Make Money From Music EP8 - Discipline vs Motivation in Music and Business

What does discipline actually look like for a musician? A

good question.

I've been thinking about it the last couple of days.

I think for me, I don't feel like I'm a very disciplined person, but I do i do i do things regularly consistently for a very long time which makes it appear as if i am very disciplined but i don't feel like i'm making a big effort to be disciplined so i think the key to it is it's you know intrinsic and extrinsic motivating factors For each person, they have a different sort of different drives, different needs, different goals.

There's like the Tony Robbins seven needs kind of thing.

But for something like music, You know, take someone who's practicing a lot, who's a musician.

If they want to be famous, if they want a lot of people saying how great they are and paying the money and getting all the gigs, all the extrinsic, external things, it's very hard to get that In today's world, if you're starting off, it's very hard to get it.

It's impossible to get it in a short amount of time or very rare.

You know, if you work really well and hard for a really long time, maybe you'll get some amount of it, but it will take such a long time.

If that's your motivation, you might easily get bored, frustrated with the whole thing.

So intrinsic motivation is better for the music practice.

So, you know, what you just, the feelings that you get from practicing.

I think I practice guitar so consistently because of how it makes me feel, the intrinsic motivation that I get.

From doing it just makes me feel better.

It's like good for me.

It's good for my mental health So I do it, you know, you don't have to force yourself to eat your breakfast or eat food You know, you just do it because it's good for you because if you don't do it, you're gonna get Hungry and sick.

So, you know, you just do it and that's how music practices for me now after after 34 years of doing it It's just I just don't miss it.

I just don't think of missing it.

I don't want to miss it I just do it because good for me and you know, it's Yes part of my daily routine it's part of my life so I just do it and it with business I think It's a bit similar But yeah, it's quite hard to get.

I mean, for your business, you can't have only intrinsic motivation to do business because you have to make money from it.

It's the purpose of the business is to make money and so that you can buy food and live somewhere and have all the nice things you want.

So if you have a business that's not making any money at all, that's a big problem you can't sustain yourself on just oh I feel so good working on my business that's not gonna it's not gonna sustain that so getting sales making sales having money come in that's like the lifeblood of your business and that feels good it feels good to have money coming in to your business and that is kind of like a very motivating factor of your business so You know, different things like have different factors.

But with the music, it's interesting because I can sustain that for a very long time.

And it's not completely separate from my business as someone who makes a living out of it.

mainly teaching other people music but it's kind of tangential you know it's I could stop practicing I could I could do that I could just stop practicing guitar and never practice again my whole life I could easily do that and it wouldn't really affect my business that much but I won't so I want to And I actually just had this idea right now is the discipline of it, which I'm saying that I don't even feel like I'm particularly trying hard to be disciplined.