Reflect- Reset – Repeat

I spoke to a Buddhist monk about my current recovery treatment and he told me, “Well, it’s a good thing you are in this place now, Brad, because you can hit the reset button and really think about your life.” Of course, I thought about my loved ones … and I also thought about work and my career.

When I was a young PD I made the mistake of spending too much time behind the Selector because I had previously been a jock and a music director. I know this is a common mistake new PDs can make.

Back then I thought that a great station was about having perfect clocks and perfect rotations. My rotations could have been calculated by a mathematical genius I had spent that much time perfecting them!

But as time went on I realised that programming a great station wasn’t about HOT clocks; it was about giving it a heart and soul, a point of difference, being loved in the community.

When I became a manager I thought I had to create perfect presentations. My PowerPoint presentations to staff were so over the top that Pixar surely would’ve been impressed, for all the animated effects they included.

As years went by I realised I didn’t need them; I just needed to speak from the heart, and from my experience, with the facts.

I spent close to 30 years learning from a great master in martial arts who taught me that success comes from repetition. I remember doing 100 front-kicks over and over and being told that the 98th kick was looking good – now try the other leg, by which time both legs were aching like hell. I still had to do the other 100.

All this thinking reminded of the 10,000 hours of practise the Beatles did before they became huge.

And that’s what we have to do. This is the work.

It needn’t take illness to reflect on life, including our work. When we pause, however, we can hit the reset button and continue to do what we do day after day, over and over, but fresher and better.

One hundred kicks; 10,000 hours of band practice; rocking into the studio everyday for your shift; working year after year as a PD – same shit, you reckon?

Reset then repeat and it will be more than a different day.