Trying Your Hardest And Doing Your Best

It seems to reason that you do your best when you’re trying your hardest.

‘Go do your best’ has been around for a long time. And then when ‘best’ doesn’t happen, the follow up is ‘try harder’.

So more effort is put in as a means of ‘doing your best’.

But I venture to guess that when most of us have done our best…we’ve simply done our best. That we weren’t necessarily trying our hardest or straining like we’ve never strained before. We did our best when we showed up, did our work and the best happened as a result.

Maximum effort doesn’t necessarily yield maximum results. Especially in creative fields.

This is not to say you shouldn’t work hard or work till all hours of the night sometimes. But it is to say if you’re not getting the results you want, ‘trying harder’ might not be the ticket you need.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Enforcer

Can you be your own enforcer?

The little things you know will make things better. Can you enforce them?

Saying hello, finishing something instead of Netflix, skipping fried food, leaving the house on time, reading the entire book, picking a release date and hitting it.

Sure, it’s fine if you don’t. No one is going to blame you.

But if you will enforce the changes and deadlines for yourself, when no one is watching, when no one is going to pat you on the back, and do it consistently…that is a skill that will change everything.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

What We Really Want To Hear

We don’t want to be told its good, or even great.

We think that is what we want but it’s not.

The only real satisfactory response when we show people what we made…

We want people to be in complete and utter awe, to fall off their chairs, to weep and hold us up as divine, their mortal bodies exhausted from such an enlightened creative presence.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Anything short of that is easily dismissible.

But just because it’s easy to dismiss anything short of that, doesn’t mean that you should.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

A Timely Cough

Play me your new song or new album.

What parts do you cough over as a distraction?

Make those parts better.

Then release it.

»» Or the reverse…If you play someone your song or album and you don’t have an urge to cough over any of it, you’ve probably got something pretty good.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Working On Their Behalf

Writing a song you need you hear isn’t always the same as writing a writing a song they need to hear.

Just because a song is fun for you to play doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fun for them to listen to.

You being proud of your song doesn’t mean they’re going to feel cool about telling their friends about it.

But when everything does in fact overlap it’s pretty special.

And when you are consciously bringing out the best of yourself on behalf of your audience, then over time it will creep into your subconscious…so that even when you don’t think you’re working on their behalf you still are.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple

Do The Work

You only realized you were doing great work after you started doing the work.

Starting precedes the realization.

So do the work.

Hum Love on Spotify and Apple