What do SUCCESSFUL artists know about purpose, time-management, powerful habits, and finishing projects, that 99% of artists don't?
This interactive journal provides you with the tools you need to create more high quality work for your fans. Work actively on creating your vision, eliminating disctractions, building habits, and creating value.
It's time to discover "how to get things made."
Already got the base book?
Holy freaking shit Friedemann! This is amazing. I will literally try anything you recommend, you’re a damn super human. How do you manage to create all of these amazing things and follow through with them all. I will definitely do it. Seriously, this is inspiring and I need to get off my ass and do more!
- Linneah, Songwriter
Note: This book was originally released as "The Tracking Journal" and has since been rereleased under the new name "Getting Things Made". The two books are essentially the same. Three new chapters have been added and some small changes have been made to the body text.
You know what I'm talking about...
I’m talking about those times when you don’t know why you’d even get up in the morning. This will be another one of those days, when there is nothing you really WANT to do, when everybody annoys you, when everything plain SUCKS.
I’m talking about that creeping anxiety as you’re watching yet another YouTube video or doing the dishes. When you realize you’re wasting your talent and time. You know what you should be doing, but for some reason, you’re just not doing it.
And I’m talking about the times when you go to sleep and realize that you’ve worked all day and achieved nothing. You worked so hard today, but what have you got to show for it? Worst of all, tomorrow will be no different.
AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S SO BIZARRE ABOUT ALL THIS?
This was your dream job once!
When you were still in school, you used to look forward to this moment. When you’d have full control over what you would do with your life. When you’d get to make a living doing what you love.
You should be having the time of your life. Instead, you’re depressed. You worry about paying the rent. You feel sorry for yourself. You get up too late, you eat shit all day and you don’t do enough sports. You catch yourself thinking about a regular 9 to 5 job and a boss that tells you what to do, someone you can gossip about at the water cooler.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?
When did you lose control? When did you stop actively pursuing your dreams, career, and well-being? When did you give up?
If you’ve ever tried to get a grip, you already know how disappointing that can be. Maybe you tried to wake up earlier, go for a run every day, eat healthier, work harder, be grateful, but none of it stuck. Not even a month later, you have gained back the pounds, wake up at 11am and stress out over everything.
Doing the right thing is incredibly hard. Saying YES to waking up early and NO to eating that donut requires energy. Energy you need for your actual job. And when your work is demanding and those energy resources are dwindling, maybe having just one donut won’t hurt. Just like that, you’re back to square one.
I struggled with all of the above on a daily basis. I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I started reading about it, to try and find a guide for how to live my life.
This is the first thing I’m gonna do for you: Give you clear, precise rules for how to get you out of your misery. Then, I’ll turn you into a superhuman.
Now - I’ve structured everything so by the end of week three, you’ll have the new training implemented and “installed” in your mind.
For the past several years, I have systemized every aspect of taking back control of your life, finding happiness in your work and finally getting sh*t done. Then, I squeezed this system into two smart pages you fill out every day.
GETTING THINGS MADE is a personal trainer that kicks your ass every day to get your work done and out there!
This is a journal specifically created for artist entrepreneurs who want to get more work done. Get it made, get it out there, and feel great doing it - that's our goal, and you can get there in less than five minutes a day.
Anyway, I’ll even do most of the heavy lifting for you … telling you exactly how to set life-changing long and short term goals for yourself, how to structure these goals so they’re just the right amount of challenging and how to hunt after them like a mission in the Witcher 3.
Maybe you’ve already tried journaling, but if you’re like most people, you’ll do them for a couple of days (weeks if you’re lucky) and then stop. There seem to be two kinds of journals out there: Those that take forever to fill out (costing you a ton of energy) and those that don’t really change anything.
Well, let me stop you right there: with my background in board game design (the first in a series of games releases in early 2020), I have a bit of experience in making simple tasks meaningful and rewarding. In board game design, every component needs to be absolutely essential for gameplay and the enjoyment of the players, and this is a rule I followed for designing this journal as well.
And so because of that, there is very little free writing in this book. Most of what you’ll be doing is crossing off checkboxes and drawing in lines. The average time it took my test groups to do this was 4 minutes and 32 seconds a day.
The methods presented in this book are all based on my own research-driven experiments from the past decade and have been cross-checked by two independent therapists. If you took all of my money, my contacts and my reputation away from me so I’d have to start from scratch, this is exactly what I would focus on to get back to where I am today.
After all, these are the mindsets that got me here in the first place. I used them to crack 300,000 subscribers on YouTube, to accumulate 10,000,000 views, to write a best-selling book, to sell three of my board games to one of Germany’s biggest publishers and to marry the love of my life.
My stuff works, and I know that if you pick this up, you’ll be thrilled with the results you’ll get in your life. This is why I’m sought out by the most successful hit songwriters in the country: because I deliver.
It’s like it was created for the overly scattered, multi tasking, aspiring creative like myself. [...] I have never felt so much clarity and excitement from a journal until now.
- N. Youm, Songwriter
Full Contents of Getting Things Made
1
Kiss overwhelm goodbye and !
