Wallitner Weekly 21

Hello everyone!

A lot of productive things happened this past week.

I have been super consistent at crossing at least one thing off of my o do list every day. It feels really good to have a steady schedule and know what I want to do each day now. The craziness of summer vacation is stressful sometimes, and Im glad to be back home where I can work.

My fiancee has started her first week of school already, so she’s gone most of the day. Without her to distract me I have been super productive. I am about ten pages into my music theory textbook (not including pictures, so its more like 12-15 pages I’d guess). I want this book to be more of a survivors guide to music theory. Nothing too in depth, but also a little bit of every topic. The idea being a person who knows nothing about music could read this book and not be overwhelmed, but a music enthusiast could could also learn some things. And of course with the help of a music teacher, this book could guide students to a real level of proficiency.

I am learning a new recording software called OBS so that I can try to streamline my theory video production even further. I also plan to make worksheets and things to go along with the textbook. Practice is what really develops any skill since there’s only so much a book can do.

I also want this book to be truly useful to as many people as possible, so I plan to talk about things like pop chord changes and TABs as well as standard notation. This way even my “Campfire guitarist” friends and family could benefit from a chapter or two.

I hope to be able to send out a PDF of the textbook in the email version of this newsletter in the coming weeks. A gift for those of you who have been supporting me from the beginning.

I’ve got lots of plans for next week too!

I have officially removed the Wallitner Music Members page. I have since laid the foundation for the new theory curriculum page. This will be all of the same content that was on the members page, but now it’s FREE. However, since I am writing this new textbook, I want to make sure the videos are in line with the textbook. This week I plan to write a few more chapters of the book, and then record some videos teaching the concepts.

Motivation Tips From a Person Who Struggles With Self Motivation.

I’m saying this more for my own benefit than for yours, that way when Im not motivated to do anything tomorrow I can say, “well yesterday you said…”

Last week I mentioned that distractions destroy dreams. So by that logic, the thing that builds dreams is doing the things. And the thing that gets us to do the things is motivation. I’ve read a lot of habit building books and self help books and a lot of them talk about making your bed in the morning. The reason you should make your bed in the morning is because it feels like a win. Starting the day of with a win builds momentum and you can snowball that into doing more and more things.

This process works really really well for me. The toughest part about it though is starting that first step. When I was in college the hardest part about practicing was opening my case. My solution was a bought a stand for my bass and I left it out of its case. This way whenever I walked by it I was like “Might as well play a little bit” and then a little bit would turn into a lot and then I’d forget to eat lunch because I was practicing.

Doing that kind of “Might as well do {Insert task} a little bit” saved me. It’s a little bit harder to do now that most of my work is on my computer, and YouTube is also on my computer, but the sentiment is still there.

I have had to trick myself into being productive countless times. From things like “I need this thing out of my car, so I might as well check the mail.” or “My recording software is open, so I might as well use it.” Once I start doing whatever I need to do, then its not as hard to do the next thing, and the next thing, and then pretty soon it’s been a very productive day/week/month.

I tricked myself into doing a lot of work yesterday. I’m making a website for my sister-in-law, and I wanted the colors of the website to look good with her logo. BUT I also have been making video games and getting very distracted by drawing pixel art and things like that. So I drew a little monster using the same colors as her logo. THEN I put that monster into my color picker app and it gave me a bunch of colors that work with the monster. So I used those colors on her website and it looks great AND I have a monster too. Of course this was way more work than just putting her logo into may color app, but I didn’t want to work on her website, I wanted to draw a monster.

Again, I’m saying this all more for my future self than for you, the reader. Because I know tomorrow I’ll wake up and not want to do anything because its Saturday and my fiancee will be home and [insert any number of other distractions] but then I’ll remember I need to trick myself into being productive.

Maybe I’ll test my new recording software and microphone by recording myself playing video games. The testing process would be the exact same, but I wouldn’t be “Working”.

I’m sorry to just ramble about how I get myself to do the things I do, but maybe somebody some day will need some motivation tips and this will help. Of course there are people who will say you don’t have to be motivated to be productive. And that’s true to a point. The biggest issue with doing stuff you don’t want to do is its super tiring. The fastest way to burn yourself out, in my opinion, is to do something you don’t want to do. So trick yourself into making it something fun!

Moral of the story: If you want to be productive, make your bed. If you want to make a website, draw a monster. It works. Trust me.