Something you can do today is more important than everything else you will do.
Jack Daniel's Bottle Sketch
There is one activity, one thing, that will help you to get what you want, create your masterpiece, or advance your career.
Despite all of the marketing I may be able to muster, the success of my art is going to depend ultimately on the quality of my art. Since I am not an abstract expressionist, I need to be able to draw (though I would argue that even abstract need to have strong drawing skills).
Drawing is the primary skill that all of my artwork flows from. Without drawing, I can not make art. I would then have nothing to sell and nothing to market.
I need strong drawing skills.
I have recently started a habit of drawing every day, for around an hour. Implementing a habit takes time, but I know that I need to implement this habit as a non-negotiable habit. It is, after all, the most important thing I can do.
I have started very simply. I draw things that are around me. A couple nights ago I drew the desk in my office. Last night, an empty whiskey bottle. What I draw isn’t as important as just doing it. The ability to transform lines into an image, and to recreate what I see on paper is a fundamental skill.
I will not succeed without it.
Everybody has a “most important thing”
This idea does not just apply to artists and drawing.
Whatever you are creating, one thing is the most important thing to do today. If you are a blogger, writing is the most important thing for you to do. If you create iPhone apps, writing code is the most important thing to do. If you are dieting, then exercise is the most important thing for you to do.
The people who succeed are the people that do their most important activity every day, no matter what.
What is your most important thing?
What is that most important activity?
It is the one thing that you cannot have success without.
If I did not have this website, my email newsletter, and mobs of admirers, there is a chance I could succeed on skill alone. It may not be likely, but it is possible.
The successful people are going to be those that do whatever they need to do to succeed, every day. If you do it so much it becomes habit, all the better.
Overachievers are ok too
I lied. I actually have two most important things. One is drawing. The other is writing.
I have two jobs. One is as an artist. The second is as a marketer. The success of each is supported by success of the other.
As a marketer, my most important activity is writing. I’ve written about my morning power hour elsewhere, but maybe I’ll bring it back up here one of these days.
My alarm goes off at 5:45 every morning, so that I can sit at my computer from 6:00 to 7:00 am and write. I write blog posts, email newsletters, sales copy, etc. The important thing is that I write. Sometimes I have no idea what I am going to write, and that’s when I produce that blog post that kinda sucks.
It is more important to write something badly than to not write at all.
I separate my two jobs into morning and evening. In the morning, before I go to DayJob, I am a marketer. When I get home from DayJob, I am an artist. Each of these times has its most important thing to do.
What is your most important thing to do? Leave me a comment and let me know.
I’ve found that this system works really, really well. It breaks down for me when I have something extremely distasteful I need to do. At the moment, it’s reviewing some technical articles. I need to knock them out because they’re clogging up my process. Instead, I’m procrastinating.
.-= Dave Doolin´s last blog post ..Website In A Weekend Whitepapers – Series I =-.