The Weekly Planning Session: How To Plan Your Week Like A Modern Musician

Modern Musicians master their inner and outer game.

Modern musicians aren’t randomly working through their week. They aren’t shuffling papers around checking off busy work through their days.

They are figuring out what they need to learn and then taking consistent action to be, do and have what they want in life. They are working through the process of self actualization and then working towards their enlightenment and music business liberation.

Modern Musicianship is a 9 stage journey to leading and building toward content business mastery and self realization.

Modern Musicians are obsessed with mastering themselves first and their business is a reflection of that.

Modern musicians create a life plan and define what they’re going to achieve and then get to work on it on the ground level in the details, once they’ve got their blueprints and broken their dream down to goals, projects, and tasks.

Modern Musicians play the G.A.M.E. Which is played in 90 day seasons we call cycles.

Great Weeks are a key cycle for progress, and are key for great months.

They are the foundational unit of time to advance the most important projects and goals of your life forward.

Since you’ve already clarified your purpose, vision, mission and goals (if not, then do that now) setting your quarterly, monthly and weekly targets comes with less effort since we can work our way backwards.

If your goals are to launch a new album than the first thing I want you to think is what are the goals for that album launch from each of the perspectives, artistic, career and personal. What are the goals for your artistic growth, what are the goals for your entrepreneurial growth, and what are the goals for your personal growth?

Let’s say your goals were to create and launch an EP, make 100 sales and get 1000 visitors to your sales page and into your sales funnel.

That would be 6 songs written and produced, creating the sales funnel, creating the sales page and running ads for the launch. That could be broken down to two weeks per song for production and mastering during which you would create the marketing and sales material and prepare for your launch in 90 days so that on launch and all throughout the launch you could just follow the path you’ve already laid for yourself. Doing your preproduction will set your launch up for success so that everything is ready to go and you can just walk down the critical path runway and hit your targets as your launch rolls out.

• Production - That means around 2 hours or more per day

• Marketing and sales around 2 hours or more

• Personal development all throughout the day

They aren’t haphazardly making new plans each week for new projects. They are committing to a pathway for advancing toward their liberation and making incremental progress on it each week, checking in on their projected performance targets vs their achieved performance targets so that the critical path and their deliverables are on track.

Schedule it

The magic in the champions formula is your calendar and schedule. Modern Musicianship is a system for achieving success, happiness, fulfillment and mastery. It all works together.

With it you will always complete the mission. As a Modern Musician always completes the mission. SFACT. Stay Focused and Complete The Mission.

Schedule at least 1 hour for this review each week:

Plan to build in performance reviews we call RPM’s-at the end of each day, week, month, season and year for the rest of your life.

Performance reviews are essentially an objective look at what happened, why it happened, what the purpose of it was, and then how it happened.

Then what you do after each cycle, performance, event, launch, process, campaign, day, week, month, season, year, is ask did it go the way you wanted it to go? Did it go according to the plan? If not, why not? What are the sustains and what are the improve upons? How could it go better next time?

This is also called an After Action Review in the Army. What we want to do is to review our performance against a projected target to objectively gauge progress and adjust to achieve our goals.

Weekly Planning like a Modern Musician: How To Plan Your Week Effectively

What are your blueprints? How are they broken down to individualized areas of focus with clear targets for each week?

Your week is the building block for the month and the season. It all needs to happen during the week, and you need to learn how to build out your week by building out your day.

Weekly RPM - This includes this core training and planning template for finding the right regimen based on your weekly adjustments each season until you find the sweetspot

Weekly regimen

Turn your main moves into habits you do on a daily basis called your practices

You will develop practices in each of the broad 3dimensions and then expand that onto a unique mixture of practices, habits, routines and rituals for your universe mastery. For creating your own economy.

Daily dials Daily RPM - Every day

Monthly RPM - This includes a monthly report for how things are coming and what your goals are for the next month.

Seasonal RPM - This includes an end of season report.

1) Lay your plays and plan out for each week, then lock in the days projected tasks and targets the night before. You’ll likely have between 5 and 10 each day. You have to consider how many things you could really do well in a day. I’d say 7 or 8 things done well leads to a good day and a fun night.

2) Always plan your one main thing or MIT for each day first.

