From music veteran Slaid Cleaves:

1. Don’t believe the people who say you are good. Listen to the people who tell you where you are failing. You have to learn to be extremely hard on yourself in order to continually improve, or else you’ll just end up playing in your room. Everyone wants to be a musician, but only the ones who are self-critical, work the hardest, and stay with it the longest will succeed.

2. Songs are more important than anything else. There are thousands of great songs out there in the world. Why would people want to buy your songs if they aren’t as good as what’s already out there? You need to strive to write songs that say something interesting, something moving, something memorable, in a way that no one else has said it before. In order to get good songs you have to be hard on yourself. One of my favorite songwriters, Mary Gauthier, says she puts about 40 hours into every song she writes.

3. For a long time, you will have to do everything yourself. Make your own records, bring them to record stores, book your own gigs, play for free, do your own promotions (create a web site, make posters, buy adds, bug radio stations, create mailing lists). Nobody will help you until they see something going on already. Only then will they want a piece of the action. You have to get the ball rolling yourself and convince them there’s some action.

4. It’s very hard to get things going on your own. Find a group of musicians who are at your level, doing similar music, facing similar challenges. Work together, help each other get better, write together, share gigs. You might have to move out of the security of your hometown to find a group that you can be a part of. I’ve found “comrades in arms” by moving to a big music town, going to a lot of shows, performing at open mics, even playing on street corners.

5. Big record companies are more trouble than they are worth a lot of times (they might even be extinct in a few years). Small, local independent record labels are doing better than the majors lately, and you are much more likely to get their attention. Big record labels almost never sign someone unless they’ve made indie records and already have a significant audience (thousands of fans). But you won’t need them anyway, because the future of music is in digital downloading.

6. Despite all that I’ve said, you must find your own way. Every successful musician has “re-invented the wheel” to get to where he or she is. The business part of the music business is always changing. And when it changes, smart, alert, creative people will see an opening where they can gain a foothold.

7. In sum, work on your craft, let people know what you are doing, be patient.

8. Oh, yeah. Most important: find a girlfriend (or boyfriend) who has a good job and is willing to support you for several years.

Myspace and I have a love-hate relationship.

She’s been good to me, but she sure does take up a lot of my time. Not that I plan to spend hours and hours on myspace or anything, but my gosh how the time gets away from me.

Also, there’s something unique I’ve seen about the new crop of wannabe musicians on MySpace. They love to post comments on major recording artist’s pages saying stuff like, “Hey if you like Counting Crows, then come check out my music!” or “Hey everybody, I’m the next Dave Matthews. Check me out.”

Frankly, I feel really queasy about it.

OK, so I’m all for ruthless self-promotion. But give me a break. Have some flare people. If your musical creativity is anything like your copy writing, it might be time to find a new career. That may be harsh, but it’s the blatent truth.

Just a word to the wise: people get mad when you proclaim yourself to be something great. Even if you ARE the next John Mayer, don’t proclaim to be. Let everyone else find that out on their own terms. It all goes back to the “Music or Marketing - which comes first” topic, which I’ve written about before.

To be fair, I did my homework and checked out a few blatant myspace comments ads.

About 10% of the time, I’m pleasantly surprised. But the far greater majority of the time, people are putting their name and their reputation out there with little to show for it. It’s bold, sure. But if the music’s not good — really good — then you’re not really getting anywhere.

In my opinion, you have to start with live shows and build a local fan base around you that become diehards, because they’ve seen you live multiple times. They know you. They’ve hung out with you. Trying to advertise to an ad-nauscious, fleeting fan on Myspace is the wrong way to go.

OK, so that being said, I wrote to the staff at MySpace to find out how exactly to become a “featured artist.”

Hi, I’m writing to find out more about how to be chosen as a featured artist on myspace.

The FAQ said to email you for a rep to contact me. So, if you’d be so kind, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m in the middle of a project called “How to Get a Record Deal in 365 Days” where I detail my progress from zero to deal inside 1 year. For more info on my project, there’s a quick video intro at www.NicksJourney.com

Otherwise, my contact info is below. Thank you.

We’ll see how it goes, but that’s a better way to gain clicks and page hits than spamming Jack Johnson’s page.

DAY 24 - Man, it feels good to play live again! Tim and I played our first show together in a couple of years tonight.

Yeah, we rocked Patrick Malloy’s on Hermosa Pier. It feels good to have my guitar player back.

OK, so by “show” I mean we got a 15-minute set at the Summer of Fun Talent Contest, and by “rocked” I mean two guys with acoustic guitars, strumming as hard as we could. This has been a fun weekend to be a musician. I met up with several potential promoters here that dig the songs and want to work with me.

