The Ability to Effectively Plan Your Artistry is in Direct Proportion to the Time You Take to Think.

EntreMusicians Sacrifice Sufficient Space to Truly Think About Our Next Steps or Our Next Five Years because we're always ON! There is Constantly Something to Do, Some Place to Be, Someone to See and Something to Say or Listen to or Read...Or. If We Balance Family with Our Career, We Frequently  Walk the Tightrope of Rehearsing, Writing, Gigging, Promoting and Updating for the Rotating Cycle. There's Simply No Time to Think!

But Ponder This. If There's No Time to Think, There is No Time to Plan, If We Forego Planning, We Might As Well Lay Down Our Drumsticks, because we have chosen to place fate, chance, circumstance and luck as the guiding factors in our career. Stopping to Think About, Think Through and Think Beyond out Present Career is the Most Important Thing to Do.

Author John Maxwell's Excellent "Thinking For A Change" and its companion "Jump Start Your Thinking" provide a litany of tools many EMs could benefit from.

We are used to Creative Thinking. This is What Makes Us Who We Are. Creativity is Our Breath and Often our Bread & Butter.

But Learning to Utilize:

• Big Picture Thinking - Thinking Beyond Ourselves and Our Worldview to Capture a Holistic Perspective
• Focused Thinking - Thinking With Concentration & Clarity to Hone in on The Real Mission 
• Realistic Thinking - Thinking Truthfully & With Certainty on How Things Are and Not As We Tend to See Them
• Strategic Thinking - Thinking Which Provides Clear Direction & Increases Our Potential
• Possibility Thinking - Thinking Beyond the Barriers & Limitations to Solve the Impossible
• Reflective Thinking - Thinking About  & Evaluating Past Actions to Determine What Could Be 
• Questioning Popular Thinking - Thinking Past the Status Quo and Group Think to Spawn True Innovation
• Participating in Shared Thinking - Thinking in Collaboration with Others to Form a Mastermind
• Unselfish Thinking - Thinking Considerately of Others in Order to Create Something Grander than You Could Accomplish Alone
• Bottom Line Thinking - Thinking in Terms of Real Results to Maximize All Areas of Your Life.

Are All Excellent Components which will Provide Advantages Over the Way We Used to Think, If At All.

The Key, However, is to SCHEDULE Time to Think. I Know. I Admit, It Sounds Strange and Actually,  a Waste of Time Until I began to Engage. Then I Kicked Myself for Not Having Done This Sooner.  15 Minutes Twice a Day has Added Ideas & Imagination to My Career. I'm Not an Expert Yet and Often, it's Quite Difficult to Stop at the Very Same Time Every Day and Return to The Very Same Place to Think as the book suggests, but being Extremely Iintentional about this Great Addition to My Schedule has Given Me an Edge. Try and See How It Works for You!

Finally, A Book I have been Listening to often throughout this year, I will Stop, Sit Down to Read and Learn what So Many Ultra-Successful Men & Women have found to be verifiable, "Think & Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, has been the breakthrough literature of Multimillionaires for Decades. 

Stop & Think how that could be true for you too!

 

I Wasn't Listening to Any Music while writing or posting this...