Exiting Samuel French with your stomach growling for lunch, you get the call: You have an audition in forty minutes! You, however, are on the opposite side of town and unsure of how to get to the casting office. The role is a “corporate office drone”… you, however, are wearing jeans and flip-flops. In addition to needing two headshots, they want to check your availability for several dates… you, however, are down to your last picture and your planner is sitting on your bed.

Hanging up from the call, you check your watch and think, “Hmmm… what now?”

The most predictable aspect of an actor’s workday is how unpredictable it can be. When these unexpected opportunities pop up, time and traffic often prohibit even a quick trip home to raid your closet and utilize your office. Being unprepared for such good fortune increases the odds that you will squander your energy scrambling, worrying and “making do” rather than conserving it for the audition.

The key is having a lean, mean, portable version of your office with you on the road. In Los Angeles, that means having an office in your car; in New York, that means having one slung over your shoulder.

GETTING THERE

First, I want to note the difference between “setting-up a portable office” and “having what you need with you.” You may already carry around all of the items mentioned in this column, but are they scattered in the crevasses of your car or crunched at the bottom of your backpack? If they are, you lack the ability to quickly spot what may me missing, easily access items while on the move, and take inventory of what needs re-stocking.

Select a container for your portable office that best suits your needs and situation. You can use a tote bag, a plastic file box, a briefcase, a backpack or a nylon car caddy hung on the passenger seat. Next, assign every item in your office a permanent “home” (a.k.a. a pocket or folder or pouch) where it will live. Store your marketing materials (headshots with resumes, postcards, business cards, performance flyers, demo reels and voice over demo CDs) so that they remain clean and un-tattered. Keep your phone and planner handy. Carry at least one pen and highlighter with you as well as some extra cash for parking fees or cab fare. Have a means by which to charge your phone (or making charging it a daily ritual) and have access to your vital phone numbers either as a hardcopy or in your phone’s memory.

You might also include a small stapler, some thank-you notes and stamps for use during down time and, for extra credit, a geographical listing of casting director addresses. That way, no matter where the day takes you, you can drop your picture and resume off at an office or two.

Tip: A map is a necessity, but Thomas Guides are heavy and cumbersome. Though I do keep one in my car, I also made myself a mini-Guide by removing from a previous edition the seven or so pages I refer to most often. (Making color photocopies of selected pages would also suffice.) I put them into plastic page protectors and bound them together using two metal rings. Eighty percent of the time, I use this lighter, quicker version.

LOOKING GOOD

Finding “homes” for a comb, a clip to put your hair up, a mirror, basic make-up, an electric shaver, a nail file, wet wipes, tissues, lip balm, floss, toothpaste, a toothbrush, and mints or gum, is relatively simple. Having immediate access to both a “nice casual” and a “business” outfit is a tad trickier.

Of course, if you have a car, clothes and shoes can be hung in a garment bag or placed in your trunk. In some circumstances, you can stash a change of clothes at your gym or place of employment. Another plan, which I put in place for myself as auditions increased, was to get permission to access the homes and closets of two supportive friends in two different areas of town. In a pinch, I could drop in, borrow the few items I needed and freshen up.

FEELING GREAT

For days when arriving “as is” is your only option, having water and an apple or nutrition bar with you can be your saving grace. Without fuel, your energy and enthusiasm can noticeably lag.

Achieving the success you are striving for depends a great deal on your ability to capitalize on each and every opportunity – scheduled or not – that comes your way. Being organized gives you a competitive edge because, when you know what you have and have what you need, you will remain confident, focused and able to rise to the occasion.

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In acting class, your scene partner asks if you’ll go to her stand-up gig on Saturday night. Checking the date in your portable planner, you see no notation indicating another commitment, so you promise to go. Later on, you realize that you just gave away your last free Saturday night of the month. Had you known that, you might have thought twice about attending the performance. Then, when you get home, you discover that, according to the calendar on the kitchen wall, you’ve already accepted an invitation to a wedding shower that very same Saturday night. What now?

An actor’s life is a constant whirlwind of scheduling and re-scheduling. People often assume actors are “flakes” because the timing of auditions and bookings require frequent last-minute cancellations and postponements. Add to those circumstances any personal disorganization – being late, losing information, forgetting things, double-scheduling – and you are not only reinforcing the stereotype but also impeding your professional progress.

