For the past 6–7 years, on most days it feels like the work I do is rigid. I go to work at 9 a.m., do things that need to be done without asking the question “Why?”, get back from work at 6 p.m., scroll till my eyes get tired, and go back to sleep. All just to do the same things the next day.
Yes, COVID redefined the time and space elements. Office and home merged. I cooked my lunch and ate between 12–2 p.m. but worked till 8 p.m. Apart from that, I still sat in front of the computer, sent some emails, attended some meetings, ranted about common concerns with colleagues, did random trainings, and got paid at the end of the month. There were no real fundamental variations in what I did or how I worked.
Creative artists, on the other hand, enjoy the work they do and often experiment a lot while working. Two of the biggest examples that come to my mind are singers S. P. Balasubrahmanyam (SPB) and Hariharan.
SPB was known for improvising and giving different emotions to a song during recording, and Hariharan loves singing his songs in a different rhythm during his live concerts. They are not rigid with one way of singing but variation forms a key part of their identity.
It was only when I read Derek Sivers’ book Anything You Want that I realised this is part of a singer’s training.
Derek was the founder of CD Baby, an online distributor of independent music, which he originally started just to sell his own music online.
He talks about his own voice training sessions with his teacher. He’d bring a song he was trying to improve and sing it as it was written.
His teacher would then say, “OK, now sing it up an octave. Go.” Derek would respond that he couldn’t sing it that high. His teacher wouldn’t take no for an answer and would ask him to sing it anyway, even if it wasn’t pleasing.
He would start singing the whole song again in a screeching voice, though as he progressed, his voice became better.
The teacher would then say, “Sing it down an octave. Go,” and make him sing however unpleasant it sounded.
He would continue to ask him to sing in multiple different variations: twice as fast, twice as slow, sing like Bob Dylan, sing as if you just woke up at 4 a.m. - multiple scenarios just to show that there are an infinite number of ways to sing the song beyond its original form. Some ended up unpleasant, some funny, some much better than the original. But it was the clearest proof that there is no single intended way to sing the song.
He says he used this lesson in building his business. He stopped pretending there was just one way of doing things. He trained himself by creating radical scenarios and thinking about how they would pan out:
- OK, make a plan to get your first 100 customers. Go.
- Now, how can you get 10× more within 2 months? Go.
- Do it without a website. Go.
He applied the same approach when faced with tough life decisions or radical ideas:
- Now you are living in New York, obsessed with success and money. Go.
- You are a free spirit, backpacking around the world. Go.
- You are married, and your kids are your life. Go.
Having multiple perspectives creates different timelines, which only proves to ourselves that there is no one fixed way to live life.
Most of us live as if we’ve been given one official sheet music for life and we’re afraid to deviate from it - same tempo, same key, same verses in the same order. We convince ourselves that changing the arrangement will somehow ruin the song.
But the people whose work feels alive, whether they’re singers, entrepreneurs, or even those in traditional careers, are constantly changing the arrangement.
They treat “how I do my work” as a creative choice, not a fixed rulebook.
And once you see that, it’s hard to go back to singing the same way every single day.
