💡✍️ADN #160: What to do before you lose your way

We talk a lot about taking the next step forward.

Progress.

Consistency.

Intention.

What we don’t talk about as much…

What do you do when your belief is too low to put your best effort forward?

When you feel like you’ve followed all the advice but your results aren’t up and to the right like everyone else’s.

It is fairly simple.

Stop relying on belief.

Belief is a feeling.

Feelings come and go.

If your career depended on feeling motivated, you’d never do half the things you need to do to survive.

What you need is a system that works when belief is at zero.

A minimum viable week.

This is the floor, not the ceiling.

For me that looks like a weekly checklist so simple I can do it even when I’m not sure what to do.

Three non negotiable tasks I do even on the worst days.

Something like:

• Send 5 follow-up emails
• Show up to the weekly meeting
• Reach out to 2 new people

When belief is low, you don’t push harder.

You make the path clearer.

The artists who survive the low-belief phases and come out ahead on the other side are the ones with the simplest system.

Because when you can’t rely on yourself to want to do it, you need a system that makes it almost impossible not to.

Insert 3 things within your week that are impactful and can happen no matter what else is (or isn’t) going on.

1. One 30–60 minute recurring band meeting to discuss the week’s to-do’s (If you are a solo artist, schedule this meeting with yourself, or if you have a team, with your team.)

2. Three 30 minute sessions a week you do nothing but show up to work on new songs.

3. One 15 minute block for fan engagement everyday on social media. Make a post and reply to a few comments.

It may not seem like much, but a minimum viable week is progress, consistency, and intention that you lay the groundwork for in your calendar ahead of time so that when the days come (and they will come) that you don’t know what to believe in, that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot by beginning a vicious cycle of nothing until you get your belief back.

This way, you can recognize that your belief may be low, but there are still a few things to do anyway.

I’ve noticed by doing this a funny thing often happens:

When I knock out my few things, I feel a little bit of belief reappear.

I see a little momentum when a few lines of a new song fall out, or I get a reply to that email that I thought would never come.

This is how it seems to work.

The music business, Artist Development, and life.

Have a great Sunday,

Neil