Simply buying a planner and using it haphazardly isn’t enough. In order for a planner to become a helpful organizing tool, you must select one that best fits your style, use it consistently and maintain its accuracy.

USING ONE

A planner has two main purposes. The first is to store details about your activities so your brain doesn’t have to. Relying on your brain to remember and remind you about bits of info and multiple to-do’s generates stress. Is your brain constantly juggling everywhere you should be and worrying about everything you should be doing? If so, I doubt there is much peace or space available in there for you to relax, think and create. The more info you can get out of your head and into your planner, the freer you will feel.

“But once stuff is out of my brain and buried in my planner I will forget all about it!” That’s possible – unless you develop the habit of planning, recording and reviewing your activities on a regular basis.

The second purpose of a planner is to help you make and track decisions about how you use your time. To make a clear decision about how to use your free time, you have to have a clear idea of how much free time you actually have. When you get your planner for the new year, pencil in your existing commitments – your job schedule, your class schedule, your family’s schedule plus special occasions and holidays. Then, at the start of each week, sit with your planner and choose how to fit your professional and personal activities into the windows of time available during that particular week. As the week progresses, keep your planner accurate by recording changes to your schedule as they occur. Regularly review what is coming up the next day, the next week and the next month. Use your planner to remind yourself that you can return those DVDs tomorrow when you pass Blockbuster on the way to your voice lesson.

Rather than forcing you to be rigid, your planner enables you to remain flexible and informed. Also, if you are ever audited, your planner provides important documentation of your career.

CHOOSING ONE

The goal is to find a planner that best suits you, personally. Test drive a few until you find a good fit, but do not fall into the trap of jumping from one to another on a quest for the mythical yet non-existent “perfect planner.” Trust me — there is no paper or electronic planner that will, once and for all, Organize Your Life. Almost any planner can be of use if you actually use it.

You can have wall calendars to remind you of the date, but, to avoid mix-ups, I suggest you record all of your activities in only one place. Thus, make sure to synch your hand-held with your desktop daily. Plan for the time commitment necessary to become facile with anything electronic. Simple-to-use always trumps bells-and-whistles. Make sure the planner provides enough room to write comfortably and legibly. Should it have pockets or sections for additional materials? Does price or aesthetics matter to you?

Month-at-a-glance is a must-have feature. When you are considering adding something to your schedule, you naturally check to see if the actual time and day are available. Equally important is understanding how each event will impact the overall context of your month: although you are available to help your friend move on Sunday, doing so means giving up your first day off in two weeks. For paper planners, FranklinCovey and DayTimer are standard, but also check out PlannerPads.

Resist the temptation to ignore your planner when life is going smoothly then grab it as a crutch when things get hectic. Be proactive rather than reactive; start fresh in the new year by selecting a tool and crafting a routine that will, in time, help get you where you want to go.

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Just as your friend is leaving, you remember that you want to get his feedback on a new marketing piece you are creating. “Hold on,” you say as you turn on your computer, “this will only take a second.” Your monitor reveals a desktop crammed with dozens of files. After scanning the screen, you realize that the file for your marketing piece is not there, so you start to hunt and peck through other folders, wondering what you named it and where you saved it. Your friend checks his watch, doubtful that he can stick around long enough for you to find the piece. What now?

A hallmark of any actor’s life is the constant nurturing of multiple activities and projects. Finding the time and motivation to sit down at your computer and make some progress can be challenging. Facing a computer full of uncategorized files every time you are ready to work can swiftly put a damper on your creative spirit.

The key to organizing your computer files is to build a self-guiding system that enables you to locate the exact document you want while bypassing unrelated documents along the way. “Self-guiding” means the folders are arranged and named in a logical series that anyone could understand and follow easily. This comes in handy if you ever need to have your roommate or spouse retrieve something when you are not home.

THE SYSTEM

With this system, you click through a series of folders before you ever see any individual files. With a limited number of folders at each stage, it will only take a moment to make a choice and open the appropriate folder. So, even if you have to click on five folders before you get to the desired document, that’s only five or six seconds of your time – compared with five minutes or more spent opening and closing individual files.

Start by creating two main folders labeled “Personal” and “Career.” (If you prefer, “Career” could be called “Work” or “Business.”)

