How to Make Yourself Do Stuff

How can musicians get themselves to do more of their own work?

I'm going to tell you.

A long time ago, on a channel that was metal and video game music fused together, I knew the steps for each of my projects.

To keep myself sane, I started writing them down using the sticky app on Windows. This worked pretty well, but I had to find it each time. I would make multiple stickies if I was making a few projects at a time (I strongly advise against that). Those seem like tiny bumps in the road, but they were still bumps.

Later I started using a kanban board. If you're not familiar, you just have columns of tasks. When the task gets done, you move it over into the done column or delete it completely. The headers of the columns could also have completion dates.

This was getting better (I was using it for my classical guitar channel), but again, what if the internet went down? Where did I save that project again? Goodness. I still had the tendency to go off track, especially in my day to day practice.

We would think that if we make a todo list, we want to finish it, right? This may be obvious for a job, but what about our own work?

Enter Chris Deleon and the Tiny Whiteboard Method.

Chris who?

Chris Deleon is a game developer turned game development coach and in the past few years has started to help people with their own project management. I've been keeping up with his information for years, so I got his more recent works: "Self-Command" and "Complete Every Project".

Self-Command is an audio book and I highly recommend it. I believe the devil is in the details and there are insights in the whole book that may help you. I will do my best to summarize what I learned from it.

Why do we slack off on our own work?

What makes the difference in doing something for school or work vs on our own time? Here's some reasons/problems.

Assigned Work

• If you were at work, you'd do what you're told. Same thing goes with school. Why?

• We place importance on what we're assigned. So if we want to do what we want to do, we have to assign ourselves things. This is incredibly hard because there's no external pressure to finish anything, especially if we're just getting started.

Deadlines

• Another is the infinite deadline (or lack thereof). Are you a perfectionist? Then I guess your work will never get done. Most work in work and school has a deadline. I'm not big on definite deadlines since life happens, but if you have the time, set them and let the pressure build.

Digital "Productivity" Apps

• I love the productivity niche, but if you tell me I need a new app, on mobile or desktop, that increases the friction. You have to download it, remember where you downloaded it, maybe even categorize your productivity apps under one place.

• Even with the programs you need for your projects (video editing, audio, music, art, etc.), you don't see them until you open them up, then you have to remember where you left off.

TODO List Overwhelm

• The longer the todo list, the more your brain won't like it. Yes you can list out all the steps along the way, and that's good, but if your brain just sees that entire list it can run the risk of getting overwhelmed.

• If your list is perfect, great, but what about the days you do shallow work? It feels like you're being productive (practicing something you already know, checking analytics, altering a banner, etc) but you're not moving the needle forward.

Why do we work on other things?

What truths can we learn from the above blunders?

We prioritize what we're assigned.

• If we prioritize what we're assigned, we have to assign ourselves things. The current you (acting as a boss) has to assign future you (acting as the employee) things to work on.

• It helps to take on those two mindsets. As the boss you're the planner. As the worker, you trust the boss and put the work in.

It has to be physical

• What happened to good old fashioned pen and paper? It may get messy, but it works.

• As long as you keep your next tasks where you can physically see them, you can't hide them and it makes it easier to remember. Have all the tasks written digitally that you want, but at some point it will be time to take one from the list, write it down and get to work.

It has to be the smallest step ever

• When you put the blinders on and only focus on the next task ahead of you, life gets easier.

• As an example, what does it take to create a YouTube channel? You have to pick a genre, the title, the logo, the banner. Don't even get me started on what videos to make. But you can start with the genre right? That's the next step. Figure out what you want to make it about. Then what? You'd have to create the account. That's it. One step at a time.

The One Step at a Time Method

I'm going take ideas from Chris' tiny white board method and include stuff from my own brain. Remember, there's nothing new here, you just need to be reminded.

Brain Vomit

• Sit down and brain vomit every little thing that you think needs to be done for this main project you have.

• It doesn't have to be in order. It doesn't have be perfect. It will change with time. Things will get added and things will get removed. This isn't execution time, it's brainstorming time.

