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- The Club List, Issue #15: The Greater Urgency
The Club List, Issue #15: The Greater Urgency
Kodi McKinney
September 06, 2024
Welcome back to The Club List, a newsletter about making a business out of what you love.
Today’s edition looks at the deep importance of setting middle-term goals, and why it outclasses the urgency of any given day in front of you. For those of you who are back in a hectic first not-really-summer Friday rhythm, consider it a love letter.
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The Danger of Pure Urgency
A common thing I’ve seen people repeatedly taught to ask themselves in any working environment:
“What sets me up to succeed today?”
Followed immediately by:
“What do I need to do RIGHT NOW?”
That’s not the best place to start.
And if you’re asking the second question every day without heavy guidelines in place to manage it, you are going to have a bad time.
When you think about it, doing things in the most short-term way possible is a recipe for failure.
Why?
It’s too easy, which means most people will do it, hurting your competitive advantages. It also keeps you in a state of perpetual anxiety. And when you’re perpetually in fight-or-flight mode, it’s too easy to lose direction as a result. You’re only engaging part of your brain.
Today is not where your success lies. Today can be filled with distractions, or you might be sick. Today is fine for being reactive, where necessary. But the future requires you to be proactive, in a constructive way.
So instead, ask yourself this:
“What sets me up to succeed tomorrow?”
And then:
“What sets me up to succeed three days from now?”
And finally:
“What sets me up to succeed this month?”
I can tell you, because I have been here before, that moving in crisis mode all the time is a straight line to exhaustion. Do that enough times, and it turns into burnout. Even worse: it’s contagious. Many people around you operate in crisis mode by default and will get actively nervous when you don’t. Do not let them shift your vibe to something performative to placate them. This will end in disaster.
Instead, play it a little like chess. Stay a minimum of three moves ahead, at all times. Ahead of tomorrow, ahead of three days from now, and ahead of this month.
The greater urgency, which then guides how you handle whatever is in front of you, involves always knowing roughly where you intend to go. Yes, artistic vision applies to any professional motive. You don’t have to have it exact - in fact, it’s arguably better not to, creatively - but you should know the intended destination, both for what you’re doing and also for yourself. You will eventually lose track of the path when you don’t.
Why did I not mention staying ahead of this week, this quarter, or this year? Well, because you likely have set goals there already. If you haven’t, other people you work with will do it for you.
And as you may guess from what I said above, you are always best off setting these goals for yourself first.
Here’s a way I learned this early on.
When I was a radio promoter fresh out of college, charts closed at 2pm EST on Tuesdays. Conventional wisdom held that you needed to do all your work to reach stations about records you were promoting that week, up to and through that moment. The working week ran Wednesday to Tuesday, to reflect this structure.
But I played it differently. I would set my strategy up on Wednesday after reports, start calling stations Thursday, emphasize blanket outreach on Fridays and Mondays, and then double down on phone calls Mondays as well. By the time I got to Tuesday, I’d be coasting. I’d save that time to be there for stations who wanted to call me, or to send one last voicemail to a person who had dodged me all week in hopes they’d hear it.
My calm on Tuesdays used to unsettle my colleagues a bit, so I would just do what I could to be productive in a role where Tuesdays were not a “do this long-term project” day. I actually kept myself busier on Tuesdays as I went along and would even focus on helping my teammates in other departments then, to help them know I was fully present.
But the fact of it was, I had already done so much in the days leading up that there wasn’t a lot left for me to do for myself. And the results would always show it. If I had a tough Monday and made up ground on Tuesday, it was always a worse outcome. If I had a great Monday, everything I was promoting would do well. And if I had a tough Monday but my Thursday and Friday prep were exceptional, I had Tuesday as my failsafe, and I’d still have a path forward.
Don’t start by figuring out what to do to succeed today.
Look at tomorrow first. Then a little past it. And then zoom out.
The second you free yourself from what’s happening right this second and alter your rules of engagement with the present moment, everything will change.
One Thing You Can Use Today
Are you a musician? Are you interested, even passingly, in being one? This is for you.
In my free time lately, I’ve been really enjoying messing around with KORG Gadget. (This is not sponsored or an affiliate link, and you can check it out without spending a dime - I purchased Gadget 3, but Gadget Le is the full-featured lite version, and it’s a free app!) iOS users will have the best access here, but there is a PC version, and you can even download it for Nintendo Switch if you’re a gamer.
So…what does it do?
I’ll save all the technical stuff about how it can plug into anything you might make music with and instead tell you that it’s THE simplest way to learn sequencing and beat-making that I’ve ever seen. Which also means it’s great for sketching out ideas if you’re a songwriter, electronic genres and otherwise.
Want to learn how to make simple drums on a drum machine? You can do that here.
Interested in synthesizers, but intimidated by their complexity? They’re in Gadget too, and I would put some of the presets up against hardware synths. You still have lots of room to tweak and learn from there.
And just wait until you open the demo tracks. It’s kind of unreal to see what people can make in what’s ostensibly a phone app.
I am not in any way experienced with making electronic music; my background is in guitar and vocals. But after a few weeks playing around with Gadget, I get it in a totally different way. And it’s versatile enough to be useful for veterans of any kind of musical approach.
Track of the Week
Sun Blood Stories - “Brand New Ghost Town”
Dark experimental psych-pop from Portland, as independent as it gets, and a band that’s been around in various forms since the late 00’s. Sun Blood Stories describes itself as a band that’s “now in its sixth chapter,” and this chapter appears to be morbidly fascinated with the end of the world. “Brand New Ghost Town” and its huge drums and hypnotic qualities have stuck with me through repeated spins, in a way that’s given me every reason to be ready for when Shadow Loud releases October 4. There’s a vinyl pre-order on Bandcamp that I highly advise you look at first.
List of Clubs
These are the kinds of clubs I’d like to be in around NYC! Wherever you might find music, art, or a compelling experience under one roof, that’s a club to me. I only list clubs I’d enjoy going to. If I list a client, you’ll know.
Friday, September 6 - KCBC 8th Birthday
It’s rare for me to list breweries anywhere near here, but KCBC makes space for the creative side of Brooklyn in a way that’s astoundingly rare, and it’s worth celebrating them. Festivities start at 6pm, and it’s an easy move before continuing your evening.
Saturday, September 7 - CLUB:SODA @ Le Petit Box
The good souls behind CLUBSTACK are doing a very, very limited capacity dance night. DM @clubsoda_nyc on Instagram to RSVP. If you were paying attention to this section over summer, you know they have great taste and care about getting down, and we want to see them keep doing parties!
Tuesday, September 10 - David Lunch, Escaflowne + more @ Bossa Nova Civic Club
My Sunday is likely to involve sleep, but who says Tuesday has to?
Thanks for reading! And now, an image of me in the club…
