Here's Your Invitation to a Great Adventure
Hey Friends,
I've written down many, many experiences and ideas in past newsletters about how I try to bring more productivity to my days as a musician. I've talked about the ideal day method, time blocking, identity, all kinds of stuff. And although I don't do every one of these methods perfectly, I fully believe in them, and I try to use them as long as they make my life easier and not harder.
However, one thing recently got me thinking: these methods are good, but they are more practical and may lack the fun factor. And I’m sure you want to have fun practicing or doing your things, don’t you?
Recently, Capy and I did a bike tour around Lake Balaton, which was a great adventure out of my daily routine. What I really loved about it is how we made all of these spontaneous decisions about when we wake up, what we eat, where we go. And this reminded me of a method I used to do and kinda stopped 2-3 months ago. A method that helped me to turn even the monotonous tasks of everyday life into smaller and bigger adventures. I intend to bring this back to my life now, so let me explain what this is about.
The job is to ask yourself every morning this one single question:
“ What should be my daily adventure? “
Choosing a main quest or adventure to your day will give you a theme or a sense of structure, a compass. Let’s say your daily adventure is to work, so you can provide for your family. That sounds pretty reasonable. But can you be a bit more specific? Maybe describing what exactly you’re going to do today can bring an extra excitement to your main quest. Instead of saying “today’s adventure is to go to work”, which sounds quite silly if you look at it this way, maybe say, “my daily adventure today is to save as many lives as I can” if you’re a doctor, or “to help people have electricity in their homes”, “to solve people’s personal problems with our product on the phone”, etc.
But don’t stop there. Every day, once you're done with your main quest, you can choose side quests to balance your life. Because my main quest is usually work related, I like to choose 1-1 side quests of the following three categories: creative, relationship, health. This allows me to stay balanced or centered, and don't get lost in work. So in practice:
My daily adventure today is to jump on a meeting with some folks from Manuel Rodriguez Guitars and create an awesome show plan for our upcoming collaboration at Guitar Summit 2024. Very exciting, very adventurous.
My side quests for today:
Relationship : I’ll call my grandma this afternoon around 4 pm and we’ll chat for about an hour
Creative: After sending this to you, I’ll start working on my online video course.
Health : I’ll go to the gym at 8 pm
(By the way, I didn't invent this technique, I read it in Ali Abdaal's book. I'm going really slowly with this one, and this is not a paid promotion from me, but it's really worth reading, full of great ideas.)
How you note these quests down is really up to you. I created a spreadsheet in Notion for this, but a notebook or your phone will also do just fine.
You can easily integrate this method with other techniques you have already started implementing in your practice. For example, if you have decided as part of your ideal daily routine to sit down and play the guitar at six in the evening, that can also be an excellent main quest. Or if you have to take a letter to the post office, it could be a side quest. And how nice it will feel to finally get it done instead of letting it sit at home for weeks!
Or, let’s say, another good main quest is to restring your guitar so it will sound even more beautiful, and you can finally get rid of those old strings (pro tip: turn on some tavern music or renaissance dance music, and it'll feel just like being a medieval traveling musician, will be much more fun :D)
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Because of this holiday I took, I didn’t work on any new videos, but I’ll share some new things with you as soon as I can. In the meantime, don’t forget that my album is available on all major music distribution platforms, here’s a spotify link for example:
That’s all, y’all have a great week!
Hugs,
Beatrix