- A holistic approach to life improvement and project management that removes stress, and keeps you cool, calm and collected while getting more sh*t done than ever before in your life (p.11)
- Figure out which of the Four Archetypes you are to identify where your biggest point of improvement lies so you can make huge progress with the smallest possible effort, and learn how to become the type you want to be (p.17)
2
The Four Archetypes
Figure out which of the Four Archetypes you are to identify where your biggest point of improvement lies so you can make huge progress with the smallest possible effort, and learn how to become the type you want to be (p.17)
3
Your phone...
Eliminate distraction, procrastination and addictions from your life that suck the fun out of the little moments and murder your productivity so you can be present, alive, efficient and relaxed instead. Be the bullet, not the ping pong ball (p.26).
4
Balancing life
Learn the most crucial skill any creator has to master: How to balance your personal life and your job so you can stop wearing yourself out and act from a place of strength instead (p.31).
5
Adapting a success mindset
The two toxic motivators you’re using that keep you from playing in the big league, and how to adapt a success mindset that lights up everyone around you and gives you a rockstar confidence (p.33).
6
Creating value
Learn the essential skill that turns you into an indispensable force for your clients that they actually WANT to spend money on p.37).
7
Picking projects
Cut the crap and figure out what you should actually spend your time on instead of wasting your life on meaningless BS that doesn’t get you anywhere. The goal is to work less and to work deeply (p.40).
8
One simple rule
The simple rule that changed my life from a complicated, stressful mess into a clear plan of action that will make you feel like you’re cheating (p.45).
9
The FETUS Index
A powerful mathematical formula to figure out the importance of each of your projects, helping you to remove any doubt as to what you should be working on next so you can get up in the morning and know exactly what actions to take (p.45).
10
Your target you
Learn the most powerful exercise ever created for becoming who you’ve always wanted to be - best of all, you can do this in seconds and wherever you are (p.53).
11
Habits...
Identify and implement the habits that slowly transform you into a superhuman, so you can turn yourself into a happier, smarter and physically fitter version of yourself (p.56).
12
...and how to form them
How to put your habits on autopilot so you can improve without any conscious effort on your part whatsoever (p.63).
13
Food!
Stop with the junk food and half-assed diets and learn to eat what gives you energy and keeps you healthy (p.66).
14
How to use the journal?
In-depth instructions on how to use every part of the journal so you can do your pages within seconds (p.71).
15
Automation
Discover “the Automation Spiral”, the model for understanding why you do what you do. Use it to make meaningful changes to your life and others’ (p.130).
16
The Scoreboard
Track your successes on a detailed overview page called the Scoreboard to visualize how you’re progressing at a glance (p.248).
Table of Contents
Bonus Chapters
BONUS CHAPTER: THE HABIT BURN
What to do when you're bored / frustrated / unsatisfied by your progress. These killer techniques will put you back on track!
BONUS CHAPTER: WARNING SIGNS
What to do when specific thoughts come up. Automatic Reactions for handling Boredom, Anger, Frustration, Fatigue, Pain, Sadness, Disillusionment, Anxiery, Paralysis, Unfulfillment and Laziness.
BONUS CHAPTER: RELEASING A PRODUCT
You've worked hard on making something. Now what? Some important points on putting it out there and building a legacy.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you want to improve your productivity, exposure, happiness, income, personal relationships, yes! However, this book is targeted specifically at artists and entrepreneurs, or creators in general. While there is a lot of information in this book that anyone could use, there are many problems and challenges tied to being self-employed or having to be creative on a daily basis that probably won’t apply to you.
There is a journal-only version available at Amazon. You can purchase it here.
For 66 days, six days a week, you fill out two pages: A Morning Page and an Evening Page. On day 7, you fill out a different set of pages, the Week In Review page and Planning Next Week.
The Morning Page is where you plan your day, track your sleep and make a to do list.
The Evening Page lets you track your projects, habits and well-being and express gratitude.
The Week In Review Page is all about reevaluating your projects and habits, about minimizing, simplifying and focusing your energy. You also copy your week’s stats to your MasterPlan.
Your MasterPlan is a spread at the end of the book that shows you all of your progress at a glance.
The Planning Next Week Page lets you plan which habits you want to continue working on and what you want to eat for the rest of the week. You also rate your projects with the “FETUS Index”, using a formula that tells you which projects you should be working on.
No. This is an interactive book that you will write in every day, which is not as simple with digital pages. I want to keep people from using permanent marker on their iPad.
The book is for 66 days, which is the average length it takes for a habit to stick. If you want to continue after this period, there will be a journal-only version without all the instructions.
Just a small peek into what I did in the past 4 years:
- I wrote and published a best-selling book (the Addiction Formula)
- I published 10+ video courses for Holistic Songwriting
- I grew the YouTube channel by 300K subscribers and gathered 10M views
- I sold 3 board games to one of Germany’s biggest publishers (release 2020)
- I wrote and published this book, GETTING THINGS MADE
- I wrote, performed, recorded, produced and published my album Subface under my artist name Canohead
- I kickstarted The Songwriting Decks (230% overfunded on kickstarter!)
- I married the love of my life
- I published 180+ videos on my YouTube channel.
- I’m an advisor to Germany’s biggest songwriters
- I toured Europe doing masterclasses and songwriting camps
I did all of this by myself, with no connections, no previous track record and with very little help (I hired an editor a couple of months ago).
Yes, Getting Things Made is essentially a second edition of the Tracking Journal. Three new chapters have been added, making this 26 pages longer than the Tracking Journal. Some small changes have been made to the body text.