Practically everything in your life falls into either of those two categories. If you have a day-job or projects not related to your acting, those projects can still be filed under “Career.” Now when you open your computer, you need only ask yourself one, simple question: “Is the file I need a Personal file or a Career file?” Also, while searching for a “Career” file, you will avoid your “Personal” files altogether — and vice versa!

Inside the “Career” folder, create several folders that break down your “Career” category a bit more. For example, in my “Career” folder I have a folder labeled “Acting” and one labeled “Organizing.”

Likewise, my “Personal” folder breaks down to the general categories of “Household” and “Volunteer” and “My Stuff” (for miscellanea).

All of those folders will then contain other folders that break down each category even further. At this stage, your category names will depend upon how your mind works. One person’s “Acting” folder might break down into folders for “Commercials,” “Voice Over,” “The Actors’ Network” and “Unions,” while another person’s “Acting” folder might have folders for “Marketing,” “Auditions,” and “Writing Projects.” As you sort through your files, you will get a better idea of how many folders you’ll need and what to name them.

With a system like this in place, showing your friend your marketing piece would simply mean clicking on your “Career” folder, then on your “Acting” folder, then on your “Marketing” folder and then maybe on a folder named “Postcards” and finally on the file named “New Year Postcard 2006.”

THE SET-UP

Having to re-file all of your existing computer documents may seem overwhelming. I suggest setting aside time each week or two to tackle the project in the following stages:

1. Create the new folder system and start filing your brand new documents in it.

2. Gradually look at each of your old documents. One by one, trash what is no longer useful and file the rest in the new folder system.

3. The goal is to be able to scan the contents of any folder fairly quickly. Therefore, when any folder in the new system becomes crowded with individual files, it’s time to create one or two sub-folders.

4. Then, about twice each year, schedule a few hours to weed your computer files. Having a future date set for weeding means you don’t have to think about it until then.

5. Break the habit of saving files to your desktop. Parking a file there temporarily (to draw your attention to it) is fine. However, when “once in a while” turns into “regularly,” your desktop will become cluttered and nothing will stand out.

Accessing your work does not have to be work. If you already have a difficult time getting and staying focused, navigating an ever-expanding sea of random files certainly won’t help. Propelling your career forward at a competitive speed requires the ability to use your computer without hesitation or hassle.

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After a long day, you finally arrive home. Your arms and bags are loaded down with magazines and scripts, scraps of paper with important names and numbers, notes from acting class, and the mail, clenched between your teeth. To avoid collapsing, you unload everything onto the nearest flat surface and drag yourself to bed. Waking up the next morning, you are greeted by Yesterday’s Pile. What now?

Every actor has days where he or she is on the go from sun-up to way past sun down. When life is hectic, dumping your stuff into a pile is an understandable action. However, problems arise when one day’s pile is plopped onto another day’s pile and that giant pile starts to spawn auxiliary piles. You don’t want to be frantically excavating audition sides from a mountain of paper minutes before heading out to a callback!

To keep this constant inflow of paper under control, you need a basic system in place. A system that guides your papers from “unsorted” (a.k.a. freshly dumped) to “stored.”

DUMPING IT

To start, select a lid-less container to be your “dumping bin.” This bin can be a beautiful basket or a cardboard box, but it should be about five to seven inches deep and big enough to accommodate a three-ring binder.

Next, choose a specific place for this bin to live – a spot that is as close as possible to where you habitually dump your stuff. If you are someone like me, who comes through the door and plops everything on the dining table (even though the office is mere steps away), then place the bin on, under or very near that table. Dumping your papers, mail, and notebooks into one designated bin provides you with a visual cue for action; when the bin is full, it is time to sort. Of course, you do not have to wait until it is full! Tending to these unsorted papers is something you can do whenever you have a few minutes to spare.

SORTING IT

In addition to the “dumping bin,” you’ll need at least six containers in which to sort the dumped paper:

#1 labeled “career to-dos”

#2 labeled “personal to-dos”

#3 labeled “unpaid bills”

#4 labeled “to-be-filed”

#5 labeled “to-be-shredded”

#6 a trashcan.

Each container should have a specific, convenient place to live in your home office area.

Container #1 – career to-dos – holds papers related to your acting career.

Container #2 – personal to-dos – holds papers NOT related to your acting career. These two containers should only hold papers you need to take action on – calls to make, letters to write, data to enter, etc. Once the action has been completed, move the paper to the to-be-filed, the to-be-shredded or the trash container.

