What do you do when you’re bored?
Meeting with curiosity
My best friend was scheduled to record vocals with a prominent Australian artist. The session was supposed to be a collaboration between the artist, a writer-producer, and a vocal engineer (my friend). That particular day, the writer-producer canceled (after the session started). In an attempt to salvage the studio time, the artist asked my friend to create some tracks to guide their prepared lyrics.
He started his career as a vocal engineer working on pop music. When he found himself between projects, he would open up Ableton Live and mess around with samples, synths, plugins, and chord progressions. As time passed, he naturally developed skills related to his experiments and honed his ear for what makes a great pop song.
Having extensively tinkered with this type of production in his downtime, he exceeded all expectations (including his own) during that fateful session. The production was rough around the edges initially, but it worked—it really worked—and the artist was so impressed by the music they created together that it changed the direction of the entire album. The original producer was fired, and my friend became the new producer for the album (which later won two Arias).
His bored, playful curiosity paid off massively. It also accidentally changed his career trajectory for the best. His deep curiosity about the craft gave him a serious edge over people who didn't have that deep connection.
Observation
The things we're often best at are so familiar that we don't even recognize them as skills or traits we possess. Unless we monitor ourselves carefully, it takes someone else to point it out.
Observing how we spend our time and energy can help us learn a lot about ourselves. It's easy to gaslight oneself into believing we should identify with what seems cool or important, but often, the cool and important work is what we're already spending our time on. We can be blind to our own passion, and only with careful observation will we shine a light on what is meaningful. When that light turns on, double down on it.
