Latest / The Daily Writer / Keep Putting in the Work

Transcript

Keep Putting in the Work · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Rider, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for creative success.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: One of the staples of the modern music world is the Greatest Hits album.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: When an artist has been around for a while and they've had at least a few hits, it's customary for their record company to release a new album that repackages all of those hit songs.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about the work required to actually create enough songs for a greatest hits album?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at the albums of any popular artist, you'll see that they generally only have a couple of truly hit songs from each one.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, occasionally you'll have an artist with four or five massive songs from one album, such as Richard Marks' 1987 album Repeat Offender, which had at least four massive hits.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or you'll have a true superstar like country legend Garth Brooks, who was on such a hot streak in the 1990s that almost every song of his was a huge hit.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: And let's not forget the Beatles, who were so far above everyone else that almost everything they touched turned to gold.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the exceptions prove the rule.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time, a band or a solo artist making traditional albums only has a couple of hit songs for every 10 that they put on an album.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's more, they don't often know which 20% of songs will be a hit as they're making the record.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: They're just in the studio, they're at the writing desk, putting in the work and showing up and just getting it done.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's interesting is that the same success rate holds true in other industries.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: For example, the Major League Baseball batting average for 2019 was 252.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: That means players are quote unquote successful less than 30% of the time.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, if a pro baseball player has a 300 average, they're considered excellent.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: So have you ever written something and expected people to immediately love it?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you wrote an article, a book, or a social media post and you felt disappointed that it wasn't a quote unquote hit.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But if you look to other industries such as music and baseball, you will have a hit, quote unquote, less than three out of ten times.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So does this mean that the other seven attempts are failures?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, not at all.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you step up to the plate or you go into that recording studio, or you sit down to write, you're just putting in the work.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're developing your craft.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're getting better all the time.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can't control whether somebody else is gonna love your work.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many factors at play that it's nearly impossible to engineer a hit.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: But when you do the work on a daily basis and you do it over the years and over the decades, you're almost guaranteed to eventually have a collection of greatest hits.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: The legendary jazz singer Tony Bennett reiterated this idea in his book Life is a Gift when he talked about focusing on a long-term collection of hits rather than momentary success.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: He said, the public might get the impression that singers only want number one hits, but that has never been my premise.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being number one, I only wanted to be one of the best.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just kept being myself, and I never compromise.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I never strived for a hit song, some novelty tune that would hit it big but be forgotten in two weeks.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted a hit catalog.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: If I do something, I want it to be top quality.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So don't focus on being a one hit wonder.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, focus on doing the daily creative work that will create not just one hit, but a whole collection of hits over the years and the decades.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.