Even after taking an action on a to-do item, that to-do might remain “active” or unresolved – maybe you had to leave a message or your order has not yet arrived. In that case, write “pending” on a Post-it Note, attach it to the paper, and return the paper to its corresponding to-do container.

Within the scope of your career or personal life, there may be several major or long-term activities constantly generating to-dos (like involvement in a class, an organization or a play.) By all means, personalize your sorting system. Perhaps, for you, it would be helpful to divide your career to-dos into containers labeled “career: general to-dos,” “career: data entry to-dos,” and “career: class to-dos.”

Put container #3 – unpaid bills – in an eye-catching place where it can’t be overlooked.

Container #4 – to-be-filed – is where to toss papers that are ready to be put into your file cabinet (or in binders or other such storage system.)

Container #5 – to-be-shredded – is for paperwork that should be destroyed.

Though you can use stacking trays or file folders to sort your papers, I find that the L-shaped containers designed to hold magazines on bookcases work very well. They keep papers upright and visible in an easy-to-flip-through way and they allow each category to be individually portable. They are available at Ikea, Staples or Target in varieties to suit any budget or style.

WORKING IT

Systems work, but they don’t do the work. It is up to you to regularly take your papers from the general dumping bin and distribute them amongst the individual sorting containers. The sorting containers are there to provide places for papers to sit temporarily until you get around to dealing with them – they are not for permanent storage. You must continue to execute the to-dos and complete the cycle by ultimately filing, shredding or trashing your paperwork.

Unsorted piles seem daunting when the papers have nowhere to go to. Having an organized system to process your paperwork is vital because those papers represent possibilities and opportunities for you to expand your professional activity; if they remain stagnant, then part of you, your creativity, and your career will too.

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You return from an industry party pretty pleased with yourself. Not only did you work up the courage to actually go, but, once there, you also managed to avoid wallflower status by introducing yourself to several people who sounded almost sincere when they gave you their business cards and told you to “keep in touch.” As you get ready for bed, you fish the cards from your pockets, open your desk drawer and toss them on top of the dusty mound of similar cards and contact info you have been collecting ever since you hit town. What now?

Life as an actor is all about people. The people you’ve met, the people you want to meet and even the people you will eventually portray on stage and screen. Unfortunately, people don’t come with little signs that say “hold on to this gal’s number because in six months she’ll be someone helpful to know.” Therefore, having some sort of system to organize all of the bits and pieces of information that you accumulate while networking is vital.

Using a desk drawer as your “database” is pretty bad. However, spending hours inputting information into a fancy computer program that you then ignore, is worse. Besides suspecting that they “should have one,” many people have only a vague notion about what exactly a database is supposed to do. Clarifying that point is the first step towards selecting and utilizing this valuable organizing tool.

GOOD NEWS

Don’t let the bells and whistles of a sophisticated program lure you in or scare you off. You are not required to take advantage of every little trick the software can do; begin by fulfilling your basic needs. Simple works just fine. For several years, I successfully kept all of my contact information in Excel. That’s right – the combo of Excel and Word, pre-installed on nearly every computer, meet the four basic requirements of any actor’s database:

Seeing your info – first and foremost, a database should provide speedy retrieval of information. Scrolling down a screen or clicking a mouse to view a contact moves you along in your day; sifting through piles of business cards or flipping through old address books halts your momentum.

Manipulating your info – a database should also allow you to sort your contacts by categories. That way, you can easily see a list of all of the casting directors you’ve read for or a list of all of the actors in your improv class. A well-maintained database can relieve you of keeping track of and cross-referencing multiple contact lists.

Tracking your info – especially helpful for the actor is the facility to store statistics related to your contacts. This allows you to quickly find answers to questions like “When was the last month I sent a postcard to him?” or “How many times have I auditioned for her?”

Repurposing your info – a last, basic element of a quality database is the ability to print out mailing labels and mail merge letters from the database. (Being able to send emails to groups of people is another desirable function although not one available via Excel and Word.)

GREAT NEWS

Most likely, a program that does all of the above is already installed somewhere on the computer you own. Like Dorothy, you’ve had this great tool all along – now you just need to start using it. If you are concerned about the time required to learn a new program, I recommend getting a tech tutor to shorten the process.

Databases demand consistent feeding (adding new info) and weeding (updating and deleting). I suggest scheduling a regular block of time every other week or so devoted to data entry. Hiring someone to do this task for you may be money well spent – especially for the initial chunk during set-up. Remember to choose a specific bin or a drawer to hold all of the business cards and scraps of paper that are waiting “to be entered” into your program.

