“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
- Gustave Flaubert
We can all do the things we do better. Regardless of our medium, we can all work faster, more efficiently, and with more focus. As an independent artist, managing time is even more important because responsibilities so frequently blur into different categories. In addition to the creative work (like actually making art) there are a bevy of non-creative tasks that, while less glamorous, are critical to the overall health of a creative enterprise (stuff like finances, marketing, etc.). There’s a lot to do, and getting everything done effectively requires a careful balance of time and priorities. This year, I’m going to drill down on that balance through an in-depth look at what I consider the three most important parts of doing work:
Specification – atomizing tasks into their smallest component parts. It’s pretty easy to specify non-creative tasks (everybody can break up the tasks required to mop a floor) but the real power is in applying this to creative work. For example – an album is made up of songs – songs are made up of verses – verses are made up of lines – lines are made up of words.
Planning – ordering specified tasks so they can be efficiently executed. By specifying each individual step in each component of a project, one is able to jump around between smaller tasks that need attention while maintaining a clear overall picture of what the project looks like.
Execution (Iteration) – successively executing the specified plan. This means that you progress through your specified plan multiple times, with each iteration slowly but surely chipping away at the bigger task that needs to be done. Why? Scheduling tasks on a calendar rarely works – you either get behind, or you realize that the order you had everything in initially doesn’t make sense when you’re actually doing the work. Either way, the schedule quickly becomes fiction. For a plan to be useful it should evolve – doing things in successive steps allows this, and gives your work both stronger internal coherence and external consistency.
In the coming year, I plan to demonstrate this system by doing a project from start to finish in public (I know, I’m not done with the previous project yet, but as one nears completion, I move towards the next). Whereas Jamboree existed in the 50/50 area of the iMap (a balance between concrete and abstract narrative and execution), the new project will lie more in the 90/10 area (abstract narrative and concrete execution). It’s called Jubilee and will be a series of abstract allegorical meditations centering around personal definitions of joy and faith.
This week, I’m going to talk about how specification, planning, and execution can be applied to creative and non-creative work. Over this year, I will post updates biweekly with screenshots and sound samples documenting the creative process, and will continuously post on different non-creative things (like marketing and legal issues). Hopefully by the end of the year, there will be a completed project and a nice roadmap illustrating how it was accomplished.
It should be a great experience – let’s do it, and let’s do it better.
Tags: Jubilee, Music, Project Management
[...] laid out the plan for my new project Jubilee in a post about a month or so back, and I’m excited to offer my first update on the process. My goal was to approach songwriting [...]