HOW TO PUT ACTING ON AUTO-DRIVE

I use to think I was an absolute boss at managing my time

Turns out I just didn’t have kids yet

I’m frustrated that haven’t written in a while

I’ve been acting in Victoria

Smiling at my new baby son

And helping high performing individuals increase their ability to perform under pressure

The pressure of leading films

The pressure of preparing for shows

The pressure of waiting in between acting jobs

But I miss this weekly ritual enormously

And I heard myself say to a dear friend the other day

With an exhausted tone

“I guess I just don’t have time to try get things perfect anymore”

Ooo

No time for perfection…

Just because I don’t have my dream amount of time to write at the moment

Don’t mean I can’t write

Let’s go

I’ve been noticing a pattern

Professional actors

Who have reached a level of maturity in life

Who know their worth

Trust their skills

Have fabulous work under their belts

(I’m talking actors with incredible film credits

Actors who couldn’t walk down the street in certain cities,

Main stage theatre show regulars,

West End locals,

and in one case almost a thousand episodes of television under their belt!)

But are completely exhausted

They don’t want to put down another self tape

They don’t want to feel poor in-between now and their next job

And they hate that their energy is so drastically dependant on whether they get an audition that week (or month) or not

They want…

No…

Need change

They need some form of autonomy back

They need to live life their way again

Regardless of what they hear back from that last self tape

Regardless if their next gig is in 6 weeks or 6 months from now

Okay

Let’s get clear on our problem

It’s certainly is not skills

It’s not experience

It’s what happening in between the work

When I hear the sentence

“Mike, I’m just sick of acting, I’m feeling so exhausted by it, I don’t see how I can keep going”

I usually interpret that as:

“I love acting so much, but I’m hurting. I don’t have a way to handle the moments in between the work”

Thus

This becomes our next project

Putting acting on auto drive

So you can get on living your life

No matter the chaos that comes

Remember

It’s not the best actor who wins

It’s not the actor who has the most experience, or strongest network, or who’s been doing it the longest

It’s the one who is able to adapt most who flourishes

Flexibility wins

So let’s adapt

Open your weekly schedule

Allocate one to three blocks of time for acting

Thus, giving yourself just enough structure in order to feel free to live again

For example

(and please this is just an example - expand or contract to what suits you)

Monday morning 10:00-12:00

Wednesday evening 19:00 - 21:00

Friday morning 10:00-12:00

Then?

Take those times fucking seriously

I don’t mean take yourself seriously

I mean treat those blocks of time as professionally as possible

Self tape comes through?

No need to panic or rush

You already have your time allocated for your profession

Need time to read that script?

Work with that coach?

Go to class to up-skill?

Reply to those networking emails?

Easy!

The time is already booked aside each week for you to handle it

“But what if it’s urgent and needs to be done immediately!?”

Dear artist

I’ve been doing this professionally for two decades

I have one - ONE - example where my agent called and said

“The director wants to meet you for the role but leaves Sydney tonight”

In that case, I was happy to cancel my arvo and adapt

But that happened once

My point is:

This industry will try convince you to rush

Don’t

If you manage your time professionally

You won’t have to desperately react

You can respond your way from a healthy and professional place

But

If you always make yourself available to exhaustingly react to the industry

You will keep exhaustively reacting to it

Simply not sustainable

Now

Some points of resistance

“I don’t want to spend 2-6 hours a week acting - I just want to be getting paid to act every day”

Alrighty

Let’s approach this as logically as possible

No actor in Australia gets paid to be on set every day for their career over the long term

There will absolutely be periods of weeks, months or even occasionally years where this will be the case

But over decades?

Nope

Some learn right after drama school

Some learn 3 years after leaving drama school

Some learn 14 years after leaving drama school

The VAST majority of this career is waiting

So learning to wait (live) well in-between artistic work is crucial

Another point of resistance

“2-6 hours on acting each week is bullshit! I should be working on the craft of acting all day, each and every day”

Okay

One

No casting director wants an actor who just lives and breaths acting

Who has no life to bring to the lens

Two

Work will expand to fill to the time allocated for it

A self tape will take 45 minutes or 45 days depending on how much time you allocate for it

Three

Amateurs stay amateurs because they try do lots

Pros do less, thats why they do it better

A few focussed hours each week making intelligent adaptive progress with wonderful people supporting you

Is far better than fifty cloudy de-energising hours pretending you’re doing beneficial work just so you can feel like you’re a tortured artist

Next

If I allocate professional time for my art

WTF will I do with the other 30, 40, 50 hours of the week?

Well

You get to do…

Whatever you want

You get to build it your way

I hate the idea:

Of an artist spending their career exhaustively trying to make it to the next pay day

Rocking up to give their work from a place of desperation and strain

I love the idea:

Of an artist living for a living

So

Allocate a few times in the week to give your art as professionally and playfully as you can

Treat that time with respect, compassion and care

Share that time with great people

And outside of that time

Aw shucks

You know…

Live

Have relationships

Join a soup kitchen

Build families

Walk in nature

Celebrate the joys

Grieve the losses

Thank the bus driver

Say fuck yes

Say fuck no

Say fuck maybe

Say sorry

Find forgiveness

Find beauty in your scars

Turn your scars into your super power

Find innocence again

Move in the direction your body is nudging you in order to feel more alive, expansive, energised

And when it comes to building financial stability in between acting work?

To cut long advice short:

Help people solve problems you genuinely care about solving

There is a reason I help high performers increase their ability to handle pressure

Because at 25 I achieved my dream of leading at the Sydney Opera House

And I was completely miserable

Because I had no language, tools or processes to help me perform under pressure sustainably

So now when I work with an athlete, artist or leader who is really struggling with reaching their potential in high stakes moments

It’s like every part of me shows up

Because my body knows how painful that problem can feel.

My reservoir for giving acting work I care about is deep

But my reservoir for helping a performer with the pain of pressure is endless

Anyway

Let’s get to my point

What am I encouraging here?

I’m encouraging actors to building meaningful lives

Why?

One

Because 70 years are going to fly by

You will soon be dead

And in three generations time

No-one on this earth will remember your name

Or care about what your work was like on Home & Away

Acting work will flow up and down in waves

Some years multiple jobs

Some years none

We know this

And what’s the worst case scenario of going down this path of treating your profession more professionally?

“People will think I’m not serious about acting any more because I’m not available all the time”

Trust me

People will respect you far more as an artist if you respect your own time and craft

Don’t let the fear of not acting get in the way of all thats worth living for

Hope this helps

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