Hello beautiful people!
Let’s identify actor busy work!
Because at the end of a year when an actor looks at all that checked-off “work” and feels no higher up the tier map than a year ago despite having done all this stuff that felt important to do along the way, the actor feels like a failure. And I hate that. Because honey, it’s not you who has failed when you’ve chosen actor busy work over doing the work of targeting and researching and healthy mindset building and investing in meaningful storytelling experiences… it’s the focus you’ve chosen.
Actor busy work — when packaged as a career strategy on its own — is a flawed system that feels good in the short term, but that gets you very little leverage overall. So, that’s why we need to identify and then minimize (or mindfully choose) actor busy work!
One of the reasons actors feel they must engage in the actor busy work is the, “What if it works?!?” factor. This form of FOMO is really scary, because if you have a lifetime of acting stretched out ahead of you, you could be running ’round like a chicken with its head cut off, always trying this thing and that thing just in case that’s the thing that’s missing. Meanwhile, what you’re missing is your life. You’re missing the journey. And worse — for those of us on the buying side of it all — we’re missing out on you because you’re so busy running all over the place trying everything.
Besides, if you think about it, “What if it works?!?” has already been answered by the time you get wind of the latest trend in actor busy work. You can usually point to a tiny percentage of people who will absolutely claim this one thing is what made all the difference in getting them a booking that a far larger percentage of bookers got without this magical edge… and then where are they a decade later? And when you watch top-tier celebs on the awards-circuit roundtable shows, are they mentioning that people not knowing their age is what made them famous? That having a talking headshot got them their badass agent? That paying for access landed them the three-picture deal? Nope. Never. What made all the difference? Doing the damn work consistently over time and not losing their mind along the journey. (Tweet it.)
As you’re labeling your various forms of actor busy work, remind yourself that it does have its purpose but that ultimately its presence in your life for extended periods of time (or worse, as a method for managing your career, in and of itself) is eating away precious time and deep focus that could be spent working on things that really do make a difference in your trajectory long-term.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list, here are some of the most popular bits of actor busy work out there.
- buying fans on social media
- gaming the system to up a StarMeter ranking or follower count
- scheduling social media
- ingratiating yourself with buyers via social media
- having more than two or three awesome headshots up on casting sites
- changing out those headshots frequently
- changing your hair when not hell-yes OMG excited to do so
- wearing colored contacts or gimmicky glasses without being personally motivated to do so
- losing or gaining weight not because of a specific role or due to health reasons but because you were told by someone using a stopper that doing so would make you more castable in general
- getting plastic surgery to become more castable
- getting in front of anyone who is a buyer without regard for what they work on and how that aligns with your true north
- hitting every workshop
- doing a talking headshot
- standing in line all day for every EPA
- training at the hot improv spot when you have no inclination toward nor interest in doing comedic work
- rushing to join the unions
- going FiCore or working off the card after so desperately trying to join the unions
- printing out a thousand labels and plastering the town with endless postcards
- campaigning to get your age wiped off the internet
- stealing access to the breakdowns
- submitting on everything, always
- shooting new headshots every year
- pumping up credits to make their billing seem more impressive than it was
- changing your name to be “more castable” or “less ethnic” or whatever else
- buying memberships in groups managed by gatekeepers who allege they’ll make important introductions for you in the industry
- getting together with fellow creatives to bitch about how hard this business is
- obsessively tracking metrics to beat yourself up with the data vs. mindfully checking under the hood to make meaningful tweaks periodically
- getting into arguments on the internet
- signing up for the “next great all-new innovative exciting” casting submission website no one has ever heard of (and that will be out of business in a year)
- paying a production facility to shoot all your footage using material they recycle but say is original just for you
- hitting every networking function you hear about without doing any recon on the attendees and how you align with them
By comparison, here’s some decidedly NON-busy work stuff you could get into when you’re feeling the energy of distraction coming from shiny FOMO-laden busy work action.
- organically building next-tier relationships that will endure
- amassing credits that teach the buyers how to cast you at the next tier
- creating content that showcases your most castable brand
- collecting outstanding footage from previous shoots
- cleaning up your self-talk, your community, and your lower-tier habits
- researching buyers and building your show bible
- collaborating with fellow ninjas and sharing show bible research thereby expanding your network
- engaging in the 30-day self-tape challenge
- training with top coaches who challenge and inspire your best work
- developing a personal business plan for your creative pursuit
- learning about non-buyer-level showbiz players and their function in this industry of ours
- reading up on trends and business news, adding to your ability to get predictive about where our industry is headed so you can get out ahead of trends
- going through proofs from your past headshot sessions to see if you now can identify a hell-yes shot you overlooked before you were so target-specific and brand-aware
- performing resume feng shui
- updating your Google Alerts mindfully toward your next-tier goals
- creating more content that shows your low-risk badassery for the next tier
- restarting these 100 days or revisiting any of the enoughness work here in Get in Gear that needs more of your attention
- improving an on-brand special skill
- developing a dialect that goes with your target castability
- practicing your Brandprov and creating your next-tier wardrobe strategy
If you like pretty PDFs to print out and highlight, I have one out there in the Bonniverse called Actor Busy Work and you can grab it to add to your collection with a click here. 😉
Today’s work: Grab your journal and start identifying how actor busy work takes shape in your daily life. Share below in the comments as well. Without judgment for it — in fact, better yet, from a place of deep appreciation for the purpose it has played in your trajectory thus far — write down your actor busy work list. Rank it from “biggest bait factor” down to “least likely to trigger me” territory.
As you bump into actor busy work in your life from here on out, label it appropriately, thank it for its place in your life, engage in it mindfully should you so choose, then shift gears back into the next-tier work that matters so that you can get to that finish line of rendezvousing with the future badass version of you that you started out — at the beginning of this course — pledging to get to meet!
You still wanna meet this version of you, right? I know I sure as shit do. I’ve had a glimpse. I know you want to!
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
