Music and branding, research, teaching, music.
Between 1610 and 1612, sunspots were independently discovered by at least four different astronomers in England, Frisia, Italy, and Germany. None knew of the others’ research.
Oxygen was discovered in 1773 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele. One year later, and without knowledge of Scheele’s discovery, Joseph Priestley also discovered oxygen.
Read MoreWhen early reviewers give you “notes” or other constructive feedback on your work-in-progress, they don’t typically just tell you what’s wrong. Often a reviewer will also tell you how they think you should fix the problem they identified. They tell you how they would fix it.
This is a vulnerable moment for the nascent creative seed that you have been cultivating. Critical feedback has the potential to blast the seed right out of the ground, disintegrate it, and scatter its torn fragments to the winds. To avoid this, you need an approach to receiving critical feedback.
Read MoreSo many artists are lonely. It’s a self-inflicted exile.
Composers struggle alone. Painters grapple at the canvas but end up grappling themselves. We feel like we have seized control, but control has seized us.
The story we make up about creative life is that it is cheapened when we have help. The critics will say that you’re not good enough to do it on your own.
Read MoreAs a creative person, you've likely had the experience of struggling with a thorny, immovable problem or puzzle: how to organize a painting, a piece of music, a piece of writing. How to kill off a character in your screenplay. What metaphor to use in your story. Which path to take on your next project. What your next project should even be.
And you’ve also likely experienced the futility of trying to force a solution. Of going to sleep hopeless and distraught, with a sense of despair.
Only to find that when you wake, the perfect answer to your question has been miraculously presented to you by your unconscious mind.
Read MoreAs a creator, you can win the creator’s daily struggle and increase your creative output by building a Creative Deep Work Routine.
What is a Creative Deep Work Routine?
The concept of Deep Work comes from Cal Newport, in his book Deep Work. Newport defines deep work as:
“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capacities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
Read MoreAnother morning and it’s there again. That Resistance. Those distractions. That hope of an easy way out, that avoidance. That wishful, irrational thought.
Maybe today I won’t have to work for my art.
Maybe I don’t have to seek out the Muse. To make any effort. ”Please, just let the Muse seize me,” we cry internally. Seize me from my bad habits. From my social feed, my Netflix account, my over-scheduled life. Rip me from my self doubt, my procrastination. Kicking and screaming, just save me from my own apathy.
From my own lack of preparation.
Read MoreSo many artists are crippled by fear. Fear that we will "annoy" our followers through self-promotion. Fear of imposition. Imposter syndrome. Fear, ultimately, that we won't be able to make a living for ourselves and our loved ones through our art. It is so emotionally exhausting!
Here's a lens that has made marketing much less exhausting for me, because it takes the spotlight off of me, and throws it back onto my listeners:
Instead of talking constantly about what you do in your marketing, talk constantly about your customers' problems and frustrations.
Read MoreA couple years ago, Billy was just a ski instructor and recent college graduate who wanted to be a writer. After becoming interested in Holiday’s books (Obstacle Is the Way, Perennial Seller, and others), he sent Ryan an email thanking him for his work, and offered to help out on any projects Ryan might have for him. He sent the email and moved on with his life.
Then Ryan wrote back.
Read MoreFor creators, sometimes the hardest thing is just to start.
We plan, we prepare, we tidy up. Maybe I need to build a better chapter template for my book. Maybe I need to do more research. Maybe I need to go to the store to get different paints. Maybe I should search for a new sonic plugin that will really make this track sound great. I think if I could just tweak my desk setup, I could really get some good work done.
Some planning can help you fly further when doing your creative deep work. But too often, planning can be an excuse. It’s tangible, tractable, satisfying—and deadly to your creative production.
Read MoreArtificial intelligence is having a moment right now, especially if you are a professional creator. Especially if you are a writer. In this article, I want to propose one way that authors can utilize AI writers ethically—saving time and producing more writing, while saving money—by using AI writers as research assistants.
Read MoreIn this installment of my reading advice for college students, I share two connected strategies to get more out of your reading in less time.
The first tip is to decide how long you want to read, and set a timer. Having a timer running will help you stay on task and avoid distractions such as checking email, social media, or YouTube.
Avoid trying to set Herculean goals that are impractical. If you say you are going to read for 2 hours straight, your brain is going to think that a quick break can’t hurt anything. But you can probably convince yourself to focus for 30 minutes on reading with no distractions, and complete focus.
Read MoreIn my previous post, I shared my overall advice for college students who want to spend less time reading while getting more out of what they read. Now I want to follow up with the most important mindset shift to make when you are moving from high school to college reading assignments.
The goal of a reading assignment is not simply to read all the words from beginning to end and take scattered notes on random elements that you think might be important.
Instead, the goal is to uncover the author’s argument, and be able to restate that argument briefly in your own words.
How do you know when you have understood?
Read MoreAfter weeks and months of research, reading, and–as it turns out–practicing, I emerged at the end of that summer of 2011 with a whole new mindset. I not only no longer considered myself a slow reader, I knew for a fact I was pretty darn fast. And as I got quicker at reading, I was somehow also understanding more of what I read, and remembering it with a clarity that was unsettling.
Read MoreFor their 2017 album, Everything Now, Arcade Fire created an extensive faux-promotional campaign. I’m writing about the album and its promotional campaign in my book project, Sway: How Promotion Has Shaped American Music. One of the features of the campaign was the creation of a fictional, evil corporation that plugged AF’s release with all the vigor and crassness of a profit-mongering company.
The ploy led to a number of funny and caustic creations from the band, one of which was their music video for “Creature Comfort.” Here’s how it went down:
Read MoreIt is important to understand the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. These terms refer to how many layers of scholarly interpretation and analysis have been applied to the source material before you are interacting with it. To get a sense of how this works, consider a research project on Duke Ellington’s compositions in the 1940s.
Read MoreHere is a step-by-step process to find relevant sources for your research project quickly and efficiently.
Read MoreIf you take the time to do things right, it will seem like you are moving slowly at first, but you will save time later, at the finish line, when it counts most. Learn how this philosophy applies to your research process.
Read MoreAs a university student, you are asked to do research, but why? It turns out that we use our research skills constantly, every day, to make decisions. In this video I imagine what it would be like in a world where research didn't exist.
Read MoreAs I have been watching courses on Masterclass, I have been paying attention to patterns of thought or approach that several top performers share. What are the similarities of top performers in very different disciplines? I am keeping a running list of these concepts in order to study them more deeply. One of the first ones to surface for me was in how top performers respond to and utilize critical feedback.
Read MoreIt can be difficult to know how to convert your live lecture courses to an online video course. In this video I share my approach to dividing lectures into short, manageable chunks for students. Then I show you exactly how I sequence these short videos into a "playlist" in the course website.
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