It’s easy to be a music management novice with your head in the clouds. You’re dreaming about the great things you’re going to do with your first band. You’re looking at all the great letterhead and logo ideas you’ve scribbled out. You’re playing with the website layout that you think will make your agency look just the right kind of polished to the talent buyers and journalists you want to impress.
Go ahead and deny it, but I was there too, the first time I dipped my toe into music management as a career. It’s fun… for a little while. Then, over-analyzing can take on a life of its own. It can cause you to back down on actually landing that big client or getting a representation agreement down on paper. It can force you to into a form of paralysis that makes you miss out on real opportunities. And it can lull you into a dream state where everything’s going just fine — even though your client hasn’t had a gig in ages and your publicist thinks you’ve fallen off a cliff.
Over-analyzing isn’t just a habit among music management newbies. It can strike experienced professionals, too. Thinking about all of the options available for touring, promotion, publicity, and distribution can get you to the point where you start spending every hour waiting to come up with the “perfect” solution. Stalling for perfection is just another form of procrastination — signaling that you’re not really ready just yet to move forward.
When you stop over-analyzing, you commit to driving your team down a path toward results. Sure, you’ll stumble or even fail a few times along the way, and I’ll write about that over the coming weeks. Changing this behavior requires replacing it with something better. Some folks recommend:
- Adding more exercise to your routine. Replace the time you spend thinking about problems with some clear-head time on the treadmill or on a Wii Fit. Livestrong calls this a “distraction” that can refocus you.
- Keep pushing forward once you’ve made a decision. Stop torturing yourself with the “what if” questions — you can’t change the past, so focus on the future.
- Choose a specific place to do your deep thinking and analysis. It can be a favorite chair, a park, a garden, or even a coffee shop. Force yourself to hold your internal monologue until you get to that spot.
What tactics have helped you overcome your over-analysis? Let us know in the comments.