It’s New Year’s resolution time again.
Many of you who are my Facebook friends know that my resolution for 2011 was based on the theory that doing nothing is actually doing something.
Put into practice, this became a goal of not shaving for a year, and I ended up growing the same beard that I had in high school. It was a fun quest, and had side benefits such as totally confusing publishers of recent “congrats on 40 years in the industry” notices because I look the same in both old and new photos.
This is a lead-up to an idea I’d like to throw out to you: success in business can be the result of doing nothing. Further, it is a range of particular nothings that I want to propose here.
On a related note, my late father-in-law used to say to me, “You’ll be fine as long as you don’t screw it up.” Sounds obvious, but then again, we can be blind to the obvious.
Meeting The Need
Let’s start with our clients. I read a lot of griping about them on various blogs – how ignorant they are, how little they understand what we geniuses are doing, how much credit they don’t award us, how they don’t understand the simplest principals of audio, and so on.
Get over it. If they knew what we were doing, or how it all worked, or the basic theories of signal flow, they wouldn’t need us. Do nothing to change this. We had better hope they never figure it out, and that it stays a black art, because the day their 12-year-old kid can do it from a cell phone app is our last day on the speed dial.
I regularly endure sound folks with a chip on their shoulder because they’re tired, overworked, don’t like the gear they’ve been issued, or don’t like the musicians, or the event planner – or all number of folks who don’t know anything about audio.
That’s not their problem, so don’t make it yours. It may seem obvious (see above), but do nothing to tick off the band, the management, the stage crew, the promoter’s assistant, the electrician, or the security team.
And upon receiving that aggravating e-mail from any of the above-mentioned “ignoramuses,” do nothing. Many of us have the tendency to write a long-winded dissertation about why we’re right and they’re wrong, and then to emphatically punch the send icon to show them that we’re on top of it and reaffirm that we’re the expert by one-upping them.
If you really need to write something, go ahead, get it out of your system – but save it as a draft. And then do nothing.
