Here are two ways to instantly improve your sound design skills.

It's easy to try a new system, whether it be a to-do list, a note taking app, or anything else, have it work perfectly for a bit, and then feel overcome with guilt when we fall off of using it. At this point we can: 1. Simplify what we already have 2. Abandon it without guilt and start a new one I do both all the time. The system should work for you, not the other way around.

As someone who loves journals, tracking, and checking boxes it's beyond easy to create systems that get overwhelming and complicated. And, when things get too complex, we tend to stop engaging with them. We end up having a CRM that hasn't been updated in 5 years, email filters that have made us miss countless important messages, and a to-do list that's still nagging us to pack for a flight in 2018. Simpler, messy systems are often better than complicated precise ones. After a

We like to think that people hire based off of purely logical factors. We think ticking a bunch of arbitrary boxes is the way forward. But we hire who we trust. It's that simple. And trust is gained through familiarity. Have we met them before? Have others vouched for them? Are they visible in any capacity, or are they hidden away hoping someone notices them? Fancy websites and demo reels can help, but they only go so far. Focus on building trust and following through. That's

One of my biggest productivity boosters has been the focus on slow dopamine over fast dopamine. Slow dopamine is gotten from doing the things we might not want to do in the moment, but feel awesome afterwards. Working out, meditating, doing deep focused work with zero distractions, etc. We get fast dopamine from the things we know we shouldn't be doing: being on our phones, blasting stuff into our headphones constantly, eating junk food, and on and on. Anytime I start my day

One of my favorite tools for helping me get stuff done with ADHD is body doubling. Body doubling usually means working in silence near someone who's also doing their own, often completely-unrelated thing. It's strange how focus-boosting it is to just have another person around, even if you're not interacting in any way. Of course, you can't always have someone physically next to you, so some of the tools I use to do this online are: 1. Focus Blocks 2. Focusmate 3. Caveday And

I had a lovely meeting with my online course students yesterday, and the topic of consistency came up. We live in a world where it looks like everyone else is so disciplined and consistent, and we feel like we're the only ones that just can't stick to things. In reality, everyone messes up. Everyone falls off the horse over and over again (myself included). The trick to staying consistent, then, isn't about training yourself to always do something without fail. It's to train

It may not seem it from those who have met me, but I'm an *extreme* introvert. If I didn't have to leave my house ever again, I wouldn't. So, over my 13+ years in games, I've had to find ways to make networking work for me. Essentially, I have to either enjoy it, or find some way to be forced into it. For me, what's worked has been: 1. Hosting a podcast - I get to stay at home and meet tons of interesting new people from all over the world. 2. Helping run the Seattle Game Aud

Some of the best advice I ever got from Ramit Sethi was "Do things that don't scale." When running a business, all of the common advice focuses on scaling. Can the work be done faster/cheaper/with fewer people? But, when we overfocus on scaling, we lose our humanity. We see the results of this daily with the enshittification of products, customer service, and the internet as a whole. When we do things that *don't* scale, we actually take the time. We respond to our students t

There's an intermediate stage where, as freelancers, we start to think of all of the extra stuff we could/should be doing. Should we start a new part of our business? Should we build a new product? Should we do more more more? Sometimes, the answer is yes. But, I've noticed that we think of "doing more" as a way to avoid doing things *differently*. We get into a state where we're doing a lot of hard work, but ultimately, have very little productivity. Sometimes, "more" isn't

Allow yourself to make garbage. It's the easiest way to practice your craft. Whether it be a redesign, a preset, some layering work, a new piece of music, or literally anything else, just allow it to be terrible. *Try* to make it terrible. No one needs to know about your trash experiments. They never need to be shared. But, if you stick to it, you'll wow people with your skill, and they'll assume you've never made anything bad in your life.

We've all been there: you have a meeting at 4:00PM and it's currently 7AM. Of course that means it's time to just sit there and stew for 9 hours until the meeting actually happens. This is doubly-true for my fellow ADHD-havers. But, I've started to do the following to help mitigate that Meeting Miasma™: 1. In the morning, I acknowledge that the day is going to have interruptions, and that that's fine. I'll schedule less on my plate as a result. 2. I still allow myself to sit

A common question that every creative asks is "can I work for free?" Of course, there are a thousand nuanced answers to this, but my simplified take is: "you can work for free, but don't work for nothing." Ideally, yes, you get paid. Even if you're at the early stages of your career, it's good to at least try and get some sort of monetary compensation. But, barring that, ask for *something* in return. Connections in the industry, tickets to conferences, profit shares, and ski

Unfortunately, internships and beginner-friendly entry level jobs in game audio are few and far between. So, it’s more important than ever before to generate our own experience. Whether it be through game jams, student work, or mini-projects that satiate your curiosity, all of those little bits of experience go a long way. The output doesn’t always need to be amazing, but the sheer fact that you’re doing something, *anything*, of your own accord is immediately impressive.

As we become more advanced in our skillset, we can also become more frustrated. The smallest things start to become tougher as we refine, hone in, and improve in the tiniest ways. And often, our attempts feel like they yield no results whatsoever. It feels like the total opposite of when we were a total beginner, where massive improvements were much easier to make. But that frustration is often a sign of learning and progress. Yes, a good teacher, system, or tutorial can get

Many moons ago after one of my classes at Berklee, I remember overhearing the always-wonderful Michael Sweet say something to another professor: "Anyone can be taught to be a good composer." Even though I was but a humble eavesdropper in that moment, that statement has stuck with me ever since, and I feel you can fill in the word "composer" with almost anything. While it often feels that meany of the skills we need to learn to become full-time creatives are mysterious and imp

Many of my online and 1-on-1 students have been asking: "What about AI? It can make music and sound, so there's no reason they would hire a person instead." I get where this worry is coming from: We're hearing constant fear-mongering about how the AI revolution is here, and how we just need to roll over and realize that our work is just going to be replaced. But, there is a skill that my fellow audio folks and freelancers can focus on that is irreplaceable, rare, and will be

I’m in the midst of running my cohort-based course for boosting the careers of those in game audio, and this week, we started to work on our positioning. We’re really starting to think more deeply on the sorts of problems that we audio folks are truly solving. Ultimately, we’re wondering: What are we helping with that goes beyond just “making good sound/music?” All too often, we think just because a developer or director says they need audio, that that’s the only issue we’re

My favorite time to set goals and think about the next year is October.

You've probably noticed that the tech and game industries are in an... interesting position right now. Mass layoffs are the norm, it...