An obscure artist and a megastar may’ve had the same exact goal: To reach millions with their music.
What separated the two? Their habits.
One musician built a system where tiny daily wins compounded. The other kept dreaming of their goal, waiting for a big change to happen.
Systems are more important than goals
If you look at many notable musicians over the past 20 years, some version of the above story has played out in their careers.
They worked diligently at their craft, their content, their marketing. Then they emerged as an “overnight” success.
These artists found a way to push through their “valley of disappointment,” that phase of any new endeavor where small progress is being made, but is difficult to perceive.
When it comes to building a music career, sometimes that valley can last for months or even years.
How to make better habits automatic
“It’s the journey, not the destination, man!”
Whenever I talk to independent artists who are making big things happen, it’s because they’ve dedicated themselves to the process — not specific outcomes. The activities that help them make progress in their journey have become almost automatic.
This all made a lot more sense to me earlier this year when I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. The video above does a great job summarizing the main points of the book, offering practical tips to help you make tiny changes each day in your habits, environment, and relationships.
Forming better habits helps you build a better system, and a better system is the key to achieving results — whether those results started as a goal or not.
Chris Robley is an acclaimed singer-songwriter and award-winning poet from Maine.
His Beatlesque indie-pop and milltown Americana songs have been praised by The Associated Press, No Depression, KCRW, The LA Times, Boston Globe, NPR, American Songwriter, and others.
His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, The Poetry Review, and more.
Robley has received a Maine Literary Award in Poetry, Boulevard’s Emerging Writers Prize for Poetry, and in 2016 was selected by former US-poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a finalist for the Dorset Prize.