I've just spent three hours thinking about my business, working through worksheets and planning stuff. And the conclusion I'm coming to is that the more I think about what I want my business to be, the more it seems to wriggle and transform under my gaze. Possibly this means that I didn't spend enough time thinking about it in the first place, but I think all the reading I've done about online business strategies and marketing and options open to me in the past few weeks has had an impact too. What started out as a simple "I'll build websites for small businesses that will really help them to get more business!" has transitioned through consulting work and come out the other side as "what if I could set up an online training course for designers and DIY web nerds to show them how they can build websites for small businesses that will really help them to get more business?".
I think I like where it's going. I'm not sure how it might gain traction in the marketplace, but I think I like it. And the best bit about this transformative stuff is it's moved from high-input, medium financial gain work through to low-input, potentially high financial gain work. From needing to be on the ground and building stuff, to prepare-once, run many times (with necessary updates, of course) and just check in regularly to answer questions and make sure everything's going OK. All of which then leaves more time for composition.
One of the things I'm working on now is to work out how much of my day is really composition-related. Obviously at the moment it's a bit low because I'm caught up in getting the business stuff going and there's a bunch of other stuff going on that makes me feel like I'm treading water, but I think it's important that I know a) how much time I actually spend composing b) whether that's better in a block or scattered throughout the day (scattered seems best, although haphazard) and b) how much sitting-and-thinking or sitting-and-reading or sitting-and-listening time do I also need to feed into my composition. This is the woolly bit. And at the moment I'm not really getting any of that and I think I need to start to schedule it because this is ALWAYS WHAT HAPPENS! The woolly stuff doesn't feel productive, so I skip it, but I need the woolly stuff to allow my brain to do the processing and make the connections it needs to actually produce good music.
Thinking of following Havi Brooks' lead and keeping a Big Book of Me to try to work this out. So I can write stuff down as it occurs to me and analyse at leisure.
Why are there not 72 hours in every day?
Comments