• I use Notion for this. You could also use Trello. For all I care you could use paper, then make each step a sticky note and have a huge poster board wall in your room (that actually sounds cool). The important thing is that eventually you create it in the kanban format.

Deadline? Maybe

• Set a deadline if you have the time. I emphasize that because I personally do not use deadlines. I use a loose deadline (I'll explain in more detail).

• If you set a deadline, make sure it's something reasonable but a bit scary. Do not push things out for a full quarter or even a year. A project needs to be sooner than that. Either way, a big project requires a bunch of smaller projects. Think big with a life vision, but small for a project and next steps.

• What's a loose deadline? Like I said I don't set deadlines for my own work, I do something different. I make sure to take action on all the steps on most days. That means on some level I'm moving the needle forward. If I get sick or go on vacation or am busy at night and can't record a video, I don't beat myself up over it. I'm not a hermit (not completely anyway). HOWEVER, this means no noodling. Every day has something to do. What ends up happening is that the last steps are practicing a song and recording/releasing it. Practicing is the hardest. Once I have the song down, I know it's time to stop putting things off and have to put myself out there and record. I can't guarantee the exact day I'll release something, but it the work will get done daily.

• Choose a path. Set a hard deadline for yourself if you're able, set the daily tasks if you're not. Just work

Organize Things

• Now that you have a list and a deadline, put them in order. Again, things may change and that's OK. Just write down what makes sense.

• As a bonus, part of the reason why I like using Notion is that if each project is similar, you can save a project template and the only thing that will change is the song you're doing.

Small List

• So let's pretend you have a list of 40 things you need to do. Cut things down to 1-3 tasks for the day. Ideally on paper, but you do you.

It's Whiteboard Time

• Here's the meat and potatoes of this. You're going to take one of the items from your list. You're going to use the tiny whiteboard and write what you did in the personal past tense. If you need to pick a song you write "I picked a song." When you get done, you erase it, then you do the next thing. The task should be something you can do in 20-30 minutes or less.

• "Huh? Why?" There's a reason for this:

• It's one step. Remember how I said the fewer steps the better? We're cutting it down even more. 1-3 in a list is great, but that means you're doing one of them and not 2 of them.

• You stay on track. Any time you forget or get distracted, you remember the next thing you have to do, not the 3 or 50 you wrote down from before.

• It's physical. The digital world is great, but having stuff that you could potentially lose on your computer or phone aren't idea. When something is in your face (like cookies in a jar) it's hard to ignore.

• It's a lie…for now. You wrote this down in the personal past tense. That means until you complete it, it's technically a lie. When you look at it but haven't finished it yet, something bugs you. You don't want to be a liar. You're talking to yourself, and you want to make that thing you wrote down true.

Repeat ad nauseam

• All you have to do is repeat these steps over and over until you've had enough work for the day.

• You can even use this to tell yourself to take breaks, make coffee, get ready for the gym, whatever. It doesn't just have to be for work time. It's for doing stuff time, whatever that means to you.

Last hard truth: Give it a chance.

If you're reading this, whatever you've been doing hasn't been working (otherwise you wouldn't have gotten this far). If that's the case, why not try it? Here. I'll make it simple for you and give you the links to all this stuff so you have no excuses. The whiteboard I got is so small you could fit it on your desk or put it in a backpack.

Why do we need this? The world has changed. Even ignoring social media, there's way too much information out there. Someone innocently trying to research something will find the "top 5 ways" to do something and just as quickly find out why those are "the top 5 things you're doing wrong."

We need to guard our brains and our attention so that we can concentrate to do things that we actually want to do.

Despite our advancements in technology, I think humans of ancient times did more just because they were bored and had more time to think and work. They also doubted themselves a lot less because there were fewer things to compare themselves to.

Everyone is on Reddit asking questions. What if all those people had no internet and were forced to just try stuff out and learn as they go? They'd probably make great leaps ahead.

Thanks for reading.

Check out my music here.