Three Questions to Ask Yourself Every Day — The Entrepreneurial Musician

I subscribe to a newsletter from marketer Max Bernstein that unfortunately seems to be in hibernation. The most recent issue (which was back in March) featured three questions that he has written down on a small whiteboard so he sees them each and every day.

These questions and their very brief descriptions are good enough that I have to share them with you.

(For the record, I just spent a while trying to find him sharing these three questions anywhere online that is linkable so I could send you straight to it but I can’t find it anywhere other than the email. And there’s not even a web-based version of the email to link to! So that’s why I haven’t linked directly to him sharing these questions - I literally don’t think it exists anywhere online!)

So here are the three questions from Max Bernstein with my thoughts on each:

Who Am I Helping Today?
Zig Ziglar famously said, "You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want."
When I start focusing on who I can help today and actively seek solutions to their problems, all my fears, frustrations, and mental blocks fade away.

This question is vital and its answer should fuel everything we do professionally. I use a similar question in my personal life which is “who needs me on my A-game today?”

What Is The Golden Nugget?
I could fill up an entire spreadsheet with content from tweets, calls, courses, articles, and videos that I come in contact with before noon. Instead of worrying about remembering everything, I focus on "what is one thing I can take away from each thing I consume."

What a great way to deal with the overwhelming nature of the always-connected world we live in: Look for the one overarching takeaway from everything you encounter.

And he encourages you to write it down in a notebook. Simple and powerful.

Am I Acting With Urgency?
Complacency is the easiest trap to fall into when you don't have anyone looking over your shoulder.
Working with a sense of urgency puts me in motion.
It creates connections.
It advances projects.
It gets stuff done.
And when all those things happen, it is a lot of fun.

The single most difficult thing for me as an entrepreneurial musician is maintaining urgency when it’s just me working on something. I’m great at urgency when I have an external deadline. But so many things in my portfolio career have internal deadlines - meaning there won’t be another person I have to email to say “I’ve let you down” if I blow past it.

I have a feeling that regularly asking myself this question, like Max suggests, is going to help me keep a sense of urgency which will pay huge dividends for me moving forward.