Space

This is the second of three posts about the constraints of time space and money. With an unlimited amount of even just one of the three, you can do anything. But the real world has limits, so how do we maximize our resources to focus on our dreams?

Do you have your own space? It can be as grand as your own art studio, rehearsal hall, or workshop, or as small as a chair in the corner of your family room. The size doesn't matter. What does matter is that you have a space where you can think, plan, and create without any distractions. The discipline required to transform your life begins in your own space. Remember that a star's presence is a result of their focus on their objective. You need to create that focus in your life, starting in your own space.

Schedule regular time each week to spend working on your plan in your space. Use it to rehearse the interactions you want to have at work. It's better to do this out loud, which is one of the reasons you want to do this in your own space. Your family may not know what to make of your talking to yourself at first. If you've never done this before start small -- initally a half hour two or three times a week should be enough. Don't worry if you don't know exactly what to do -- if you simply review your activities for the past weeks opportunities for improvement will present themselves. Eventually you'll start creating and developing an action plan for achieving your objectives. The more time you spend the sooner you will create your plan. Don't wait until you have hours to spend there -- start as soon as you can.

The sooner you start, the sooner you can achieve your dreams!

Time, Space and Money

In my first technical theatre class at Yale School of Drama, the professor introduced the concept of: Time, Space and Money. Those three things constrained everything that you might build for theatre. With unlimited time, space, or money one could build anything. In the real world, time, space and money is always limited. The challenge of technical theatre management was how to use your time, space, and money as efficiently as possible to create the biggest impact.

Over the years I realized that what was true for technical theatre was true for all arts, and for life. Picasso's famous painting about the Spanish Civil War, the Guernica, is huge. The reason it's not bigger is that his canvas stopped at the height of Picasso's studio. James Cameron spent years and millions of dollars creating the special effects for Avatar. With more money, he might have made them faster. Even a successful director with a Hollywood blockbuster budget still has to create within those constraints.

You face similar limits in your own life. We all do. The question is: what are we going to do with the resources we have? If you've started from the beginning of this blog, I hope by now you have identified your objective and have begun to create a plan for your life. In order to achieve your objective you must think about where to put your resources to create the maximum impact.

In this post we'll talk about time. How do you spend yours? I challenge you to take one typical day and write down how you spend your time -- So much for sleeping, so much for meals, snacks, work and recreation. Most people fill their lives with small details. Days go by where they don't work on their dreams. Stars work every day, especially when they're starting out. How much time are you spending working toward your dream?

In the next two posts I'll discuss space and money. Have a Happy Holiday season.

Time

Creating from the Outside In

In my first directing class at Carnegie-Mellon, my professor Greg Lehane shattered every myth I cherished about acting. He said, "for the purposes of this class, it doesn't matter if the actor feels anything while doing a scene -- as long as they follow your directions."

I was stunned. I thought actors had to feel some sort of emotion while on stage. How else could they convincingly portray a character?

It took a long time and lots more experience in the theatre for me to realize the truth of Greg's statement. Being a young and self-centered artist, I didn't understand that the audience comes to the theatre for their own enjoyment. It doesn't matter whether or not the actors on stage feel any emotions; the play succeeds only if they cause the audience to think or feel something during the evening.

What does that mean for your life? It means that in order to maximize your success, you need to think first about how your actions affect others. Remember that it's your actions that matter, not your feelings. You may feel sorry for that drowning man, but unless you throw him a life preserver he will drown without appreciating your sympathy.

When you've developed your plan go ahead and act on it. Don't wait for it to feel right, just start doing. You'll be surprised how quickly your actions will become natural.

Stars Rehearse - why don't you?

Actors will typically rehearse a full-length play for 4-6 weeks before starting performances. That's a minimum of 40 hours per week or more with overtime working in a rehearsal room with their fellow actors. That doesn't include time memorizing lines, working on pieces of business, and doing research. All of this effort is necessary to enable the actor to look like he or she is playing the role for the first time, no matter how many times they have played the role.

