Internal Vs External Work

Most of the bad work I’ve done has come from tying it with my ego in one of the following ways:

• I made this, and if it’s not great I’m not great. 

• If I don’t release something, what will people think of me? Worse, what will I think of me? 

• I need to defend what I made because it’s a symbol of who I am. 

• If you don’t accept my work, you don’t accept me. 

Internal work exists before and during the project, and external work is the final result. The order is key to creating something worthwhile.

An example: I wrote a blog faithfully every other day for 5 years. Three years in I was posting mostly because I worried that my readers would stop reading if I didn’t post. The blog post quality suffered, and I burnt myself out. 

I made two mistakes: I wasn’t focused enough on the internal work (developing a good headspace that would create interesting topics, then writing blogs that were as compelling as I could make them) and instead focused on the perception of my externalized work. I attached ego to work that hadn’t even been done yet.  

Taking the audience away from the way we think about what we do is liberating. It forces us to decide if what we’re doing is really worthwhile, and what is just commercially successful. 

Stealing Vs. Sharing

Last week a reader and pianist Ken wrote me some great tips about how to improve my rhythm, including using a DAW to check for timing errors. It really worked- I messed around with it in the studio, and noticed some areas I could improve. I told a few other musicians about it, and they’re all using the method now, too (don’t worry, I’ll share my thoughts on it in a blog when I get better at it). 

There’s a fine line between stealing and sharing. Good (and bad) ideas are sticky, and we tend to share them easily. We’d never charge for them, because they’re not ours. 

Insecure musicians are obsessed with people stealing their ideas. They’re worried that if they share their tricks, techniques, and contacts with others, we’ll figure out what the secret is and leave them behind. 

What insecure musicians miss is that almost all ideas are really, really hard to actually steal. 

It’s not the idea itself that makes something possible, it’s the massive amount of work, grit, and practice that creates something beautiful and marketable from a theory. Ideas lend themselves well to sharing because the more ideas you give, the more likely you are to receive ideas. 

If you are worried about someone stealing your trade secrets, perhaps you should give them all away. You might be surprised what amazing things people will give back.

(Note: I am not advocating that you shouldn’t charge for your work, time, or teaching. Part of giving away your ideas may include you making a lot of money through educating others. The important part is not how you give away your ideas, but that you share them and practice receiving ideas from others).