There's an old joke that came to mind this week... "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?," asks a New York tourist. "Practice, practice, practice," replies the musician on her way to perform there. Practice? That's it? If only.
There's no doubt about it. To get good at your art, you have to practice your art. A lot. Like, pretty much every day. Don't take my word for it. Read or listen to any successful creative and they'll attribute consistent practice to their success. Usually years of consistent practice before any success at all. And you'll hear similar stories from people in pretty much any profession. The more they wrote, painted, sold, taught, dribbled, etc., the better they got at writing, painting, selling, teaching, dribbling, etc.'ing. Even if you're not trying to get better at a skill, if you spend a lot of time doing it, you'll improve—get faster, more efficient, less messy. Want to be a better drawer? Draw. What to be a better ditch digger? Dig ditches. Same, same.
If only practice was all it took to launch a creative business. If you have dreams of being a creative entrepreneur, there's a whole lot of other stuff to do on the regular, too. For example,
Build a brand
Build a community
Build a website
Pitch your work
Track your finances
Learn new skills
Learn new technologies
Learn new trends
Etc., etc., etc.
It's easy to get overwhelmed. What makes this really hard is that we need to do all things with a limited amount of time. Paying, full-time jobs or needy children or needy parents or a host of other obligations cut into practice and business building work. So what do you do? Make it a habit to make a little progress every day.
This is not profound advice and it's certainly not novel advice. You'll hear the behavior change experts like BJ Fogg and his Tiny Habits or James Clear and his Atomic Habits (paid links) describe the importance of taking one simple, small step every day to reach a goal. Motivational Mel Robbins talks about taking action and laying one metaphorical brick at a time to build a path to success. And my latest creative crush, Bonnie Christine, shares her personal story and recommendation of doing one thing a day, even if you only have a few minutes.
Since the beginning of the year, I've been spending my before work time (starting somewhere between 5:00 and 6:30 a.m., depending on my schedule) doing something to advance my goal of earning a living as a creative. Typical tasks have been designing notebooks and journals to learn my new illustration and publishing software (and to potentially get a little Amazon passive income stream going), learning and practicing surface pattern design (thanks again to Bonnie Christine), learning how to design with typography, and learning how to using fucking Meta Business to "make the most" of Facebook and Instagram. (In case it's not obvious, I'm a little resentful about that particular task--when did social media get so complicated?)
Did you pick up on the theme of my daily progress tasks? Learning. Right now, it feels like I don't know how to do anything. I'm a novice at everything. My progress is focused on just figuring things out. That's all well and good. Learning will always be part of the progress. But I get into trouble when my one thing every day for extended periods is learning. Especially if it's learning without practice. Or practice without reflection and feedback. Or feedback that doesn't advance the business end of my creative business.
Here's my point. You can't rely on learning to move your business forward. If all your energy is spent on learning, you're a hobbiest. That's wonderful if your goal is to be a hobbiest. If you have other goals, you have to get your nose out of the books and the blogs and the courses. Spend time getting actual shit done. Put your logo on your website. Get your email newsletter list going. Set up your portfolio. Post on Instagram. Send a pitch to license your work or advertise your shop. Get your taxes done. Make real progress.
As they say, most things worth doing aren't easy. But there's lots of evidence that doing the hard things results in success. Here's my twist on establishing creative habits and taking action and making progress.
To move toward your creative business goal:
Do one thing every day that's a simple action (for example, learn, practice, post on social media, work on your brand, work on your projects)
Do one thing every week that's hard or uncomfortable (for example, share your work and ask for feedback, pitch your work to a company, reach out to make a new professional connection)
Do one thing every month that's new (for example, set up a shop in a new marketplace, try out a new communication channel, switch roles from student to teacher)
Do one thing every year to give back (for example, donate time, goods, or money to an organization in your community just because)
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