What Can You Eliminate in Your Music Career?

by David Andrew Wiebe | Nov 10, 2021 | Creativity

It’s a rare musician who doesn’t have some bloat in their music career. I’ve seen it with musicians over 40, because they’re clear that they only have so much time to dedicate to their craft and produce results, but it’s still a rare individual.

If you want to boost your productivity, reduce stress, and spend more time in your genius zone, you need to begin identifying things you don’t need to be doing.

Now, just because you don’t need to be doing it doesn’t mean you should automatically eliminate it. There are other options, and we will be exploring those as well.

But generally, when you do less, you’re able to do the things you’re already doing better.

You know how it feels to be sleep deprived, right? Sure, you can still get up and do your work. A little caffeine can go a long way.

But your effectiveness isn’t everything it could be. When you’re tired, you’re more prone to missing details. You could even get in accidents. No surprise, then, that you don’t do your best work when you’re tired.

Well, having an over-full plate is like that. It may seem like more is always better, but there always comes a point in your career where less is better. Because when you’re doing less, you can give the most important projects and tasks the time and attention they deserve.

In 2020, I started a newsletter called Music Career Tips Weekly.

Initially, I had a lot of fun and success with it. The list was growing every week, and open rates were sky high. Putting together new content was a joy.

Then, suddenly, it stopped growing. Open rates started declining. And in the ensuing weeks, the outlook wasn’t getting any better.

Now, I knew that I could have persisted. Put more marketing power behind it. Seek out more opportunities to grow it. Surely, if I kept at it, my passion for it would return as well.

But it was starting to feel like work. Developing the content was becoming a hassle. It wasn’t fun anymore.

And so, I let go of the initiative. It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, and it wasn’t made in a vacuum.

But the hardest pursuit of all is one you aren’t passionate about. Growth is slow. There isn’t much joy in the work. You can still get somewhere if you persist, but it will be a long, slow slog, and if you assign too much importance to things not happening, you will end up in a downward spiral.

There is a time to let go of tasks and projects and knowing when to let go is a learnable skill. The key is to listen to your heart, not just what your head has to say.