Where Are You Settling For “Good Enough” In Your Life?

I was talking to a client recently about a new song he'd written. He asked me to listen to the song to give him some feedback, so I did.

And I was honest with him that while the song was fine, it wasn't grabbing me in the way his previous songs have. It struck me as being a pale imitation of some earlier songs he'd written.

That was not the response he was hoping for.

He talked at length about how the song came to him so quickly and easily, and that was a sign the song was well-written or perfectly formed.

I offered him a different perspective; that the song came to him so quickly and easily because he was operating from a place firmly within his comfort zone. He'd essentially written the same song several times before. That would be why I thought the song sounded so much like some of his previous songs. He was writing the first thing that came to mind. He was going down a path so well-worn that it's become a rut for him.

Just to be clear, the song wasn't terrible. It was just OK. I thought there was the seed of something great there, but that he needed to dig a bit deeper.

So I challenged him to rewrite it. Great writers rewrite. The magic happens in the editing. I told him that I know he's capable of crafting something with more resonance and that I believe in him.

Understandably, he was a little reluctant to mess with the song after it came to him so quickly and easily.

I'd be doing both him and the song a disservice by not challenging him to get outside his comfort zone and reach for greater levels of artistry instead of just settling for the status quo.

I told him “Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”

We're often afraid to go for the “great” because we’re reluctant to leave the guaranteed comfort of the “good.” It can be hard to step out into the unknown when what we have is comfortable and familiar, and we’re not guaranteed either of those things in moving forward.

Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great, because the good never quite pays off the same way.

The benefits of doing this with your songwriting are obvious. You create music that touches and inspires and even transforms your audience more deeply, and as a result, they support you more financially.

But that's just the creative side of your music career. Remember, it's called the music business. 50% music, 50% business. Where are you afraid to give up the good to go for the great in the business side of your music career?

Maybe it's your online store. You might be selling your music through Bandcamp, or have a SquareSpace or BandZoogle or Wix website and you're just using the integrated storefront on that platform. Maybe you're getting some sales through, but it's not producing a consistent, sustainable income every month for you. Maybe that platform just doesn't have the functionality you need or the checkout process is clunky and not an intuitive or enjoyable experience for a customer. Or the site’s not optimised for mobile, so everything’s the wrong size and layout.

So maybe you're persevering with your online store that's just OK, but you know that if you moved over to a dedicated e-commerce platform like Shopify, you would do much better. You could really improve your conversion rate. You could do upsells and order bumps. You’d have far fewer people abandon their cart because it's a better user experience. And you could retarget those people who do abandon their cart and entice them to come back and complete their order.

Ultimately, you'd sell more albums and merch. You'd be able to fund your music projects. You'd be able to quit to day job and do music full-time. But you're putting it off because there'll be a learning curve with understanding how to do everything on the new platform and you might be out of your comfort zone for a few weeks. You're afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

There are probably other places in your life, aside from your music, where you're afraid to give up the good to go for the great, where you’re settling for good enough. It's adequate. Some of those places, if you were to give up the good and go for the great would pay a huge dividend. It would create a 10x improvement in your life, in your satisfaction, in your health, in your self-esteem, in your relationships, in your wealth, in your freedom. It would give you more leverage.

This week I invite you to take inventory of the different domains in your life and ask yourself: Where am I settling for good enough? Where, if I gave up the good to go for the great, would it give me a 10x improvement in that area, or even have a spillover effect into other domains of my life?

Some areas you will want to consider are relationships, diet and nutrition, quality of sleep, productivity, time management, learning and education, income, habit creation, personal development and self-esteem. These are areas that have a multiplier effect. They don't just improve your life a little, they improve it dramatically, and often across the domains of your life.

Let's take your quality of sleep as an example. This is a really common area people overlook and compromise on.

Why would you be afraid to give up the good to go for the great with your quality of sleep? Maybe you'd have to create a routine and a habit to get to bed at a more consistent time every night, and you feel that regimentation would stifle your spontaneity and your flights of fancy as an artist. Or you're getting to bed later than you should because you're binge-watching Netflix or scrolling through Facebook for 3 hours a night, and you don't want to scale that back. Or you like eating a big meal shortly before bed or drinking coffee through the afternoon. Or maybe you're getting poor sleep because your mattress is really uncomfortable and you wake up with a sore back, and you don't want to spend time to research and the money to buy a new mattress that’s more comfortable.

And so you justify that this is good enough. I’m not sleeping fantastically, but I’m not dead. The status quo is fine.

But if your quality of sleep is poor, it doesn't just mean you're tired. It means you're more likely to make poor decisions with your food, eating fast food because you're too tired to cook, and potentially putting on weight as a result. Or it means you’re loading up on caffeine or sugar to artificially boost your energy and then getting the big crash afterwards.

If you're chronically depriving yourself of sleep, you compromise your immune system and get sick more easily and more often.

If you're tired, you're not going to be able to focus on doing high-quality work and creating value in the world, so your productivity suffers and potentially your income too.

You're more easily distracted and you'll want to veg out more by scrolling through social media or binge-watching Netflix, so your time management suffers and you don't put time into making music or growing your fanbase.

You'll be less disciplined and fall out of routine and not do your exercise, or maybe delay starting a new productive habit that would improve your life.

You're going to be more irritable and short-tempered, so you'd have more fights with your partner or your family, so your relationships suffer.

So you can see there's a snowball effect in terms of the negative impact this can have across the entirety of your life.

But by giving up the good to go for the great, you'd have the opposite scenario happen. You'd notice a positive snowball effect across the entirety of your life.

Don't just settle for the status quo. Be willing to give up the good to go for the great.

This week, take inventory and pick just one domain in your life where you're currently settling for good enough, where if you gave up the good to go for the great, it would give you a 10x payoff and make your life exponentially better.