And by “promoters” I mean new friends that have volunteered to help me book some shows. People are jumping on board with me on this 365-day thing, and I think it’s awesome. So let’s roll people…

Oh you missed it? Don’t worry love. There’ll be more shows to come very soon.

DAY 23 - Heading back to L.A. at 2am.  Soo tired, but I’m gonna post the last of this article from Steve.

So let’s say you’ve got a little free time from dumping the unimportant stuff, from prioritizing, working smarter not harder, ready-fire-aim, yada yada, and you’re not sure what you should be doing with this newfound time.

Apply the 80-20 rule.

The 80-20 rule states that 20% a task’s effort accounts for 80% the value of that task. This also means that 80% of a task only yields 20% the value of that task. In college I was ruthless in my application of this principle.

Some weeks I ditched as many as 40% my classes because sitting through a lecture was not often the most effective way for me to learn. And I already noted that I would simply refuse to do an assignment if I determined it was not worth my time. There was one math class that I only showed up to twice because I could learn from the text book much more quickly than from the lectures.

I only showed up for the midterm and final. I would pop my head in at the beginning of each class to drop off my homework and then again at the end of each class to write down the next assignment. I actually got the highest grade in that class, but the teacher probably had no idea who I was. The other students were playing by the rules, not realizing they were free to make their own rules.

Find out what parts of your life belong in the crucial 20and focus your efforts there. Be absolutely ruthless in refusing to spend time where it simply cannot give you optimal results. Invest your time where it has the potential to pay off big.

Guard thy time.

To work effectively you need uninterrupted blocks of time in which you can complete meaningful work. When you know for certain that you won’t be interrupted, your productivity is much, much higher.When you sit down to work on a particularly intense task, dedicate blocks of time to the task during which you will not do anything else. I’ve found that a minimum of 90 minutes is ideal for a single block.

You may need to negotiate with the other people in your life to create these uninterrupted blocks of time. If necessary, warn others in advance not to interrupt you for a certain period of time. Threaten them with acts of violence if you must.

In school I would lock my bedroom door when I needed to work, so my roommates would know not to disturb me. While each individual bedroom in the two-bedroom dorm suites was designed for two people (four people per suite), I paid a bit extra to have a bedroom all to myself. This way I always had my own private room to work. When I had time to be social, I’d leave the door open, sometimes playing computer games with one of my roommates.

If you happen to work in a high interruption environment that’s negatively affecting your productivity, change that environment at all costs. Some people have told me that giving their boss a copy of this article helped convince him/her to take steps to reduce unnecessary interruptions.

While for some people it’s helpful to block off a specific period of time for a task, I find that I work best with long, open-ended stretches of uninterrupted time. I’ll often allocate a starting time for a task but usually not a specific finishing time. Whenever possible I just allow myself to stick with a task as long as I can, until I eventually succumb to hunger or other bodily needs.

I will frequently work 6 hours straight on a project without taking a break. While frequent breaks are often recommended to increase productivity, I feel that suggestion may be an artifact of industrial age research on poorly motivated workers and not as applicable to high-motivation, purpose-driven creative work.

I find it’s best for me to maintain momentum until I can barely continue instead of chopping a task into smaller chunks where there’s a risk of succumbing to distractions along the way.

The state of flow, where you are totally absorbed in a task and lose all sense of time, takes about 15 minutes to enter. Every time you get interrupted, it can take you another 15 minutes to get back to that state. Once you enter the state of flow, guard it with your life. That is the state in which you will go through enormous amounts of work and experience total connection with the task.

When I’m in this state, I have no sense of past or future. I simply feel like I’m one with my work.

While sometimes I suffer from the problem of the task expanding to fill the allotted time (aka Parkinson’s Law), I often find that it’s worth the risk.

For example, when I do optimization work on my web site, I’ll frequently think of new optimization ideas while I work, and I’ll usually go ahead and implement those new ideas immediately.

I find it more efficient to act on those ideas at the moment of conception instead of scheduling them to be done at a later time.

This happens to me all the time in songwriting.  Sometimes when you get the creative juices flowing, you gotta go with the flow.

Work all the time you work.

During one of these sacred time blocks, do nothing but the activity that’s right in front of you. Don’t check email or online forums or do web surfing. If you have this temptation, then unplug your Internet connection while you work. Turn off your phone, or simply refuse to answer it. Go to the bathroom before you start, and make sure you won’t get hungry for a while. Don’t get out of your chair at all.  Don’t talk to anyone during this time.

