If you’re an artist, this single skill will make you impossible to ignore.
The skill applies to your craft, to building your fan base on social media, or anything else you want to dramatically improve.
Before we dive in: Enrolment for Round 2 of my course + coaching program is officially open today! 20% of spots have already been filled by people on the waitlist and it’s only been two days—so if you want to do something special for your music career before the year is out, I highly recommend you get in quick.
You can check out details and enrol here.
Recently I’ve been inspired by learning about how highly successful artists and other top performers work.
What makes them so great—so undeniably impressive?
Do they just have some inexplicable trait that we don’t? Were they just destined for success from birth? Or is there something else going on?
Although it’s easy to feel like that these people have literal superpowers, they’re human just like us.
Most people who are exceptional at what they do—whatever it is—have become that way through practises that anyone can implement.
And while some can improve faster than others, most of us have infinitely more potential than we realise, and we could be much greater than we let ourselves believe.
The illusion of the ‘prodigy’ is hard to break.
We see someone with exceptional skill and assume they must have that ‘something special’—there can’t be any other explanation for it, right?
Not exactly.
The truth is most ‘magic’ in this field can be explained by a dedication to one thing, something that takes people from good to great to exceptional.
That thing is deliberate practise.
The trap of regular practise.
Many musicians understand that being great is hard work. They know it takes practise, whether it’s the craft itself, building a fan base, or any of the other million things they have to do.
But while many will show up as much as is required—that is, they’ll practise frequently, post consistently, etc—most don’t ever achieve the level of greatness they wish they could.
This is because of how we show up, how we practise. And I’m the worst culprit of this.
If you looked at how many hours of ‘practise’ I’ve racked up in my 20+ years of exploring music, you would expect me to be exceptional.
But many of the years I’ve spent playing around with various instruments, in music production, composition, and whatever else were not productive.
I’ve been engaging in regular practise.
This is the standard: We’ll practise enough to get good at our instrument or craft, but then once we reach a certain point our practise sessions start to see diminishing returns.
Once we get to a level of competence that makes us feel good, it’s easy to get caught up in the comfort of that and we stop stretching our abilities.
For musicians, this can look like playing the same stuff over and over again instead of constantly trying to learn something new (and hard), or maybe we’re writing new music but it’s never really pushing us out of our comfort zone technically or artistically.
We hit a point and our minds quietly say: “Ok, this is good enough—let’s settle here.”
This applies to social media as well.
Many musicians will commit to showing up and creating content consistently, but that’s it.
They won’t constantly push themselves to go beyond that and achieve truly great success on the platforms.
Again, this is regular practise, and it’s a dangerous trap if you want to be exceptional.
Deliberate practise is the opposite of regular practise.
It’s about constantly stretching your abilities, making sure with every session you’re levelling up in some way.
Anders Ericsson, author of Peak, defines deliberate practise as: “the individualized training activities specially designed by a coach or teacher to improve specific aspects of an individual’s performance through repetition and successive refinement”.
Think of your craft: What might these activities be?
It’s not going to be mindlessly practising scales or playing through easy songs, but rather being intensely present in the refinement of techniques, artistry, and developing mental processes that help push you further.
It’s a huge mistake to assume years practised = level of competence.
You can work at something for years and never make amazing progress—I see this with musicians on social media all the time, and I’ve been this guy (in music & social media).
Deliberate practise is what separates the exceptional from the average.
It’s what makes those years of practise worth it. It makes people so good that people can’t help but say “how the f—ck did they get to this level??”
We look at ‘prodigies’ like Mozart and assume the only explanation is an abundance of ‘natural talent’. How else would a child be so good at what they do?
In the case of Mozart, it turns out his dad was a huge fan of intense and deliberate practise.
From a very young age, he had Mozart constantly pushing his limits.
And according to Ericsson in Peak, deliberate practise is the through line in all cases of exceptional performers—yes, even the ones we see as superhuman or prodigies.
Being undeniably amazing—being so good we’re impossible to ignore—is something most of us are capable of.
But while we all want to be this amazing, so many of us don’t do this. And there’s a very good reason for this:
Deliberate practise sucks.
It’s really hard and it’s not fun.
It requires a lot of mental energy and effort. It’s often boring and tiresome.
Deliberate practise requires you to consistently push yourself out your comfort zone.
In a way, it’s like you have to be prepared to constantly feel like you’re starting from scratch.
That’s no easy thing to do (not for me anyway).
It’s hard for us to rationalise that something not fun is worth pursuing when it comes to creativity.
It’s much easier to justify staying in our comfort zone, playing the same things, posting the same stuff, etc.
We say: ‘if it’s not fun, what’s the point?’ And I can empathise with this.
But here’s the reality: The greats do what most don’t.
And if you want to be great, that’s gotta be you.
That means it can’t always be fun. It’s going to hurt sometimes.
But if you’re willing to sacrificing a bit of fun in the present to become undeniably good at something, it’ll be way more fun in future when that work is truly paying off.
