Working Class Runner

Last week I saw someone hang a colleague out to dry on a work shift at the colleague’s theater, because she had double booked herself. Though I take or leave many faux pas in the performing arts community without a fuss, I was aghast at such a failure.

Never mind that she hung someone within a work commitment out to dry. I could not believe she didn’t keep a calendar. Because if she responsibly did, there is no reasonable way this happens.

If you’re going to be a busy performing artist, or other person working in the performing arts, or really just anyone with a schedule in general… diligently keeping a real-time schedule and calendar is an absolutely mandatory minimum, right up there with paying your rent or mortgage. If you don’t diligently keep a calendar of your appointments, that’s an indictment of your character and reliability.

Google Calendar makes this very simple and easy to do, and anyone with a remotely recent mobile device, or at least in possession of a computer with a working internet connection, should be able to readily access it at any time.

I have kept a Google Calendar since 2010, shortly (and fortuitously) before I dove back into theatre after a long hiatus. I color-code and log every commitment with a short detailed description making it clear what I’m doing. I’ll even log things I haven’t committed to but am considering, and will only take those off if I decide I’m not going.

I log shows I plan to attend or am considering attending. I log proposed and planned meetups with friends, and even log time to do laundry and run errands, just to make sure I make the time to do it. I not only note appointments, commitments, anything noteworthy I did. There is never a point where I don’t remember an appointment, because I look at the calendar daily and each one is clearly noted there where I can see it. I go into greater detail than most probably need to, but anyone can keep a basic calendar online of their gigs. I’ll probably write another detailed post later (with pics) on how I set mine up.

Anyway: Double booking should not ever happen under any circumstances. Even if you’re asked to do something and don’t have ready view of your schedule, tell whoever to wait for you to check your calendar and confirm before you commit.

I don’t know how the colleague who took the pipe on this faux pas dealt with this, and beyond what I was told that’s not my business. But I consider such an offense one of my few blacklist-worthy offenses. I won’t work with people who do it.

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I am dead serious about the value of commitment.

If you’re an artist, this is going to sound I’m ripping you. Not only am I not ripping anyone in particular, but I know I myself have been guilty of what I’m about to describe. This is a common habit and I only seek to point it out so we can all work together to avoid the pitfalls.

An anecdote: Back in the day, I played with college basketball simulators, where you coach and manage a college’s basketball program. During the offseason, in the game, you recruit players to play at your school.

If you recruit one good player, you will almost certainly get that player to sign with you. But if you try and recruit more than one player, then the chances of successfully signing any of those individual players go down. There is a law of diminishing returns that kicks in quickly after two players, where on average it hurts you more to try and recruit three, four five players and beyond than it would to try and recruit two.

The lesson of the game is simple: Like anything in life you have a finite amount of energy and resources, and once you’re devoting too few resources to any individual, the effectiveness of your work in each instance decreases to an unworkable, ineffective level. So, especially when it comes to a specific goal, you are better off focusing on 1-2 commitments at a time then trying to meet several more.
To bring this back to performance art, a schedule with a high volume of gigs, groups and opportunities can begin to hurt you after a while. Every new opportunity you take diffuses the focus and commitment you can regularly give your existing commitments, and not only does the quality of your participation and availability to those commitments suffer, but your work suffers as a whole as the busy schedule frays your discipline and you develop bad habits.

Bad habits:

– Showing up at the last minute before call or late because you book yourself to rush from thing to thing on a tight schedule.
– Leaving as soon as the meeting/show is over and never having time to talk, or get to know anyone new.
– Never having time to spend outside of meetings/shows chatting and commiserating with colleagues (no, this does not need to happen over food or alcohol).
– Doing the bare minimum that is asked of you while working, because that’s all your divided energy and attention will allow.
– Going into auto-pilot due to fatigue, stress and time constraints, which reinforces any relevant bad habits since you will default to those patterns of behavior. More so, it inhibits your growth and development.
– Promotion without building relationships, e.g. typically spamming Facebook posts and invites for shows to people you never spend time with or communicate otherwise. When done to excess (which is sadly common), this comes across as quite rude.
– Not attending other people’s shows, often because you’re overbooked.
– Terrible diet, which in the long run makes you look and feel like shit.
– Tunnel vision: By only caring about what you personally are doing and what your closest colleagues are doing, you shut out everything else going on… much of which might have otherwise presented you with rewarding ideas, experiences, relationships and opportunities.
– Lack of self reflection, which drastically reduces your personal development.
– Lack of rest, which accelerates burnout.

It’s a lot like depriving yourself of sleep to make more time for things: As your sleep deprivation adversely affects your energy and health, it (to say the least) reduces your ability to make the most of that extra time.

Book your schedule solid and eventually you begin to flake whenever possible. Young performers tend not to realize the reputational damage it does to repeatedly back out of and miss meetings, practices, rehearsals and shows. Almost everyone will incidentally have to miss one from time to time. Sometimes you have to take some time off, and you can work that out ahead of time. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the people who repeatedly message the day of and say they can’t make it. Or the people who are always running from thing to thing, and treat you and your group more like a half hour errand appointment than a true relationship or a commitment.

And culturally artists (inaccurately) learn that this pattern of behavior is good for their careers and development, that a large quantity of gigs and resume line items will inevitably lead to a higher quality career. The idea in principle is at best conditionally true, and only loosely so.

Yes, practice and reps matter. Yes, experiences can be useful. However, the key to any of these experiences being useful is *committed focus*. You have to be fully invested in these experiences, and give yourself space outside of them to reflect and grow for them to maximize your development.

Otherwise, you’re simply mastering the ability to relentlessly burn both ends of the candle, lean on your existing habits within that schedule, and little more. And, as someone who has done that in his life: While that can be a useful skill, you need not commit to that so greatly than any of the individual commitments comprising that schedule suffer at its expense.

I cannot emphasize this enough: Nobody is keeping score of how many shows you do, let alone judging you on how many or how few shows you are doing. Literally no one worth a shit cares.

It’s about not just what you do within those individual commitments, but the quality and active interest you provide your relationship with the people you’re meeting those commitments with.

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Now, the working actor may find this idea of finite commitments a bit ridiculous, because most actors go gig to gig. They audition for and get cast in a role, they spend a few weeks rehearsing, then they perform, then it’s done. They constantly hustle for gigs even as they’re currently working through gigs.

I’m talking more so about ongoing commitments: Being on a team, being in an ensemble, committing to an independent group, meeting with a fellow writer to mine material every week or two. Also, friendships, intimate relationships. These relationships matter, and they atrophy when you neglect them (as a lot of performers tend to do). Often, overworked performers think their relationships and connections are a lot stronger than they actually are, having neglected them for so long.

Every commitment is not just dates on a calendar. It takes effort outside of those dates, making time when applicable outside of those dates, giving thought when you’re away to the work you’ll do next time around. It’s about making the time to get away and rest, so you’re focused with energy and ready to go next time around.

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At the very least, make sure any dates you committed to meet are on your calendar. There is no excuse not to.