Decide what it is you should be doing, and then do nothing but that. If you happen to manage others, periodically ask them what their #1 task is, and make sure they’re doing nothing but that. If you see someone answering email, then it should be the most important thing for that person to be doing at that particular time. If not, then relatively speaking, that person is just wasting time.

If you need a break, then take a real break and do nothing else. Don’t semi-work during a break if you feel you need rest and restoration. Checking email or web surfing is not a break.

When you take a break, close your eyes and do some deep breathing, listen to relaxing music and zone out for a while, take a 20-minute nap, or eat some fresh fruit. Rest until you feel capable of doing productive work again. When you need rest, rest.

When you should be working, work. Work with either 100% concentration, or don’t work at all. It’s perfectly fine to take as much down time as you want. Just don’t allow your down time to creep into your work time.

Whew!  I think that’s the bulk of what my new friend Steve had to say.  Sorry to post someone else’s thoughts on here, but he had the right ideas when I really needed to hear them.

OK, now time for sleep.  We’ll try again tomorrow.

DAY 22 - I’m on a personal development kick, and have been spending my free time figuring out why I have no free time anymore… 

Take a hard look at this and be brutally honest with yourself.  I’m trying to do the same for me.  No games.  No coverups.  Here’s Steve’s advice on getting rid of the junk that wastes your time. 

Triage ruthlessly.

Use the trash can liberally. Apply the rule, “When in doubt, throw it out.” Cancel useless magazine subscriptions. If you have a magazine that is more than two months old and you still haven’t read it, throw it away; it’s probably not worth reading.

Realize that nothing is free if it costs you time. Before you sign up for any new free service or subscription, ask how much it will cost you in terms of time. Every activity has an opportunity cost. Ask, “Is this activity worth what I am sacrificing for it?”

In college I was downright brutal when it came to triage. I once told one on my professors that I decided not to do one of his assigned computer science projects because I felt it wasn’t a good use of my time. The project required about 10-20 hours of work, and it involved some tedious gruntwork that wasn’t going to teach me anything I didn’t already know.

Also, this project was only worth 10% my grade in that class, and since I was previously acing the class anyway, the only real negative consequence would be that I’d end up with an A- in the course instead of an A.

I told the professor I felt that was a fair trade-off and that I would accept the A-. I didn’t try to negotiate with him for special treatment. So my official grade in the class was an A-, but I personally gave myself an A for putting those 10-20 hours to much better use.

Ask yourself this question: “Would I have ever gotten started with this project, relationship, career, etc. if I had to do it all over again, knowing what I now know?” If your answer is no, then get out as soon as possible.

This is called zero-based thinking. I know a lot of people that have a limiting belief that says, “Always finish what you start.” They spend years climbing ladders only to realize when they reach the top that the ladder was leaning against the wrong building.

Remember that failure is your friend. So if a certain decision you’ve made in the past is no longer producing results that serve you, then be ruthless and dump it, so you can move onto something better.

This is good advice that I’ve never heard anywhere before.  I’m thinking I oughtta dump a few things right now…

There is no honor in dedicating your life to the pursuit of a goal which no longer inspires you. This is another situation where you must practice integrity in the moment of choice. You must constantly re-assess your present situation to accurately decide what to do next. Whatever you’ve decided in the past is largely irrelevant if you would not renew that decision today.

Identify and recover wasted time.

Instead of watching a one-hour TV show, Tivo it and watch it in 45 minutes by fast-forwarding through the commercials. Don’t spend a half hour typing a lengthy email when you could accomplish the same thing with a 10-minute phone call. Batch your errands together and do them all at once.

Trying to cut out time-wasting habits is a common starting point for people who desire to become more efficient, but I think this is a mistake. Optimizing your personal habits should only come later. Clarity of purpose must come first.

If you don’t have clarity, then your attempts to install more efficient habits and to break inefficient habits will only fizzle. You won’t have a strong enough reason to put your time to good use, so it will be easy to quit when things get tough. You need a big, attractive goal to stay motivated. The reason to shave 15 minutes off a task is that you’re overflowing with motivation to put that 15 minutes to better use.

It all comes down to figuring out what you want to do with your life and what you want to be known for.  Come people call it a legacy.  Some people call it a 500-year-plan.  I call it destiny, and for me, it’s music. It just took me a while to figure that out is all… 

I think if you get the highest levels of your life in order (purpose, meaning, spiritual beliefs), the lower levels will tend to take care of themselves (habits, practices, actions).