Procrastination and Perseverance
Today I've been cleaning out my Gmail account that I use to sign up for newsletters from people such as Arial Hyatt, David Hooper and Wayne Breitbarth. I keep a separate account for anything I don't need to get to right away and it's really filled up to the point that I just stopped looking at it. After a very hectic but exciting week (I'll get to that in a minute) I decided to just relax and go through my account and read some of the emails with subject lines which caught my attention and delete the rest. I heard recently about someone who just declares email bankruptcy every few months.
One of the emails I came across from John Assaraff was a video discussing procrastination. John suggested procrastination to be caused by insecurity and the habit of doing menial unimportant things first. It's a mistake I have made thinking that by being busy I'm being productive but that is not the case. John suggested that before you do anything in the morning (or whenever your work day begins) to make a list of the 3 most important things you need to do. Those three things should be what will bring the highest income or highest impact towards your goal. He then said to commit to doing each of those three things before noon every day.
Lately I've been organizing my week this way by committing to work on one or two aspects of what I need to do each day of the week. For example on Mondays I work on all publicity and anything related to Fringe Festivals as well as making sure things are set financially for the week. Tuesdays I try to do something that will lead to getting Kevin's music into Film and Television. Wednesdays I focus on future bookings and the website and Thursday are for social networking and education. Fridays are a catch up and blog day. In the past I wasn't so focused on doing these tasks on a weekly basis but I believe by having a schedule and a plan I will start moving in the correct direction and see results.
So what does this have to do with perseverance? My belief from experience is that by making a plan and committing to doing something on a regular basis to move in the right direction towards my goal it will happen. It is just a matter of persevering with patience. We've seen this in the past few weeks as Kevin has started to sell out shows in Orlando and Cincinnati. We have worked hard to keep him on the road, performing sometimes to only a few people, but we continued, persevered and now we are starting to see the results through full houses, nominations and awards.
Sometimes I struggle with feeling like I don't have all the tools or knowledge I need to do the things I need to accomplish. Having to wait for perfection before we do anything is a lie we tell ourselves because of our fear. The key is to feel the fear and move through it and find a way to get the information needed.
I did this by attending seminars through Digital Nashville regarding search engine optimization, I read books about Google Ads, listened to a variety of webinars and read blogs to improve my knowledge regarding a variety of things including search engine optimization.
Here's the exciting stuff. I figured out what keywords I should add to Mr. Bond, Science Guy's website after learning a little more about SEO. Now I'm not saying I'm a genius in this area and there are many people and companies who know way more than me but I took the knowledge I had, walked through my fear and made his website the best I could with the tools I had. Not long afterwards an event company found his website because they were searching for "science experiments," keywords I had added to his website. He went to New Orleans a few months later and helped them with a presentation for one of their clients. Okay are you ready for the really big news. He's now been hired to go to Cape Town, South Africa for the same presentation. Guess who gets to go along for the trip, yes mam, yours truly! What more can I say, don't give up, follow your heart, ask questions and stay curious.
Need some more inspiration? Dick Wimmer recently passed away and this article in The New York Times said that he was rejected more than 150 times in 25 years of submissions but became a published author in 1989 by Mercury House because he never gave up!