If trained actors -- STARS -- need rehearsal to perform their best, what about the rest of us? Of course, we need rehearsal, too. But do we rehearse before important important moments in our lives? Most people do not -- yet even a little rehearsal can make a big difference.

So if you want to look like a star at your next meeting, rehearse! Practice coming into the meeting room and looking everyone in the eye and giving them a firm handshake. Find out as much as you can about the meeting topic beforehand, and research the topic. Know what your colleagues in the company are doing, and more importantly, how your competition is handling this issue. Be ready to suggest solutions to the problem -- and to volunteer to implement the solutions yourself.

Stars don't go on stage or on to a movie set and "wing it." Why should you? Rehearse as much as you can.

Actions

Whenever an actor approaches a role, he or she is always asking the same question about a character -- "What do I want?" Once that is answered, then the actor's problem becomes "What do I do to get what I want?".

In the film 'The Producers', Max and Leo want to become rich and escape their humdrum lives. That's what they want. What they do to get what they want is to convince a bunch of gullible old ladies to invest much more money in a Broadway play than it costs to produce. They pick a play that they believe is sure to fail and give it the worst production imaginable.

You don't need to do anything illegal to get what you want. However, you have to be willing to do what it takes to achieve your goals. You need to be a dreamer and a doer.

Go back to the piece of paper on which you wrote your objective. Underneath it, write down the actions that you will take to achieve it. Then start doing them!

First Step - Objective

The first step to becoming the star of your own life is to pick your objective.

If you're an actor working on a role in a play or film, the first thing you must understand about your character is his objective. What does he or she want? Richard III wants to become king. The Joker wants to create chaos in Gotham City. Ferris Bueller wants to show his best friend a good time so he will realize his potential.

The character's objective is behind every choice the actor makes. Richard III ends up murdering his nephews and both his brothers. The Joker kills massive numbers of people. And Ferris runs all over Chicago one step ahead of his parents and truant officers.

Notice that in order to achieve their objectives, the characters do things. Of course, if they didn't, you wouldn't watch. But what makes compelling drama can also make for compelling lives.

What's your objective? Write down something specific, but don't use any form of the verb "to be". For example, don't write down "I want to be rich," because that objective won't lead to action. Think about how you want to be rich (if that's your objective) and write that down -- for example, "I want to work at a Hedge fund" or "I want to study medicine" are both ways a person can become rich. Both of them lead to an action -- to work at a Hedge Fund, you have to apply for a job. To study medicine, you have to apply to medical school.

Picking an active objective leads to action on your part. So pick an objective for your life, and start your path to stardom. Next week I will post the next step.

Presence

Have you ever been in a room when a star walked in? It could have been a movie star, a stage star, or just one of the star salesmen where you work. Even if you weren't looking at the door, did you know they were in the room? Of course you did.

Stars have presence. They have have a special energy that draws our attention to them. That's why news channels report on their exploits, web sites chronicle their every move, and magazines trumpet their every romantic entanglement. People want to know.

Stars didn't always start out that way, though. At one time, Tom Cruise was just another young actor trying to break into movies. Tom Hanks was thrilled to get a job as a cross-dressing actor in a sitcom, Bosom Buddies. And every Nobel Prize winning economist was once a struggling graduate student.

So if you're not a star in your own life yet, that doesn't mean you can't become one in the future. It doesn't matter what you've done in the past -- what matters is what you're doing to do with your life going forward. Today is the youngest that you'll ever be -- Make up your mind that you want to change your life, and you can.

In my next post I'll talk more about HOW you can do this.

Do You Want to Be a Star?

Of course you do, or you wouldn't be reading this blog. I can help you achieve your goal of becoming a star in your own life -- at work, at home, and at play. You can get the credit you deserve for the work you do.

I received my Masters in Fine Arts in Directing from Carnegie-Mellon and worked with professional actors for many years. After I went into television I found that the same techniques stars used to achieve their goals and create believable characters worked just as well in business and community settings. I set out to study those techniques in even greater detail, and in this blog I will provide the fruits of that research to you.