3) What are the kpi’s to achieve your goals? What burning desires are you working on? how did last week go, Write down what you’re proud of for this past week, what lessons you’ve learned and what turned you on. What are the main outcomes you need to achieve this week to hit your targets for the month and the season? What were your moods like and what breakthroughs or major insights did you have?

What are the most important tasks to get done this week?

These become what are called your daily dials.

Everyday you’ve got a ONE MAIN THING that is mission critical and then between 5-10+ daily dials which tune you into, dial you into your true self and your full potential in each dimension of your life.

4) What are the main objectives you wish to get done this week?

5) What didn’t happen last week?

6) What do you need to do this week because of that?

7) What will you not be doing by working on what you are doing?

Ideally plan the night before and let your subconscious work on the best sequence and segments possible

How to plan your day by selecting your daily dial targets for the day. Simply go through the list below to build out your day by adding the core rituals into your day.

Core Modern Musician Rituals

Morning ritual

This is a staple of Modern Musicians. A morning ritual starting with right when they wake up and then begin their day is critical to building the foundation, mastering the morning, and then mastering your day. To win in life you have to win the day, and to win the day you have to win the morning.

Meditation

This is another mainstay practice. Meditation should be done for 20-40 minutes each day two times. Preferably in the morning and in the evening. If you want to do two sessions in the afternoon, that’s fine as well, but two is much more beneficial than just the one, although you will notice benefit from each session in some way almost immediately as you simply begin to tune and recalibrate back to your true self. Stretch yourself to 3 or more times per day. You can use micro-meditations as a way to power up and raise your vibration by tapping into altered states during the day. Like little powerups during the day.

Success Conditioning:

Emotionalization/Affirmation/Review/Priming/Incantation

Another daily dial to add into your daily and weekly regulars is your success conditioning. You can view these as powerup sessions to get you pumped up about yourself, your life and your future. These very important sessions must be done each day. Affirmation, incantation, prayer, priming, rehearsal, visualization, self talk, all help you develop a success consciousness and raise your vibration as well as expand your belief around the realm of possibility with your life.

Emotional intentionality for each day is a key to managing our mood through our attitude and attention. Part of being a modern musician is driving the dream through focus and state management. Meditation and visualization are key parts of activating your imagination and all of your inner os to work with you towards your goals and dreams.

Implementation/Execution

This is where the core of your workflow will happen. Implementation. The point is to have a plan, and then each week your time and attention is focused on implementation and driving the dream through workblocks and worksets you line up each week that progress your souls and careers mission.

The Flow Protocol

Your rhythms and workflow structure are going to determine your work and recalibration cycles. You may like to work in short 25 minute sprints, or you may prefer a full 90-120 minute session with a pit stop or two in between. The flow protocol is the tool for finding the right recipe that’s right for you.

Pit Stops

These are the individual recalibration sessions that you take every 50-90 minutes, but could also be shorter and with a couple power naps thrown in during the day. Modern musicianship is all about working smarter, not harder. The best thing you can do is care for your brain and your body through focusing your energy and intention on doing that which it will take to flourish long term.

First Work Priority

The most important thing for each day and for each week is your First Work Priority for the day, and should be done early in the day and early in the week.

Always focus on the most important thing for each day first.

Block out the first 120 minutes of your day dedicated to your MIT

Recognize that you are not going to get it all done

It always takes longer than you think. There is always more to do.

The key is to not get overwhelmed but to get reinspired and integrate structure into your daily and weekly workflows to maximize creativity and productivity.

RPM’s Review Planning and Maintainance

Modern Musicians do what we call their RPM’s on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis.

Review

What happened and how did it go?

Planning

What are you going to need to do this week now because of that?

Maintenance

What maintenance tasks and activities do you need to do, in addition to this process of planning and reviewing your week?

Perhaps you need get yourself back to inbox zero, log all outgoing expenses, clean the dog bowls, or get your vehicle serviced.

In Summary

Once again, the dreams and the purpose elicit a vision which elicit a mission which elicit goals and objectives which dictate the strategy which dictates the project and tasks as well as the kpi’s

Modern Musicians are working backwards from their dreams down to their goals.

This is a very simple, practical and straightforward way to plan and manage your life that has served me very well, and I hope it serves you well!

When you are ready to step your game up to Modern Musicianship, book a Music Business Breakthrough Session for some music business coaching.