Hard work seems like it should pay off and sometimes what may be needed at that moment is hard work, but often the alternative of working smarter is available and better option for many reasons. If you have the option of working smarter instead of working harder and you “know” one way is smarter then go for it. To be able to evaluate if one way is smarter or harder, you have to arm yourself with knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is something you can get from a book or from someone else while wisdom is what you gain from experience. Wisdom is expensive as you have to spend time and life can throw some serious curve balls at you, however knowledge, in the age of information, is dirt cheap by comparison. A major component of this whole site is the idea that I wanted to be able to pass some knowledge on to people who may not know something that I do (this is a part of bigger work of mine which means to lower the cost of education by reminding people that “each one [should] teach one” and that giving away what actually helps the economy and community [knowledge not money] more than any tax, etc, but that’s another topic, though closely related, anyway).
I’d like to share some examples which may help you work smarter instead of harder as a musician, band, artists, etc.
Today, there are many DIY, independent musicians, and that’s a beautiful thing. I don’t think everyone needs to be a chef, but being able to cut up an onion and make some soup isn’t a bad thing to learn (assuming you like French onion soup, I guess). The same rings true for musicians.
Photography: Let’s say you need some new promo pictures. It’s great to be a photographer, but that doesn’t mean you should have to shoot yourself, unless you really want to. If your goal is learn to shoot better pictures, then that may be ok, but if that’s really you’re goal, to shoot better pictures, then it’s probably smarter to shoot someone else instead of yourself. However, if your goal is just get pictures done for yourself, and you have someone else who can do it, then it’s probably smarter to get the other person to do it. But why? It seems like all the indie musician blog posts advocate doing it yourself for cheaper. Well, it can be, but it may not be. Knowledge or wisdom can help make that decision for you in addition to just being honest with yourself. Remember the triangle that has the following words, one at each point: Cheap, Fast, Good. It’s supposed to suggest the idea that you can choose two of these for any project; something can be cheap and fast, but it won’t be good, or good and cheap, but it won’t be fast, etc. There’s definitely exceptions, but photography would definitely hold this idea fairly true in practice – or so my wisdom would direct me to believe. The idea I’d hope you’d take away from this is that it’s not always smarter to do-it-yourself, at least not all of it. This is also good for the economy as it creates an opportunity for someone to work, a job even if it’s a one-off as there are so many freelance professionals looking for work (if you have friends who work in industries that can be helpful to you, throw em so business if you want to support them, might come back to you too).
Besides outsourcing your work directly, it may be advantageous to even outsource the outsourcing. This could be in the form of hiring a manager or a secretary or personal assistant, but the more knowledge you have the smarter you can work and even with layers of people working for you, knowing more about what people are doing is crucial too, which leads me to the second example.
Remembering you’re not at the top: No one is really. Even the highest earning artist in the world is at the mercy of those to whom the artist is working – whether that’s the concert ticket buyer or the booking agent or whoever. It shouldn’t be a downer realization. Instead though think of it as an opportunity. Look at the people above you. If you work under a big label, learn about what the people that work the mixing table are doing, or what the producer/A&R person does, or the tour promoter, but understand this is hard work if these things aren’t helping you reach your goals and it’s smart work if it does. Wisdom and knowledge are going to help you decide what’s what.
That seems confusing, I mean, am I telling you to work hard at learning because it’s smart or that working hard at learning isn’t smart or that being smart means not working hard or what?
To simplify it, if you work hard to be smart instead of just working hard, you’ll create more value in your effort most of the time and knowledge and wisdom will shift your chances of being right in your choices into your favor more often. What you read, learn, ask about, is small investment compared to the time you have to give up to learn it the longer and harder way of finding out for yourself, but sometimes that’s just what you’ve gotta do. My advice though is to ask questions and seek to increase your understanding.
If you have questions, ask me or ask someone else, but ask. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions.
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