Deliberate practise is the difference between someone who’s been working on something for 5 years and has achieved massive success, vs someone who’s been working on the same thing for the same time and not achieved success.
And while there are other factors that play into this as well, if we’re talking about level of competence, deliberate practise is the key.
So let’s say you haven’t been scared off by deliberate practise and you’ve decided “f-ck yeah, I’m gonna become exceptional!”—what do you do now?
Here’s a short list of things you can do to get started on the road to becoming an artist who’s impossible to ignore.
The road to exceptional.
Here are 7 tips I’ve picked up so far from my diving into deliberate practise:
#1: Set clear goals for every ‘session’.
Whether it’s going into a practise session, improving at social media, or something else, it’s important to have a clear goal going in.
What exactly are you trying to achieve in each ‘session’?
The last thing you want to do (when you’re trying to engage in deliberate practise) is to go in blind and just start fiddling around.
Be specific.
#2: Make sure you can measure your progress.
This heavily ties into setting clear goals—you need to be able to easily measure your progress.
A good clear goal is not “get really good at ‘x’ song”. There’s no clear way to measure what ‘really good’ is here.
You’ll be better off focusing on something specific, like pages played through, playing to a certain BPM if you’re trying to increase speed, or anything that has a clear ‘checkpoint’ and also advances your skills.
#3: Constantly stretch your abilities.
If you want to continue levelling up, you need to continue pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
An easy example of this is learning how to play a new piece on the piano that challenges you physically and mentally, or creating a piece of content that requires more effort than you’re comfortable with.
It’s this process of constantly stretching yourself that makes you exceed average and step into exceptional territory.
As you’ll know, this is not always fun—but the payoff would be unimaginable.
#4: Get feedback.
Most exceptional performers have a coach, teacher, or mentor, or at least a decent way to get feedback.
This constant feedback helps you stay focused on the right things to practise and to improve in the most direct way possible.
In music, this is easy if you’ve got a professional guiding you (coach, teacher, etc).
With something like social media or other areas where it’s less obvious how to improve, I still recommend personalised feedback.
Don’t rely on a TikTok post giving generalised advice to tell you where you’re going wrong, because those people don’t know your specific situation. That includes my posts—they’re aren’t necessarily right for you.
Also please note: Feedback from random people who aren’t qualified to help you improve your skills is not useful in this case.
#5: Constantly take in new inspiration and information.
To consistently stretch your abilities and understanding of something, you need to continue taking in new information (and inspiration).
When you do this, your subconscious mind has more to work with; it’s able to consistently make new connections and help you improve instead of constantly reusing the same information.
Please don’t take this as a reason not to take action—you should absolutely continue to apply what you learn.
But it needs to be a cycle; you take in new information > act on it until you’ve exhausted the resource > take in new information > etc.
Action without new information leads to hitting a wall.
New information without action leads to hitting a wall.
New information + action = breaking through the wall.
#6: Study the greats.
I highly recommend this new information you’re constantly taking in comes from the highest quality sources.
Find people you admire in your field and study their actions, habits, and mindset.
These people have gone through it—they know what it takes to get far. I recommend listening to them.
With that in mind, I don’t recommend relying on just one source here.
What they did is not automatically what you need to do.
I recommend you pull from multiple sources (study different high performers) and look for patterns in their actions, habits, and mindset.
Soon enough you’ll start to develop a foundational understanding of what it takes to be great, and with practise you’ll form unique practises / processes that apply to you directly.
#7: Stay in the game.
As we all know, consistency is an essential ingredient in success. This applies to almost everything.
I want you to think about becoming impossible to ignore as a 1000-piece puzzle.
Every day you show up you’re adding a piece to the puzzle, and the picture is getting clearer with each piece.
If you only show up once a week, it’ll take 1000 weeks to finish the puzzle.
But if you show up every day it’ll only take 1000 days.
I know this isn’t the most exciting list—“Thanks Alex, I can’t wait to be constantly shown where I’m going wrong and engage in practise that isn’t fun.”
But this is the cost of greatness, and I believe that if we embrace the challenge, we can find the fun and enjoyment in the discomfort of improving skills.
I hope after reading this you’re inspired to go and practise, to take a small step today towards becoming exceptional.
You’re capable of infinitely more than you think. Get after it 🙂
Just before we wrap up, a reminder that Round 2 of my course + coaching program is officially open for enrolment!
This round I’m limiting the spots, so I can focus on being present with helping you 1:1.
Awaken Your Fan Base is a uniquely designed 16—week course + coaching program that gives you access to not only A LOT of self-study material & a private community of likeminded musicians…
… but also personal access to me for the entire 4 months.
The positive feedback I’ve had from Round 1 about the 1:1 personal support has been overwhelming—so I’ve made sure I can answer all your questions and give you as much personal feedback and guidance as you need.
The course + coaching program starts on October 24th but spots are filling up fast.
If you’re ready to make 2024 your year for your music career (+ the rest of 2023!), don’t miss out—this won’t open again for a while.
You can check out details and enrol here.
All the love and talk soon,
Alex
