By Seamus Anthony

A little while back I wrote in this post about how I felt the need to set myself some new goals and generally recalibrate my life direction. Not a complete re-do, but rather a kind of tune-up or a ‘defrag’ so to speak.

Well it has taken some time for the defrag to complete, as I was happy to allow it time to run at its own pace rather than force it through. But it’s done now, and seeing as it will probably affect this blog quite a bit, I suppose I will write about it here (and also I mentioned – off-the-cuff – that I would be doing ’some kind of a public challenge’, so I’d better follow through on that).

Firstly it is important to note that I already know what my One Thing is, my Major Definite Purpose as per Curly’s Law - I don’t like to publicly share it, because it would lose its power if I did that – but it’s important to note that this post and the thought processes behind it are not about figuring out what my goal is, it’s more about having a fresh look at the events of the past year and thinking about what I can do to better get on with it and make it all happen.

So here goes …

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as much. This is because of two reasons:

1. It is important that I provide for my family as I am the sole breadwinner and unfortunately, after an easy time of it in 2008, I have had to bite the bullet and go back to working a day job (away from home) to bring in the bacon (boo-hoo, poor me, I know…). Besides being a gigantic pain in my arse, this also means I have had less time to spend on my “real” mission in life, so writing has had to play second fiddle because…
2. I have finally come to the difficult decision to use what little spare time I have (very little) to primarily focus on my music over and above writing, internet entrepreneurship and other little projects I had ticking away in the background. Allow me to explain…

Firstly, having several fronts like music, writing, and internet entrepreneurship doesn’t sound very “Curly’s Law” does it? But it is really because I have a Major Definite Purpose – my One Thing – and these “sub-things” all serve to further my major cause, (the one I won’t reveal). So, assuming I have plenty of time, I can fight my ‘war’ on all fronts safe in the knowledge that it all counts and that I am not getting distracted when I do any of these few, specific things.

But now that I have less time to devote to my One Thing, I have had to do an 80/20 and really narrow my focus on the project that I believe will best achieve my goals. This is primarily music … and why? Because of the Rule of Ten Thousand Hours, that’s why.

The Ten Thousand Hour Rule

I recently read Malcom Gladwell’s excellent Outliers and in it he writes about how as a rule, a lot of overachievers have put in about this many hours practice at their core skill. Well, while I have done shitloads of writing over the years, this pales in comparison to the amount of music I have played. It is without a doubt the thing I am both best at and most experienced at. Sure, you’ve probably never heard of me as a musician but that’s not point, the point is I believe in myself and I have done the hard yards already, or at least a fair swag of them (”fair swag” is probably an Australian colloquialism, it means “a lot”).

Also it gives me the most pleasure, not a small factor, especially considering how much work lies ahead and how many more thousands of hours practice I reckon I need.

So for this year I will be mainly focussing on my music career, and in fact part of my silence here at this blog has been due to the fact that I have been devoting my spare time to practicing my music and booking gigs (I have already done a couple this year and thanks to my new found re-focus, have an ever-growing spate coming up, including tonight at the Empress Hotel in Melbourne’s Fitzroy North).

So where does that leave this blog? Well, I am not sure, but you should remember that I am not the sole blogger here, I run it with Steve Mills. So I can’t speak for him, but what I intend to do here is write less “How To” posts and do more simple documenting of what I am doing out in the real world to meet my goals. This may be less interesting to many of you but nevertheless, that’s where I am at. I will probably still write some “How To” articles, but sporadically. Also we may be opening up the format to become more of a magazine style website. More on this later.

So my main goals this year are:

1. To become a regular fixture on the Australian (and in particular, the Melbourne) live music scene, and by the end of the year to have built a healthy profile as a musician and be positioned to really make a whopping impact in 2010.
2. To lose some weight and get fitter. Nobody likes staring at a pudgy musician with a beer belly
3. Work harder at my French. This is a loose personal goal. But hey – it will come in handy when I tour France right? We are actually intending to move to Paris for at least a year sooner or later so certainly important to me!

That’s it, the rest is just jam (the ‘rest’ being writing, internet entrepreneurship and other projects – and it’s not like I won’t be working on those too, but they will not get as much attention as the above three goals*).

And these 3 goals constitute my public challenge. I am stating that these are my goals here and now in public, and will be reporting on my progress. I hate the idea of failing publicly, and I haven’t done this lightly but have in fact chewed over it for months now, so it should prove good motivation.

Maybe I will formalize all of this somehow later but for now, I have things to do. And so do you – so get to it!

*But I reserve the right to change my mind about that at any point. Fuck it, it’s my life…

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