For contact info to be of any real value to you, it must be gathered, processed and used. Don’t get stuck just gathering, never inputting the info into any helpful system like a database. Don’t get stuck processing either, diligently entering names and numbers into the computer with no plan in place about how to use what you have. Plow through the work to get to the stage when you are using the information to make calls, send mailings, and connect people with one another.

Why take the time to select, build, maintain and use a database? I would argue that, even more than talent, the strength of your personal network is the determining factor of your level of success in this industry. In the long run, your ability to meet someone, research them, stay in contact with them, and wage a professional, respectful campaign for their attention and business is what will put you ahead of your peers. That is what a database can help you do.

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It’s Saturday morning and you are up extra early to grab a few hours in the home office. Your mind is buzzing with some great ideas for your screenplay and you are ready to get right to work – only you can’t. The notes that you left carefully arranged on the desk have been shoved aside, displaced by paperwork and binders related to a project your spouse was apparently working on late last night. Once again, you have to spend part of your creative time rearranging the desk before you can actually start using the desk.

Actors often live in situations where they must share a desk with one or more people: roommates, a significant other, kids or family members. When a home office – large or small – serves as the hub of business and household activity for multiple users, disorganization in this area can breed tension and spark accusations of papers lost, items mishandled, space hogged and privacy invaded. Over time, this constant tug-of-war for space can chip away at your creative spirit.

Whether your home office fills an entire spare room or consists of a desk in the corner of the living room, the principles of organizing it as a shared space remain the same. Technically, every desk is a shared space. Even if you live alone, you are probably using this area for multiple projects that can end up “living” on your desktop, layered upon one another. If your office space is shared by people or by projects (or by both,) here are some guidelines to help restore order and peace.

THE METHOD

Declare the desktop neutral territory! An uncluttered desktop, empty but for a few select office supplies and/or pieces of computer equipment, invites you to come on over, sit down and get some work done. The goal is to make it easy for each user to return the desktop to a neutral state once they are done working. Paperwork and project materials should be brought to the desk, worked on and then taken from the desk.

Papers and materials related to on-going projects need to live in a specific area. This project area could be as simple as several clear bins stacked right next to the desk with each bin assigned to a particular person or project. So, when your roommate wants to finish his agent target list, he moves his project bin from the project area to the desk. While working, he can spread his stuff all over the desktop; when he is ready to stop, all of his materials go back into his bin.

If you have a spacious office with plenty of shelves or closets, feel free to have separate bins (or baskets or boxes) for each project you are working on. If space is tight, single bins can be divided to hold multiple projects. Alternatively, a plastic cart with several large drawers can be used to store and separate projects. It can be rolled over to the desk or its individual drawers can be removed and taken to the desk.

In addition to the project bins, each person who uses the office area must have a shelf or a bin or a cubby reserved and labeled exclusively for them. This organizational element is key to reducing episodes of bickering and nagging about who moved who’s stuff where. If someone leaves something on the desktop and you have to move it, you move it to their exclusive space. Likewise, if an interruption forces you to leave the office without tidying up and you return to find that your stuff is no longer on the desktop, there is no need for concern. Your materials will be waiting for you in your exclusive space.

THE MUST-HAVES

The four items which I think every actor should definitely have in their home office each play an important part in keeping a shared space operating smoothly.

1) A shredder will help you maintain your privacy and serve as the first line of defense against the ever-increasing threat of identity theft.

2) Use a small “money” bulletin board for the sole purpose of keeping track of gift certificates, event tickets and valuable coupons. Put this board in a place where you will see it regularly so you will be reminded of what you have. (Attaching a small binder clip or jumbo paperclip to a plastic gift card allows you to hang it from a pushpin.)

3) Choose a container exclusively for holding your unpaid bills. Place it where it cannot be overlooked.

4) Select a bin or file folder or drawer where you can easily “dump” your daily receipts. Whether you enter receipts regularly into a computer program or just hold onto them until tax time, you need to be able to get them out of your pockets and purses while preventing them from drifting all over the house.

Fortunately, even the tiniest of home offices can serve several users once these simple organizational systems are diplomatically put in place and embraced by everyone sharing the space.

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You’ve been lying in bed staring at the ceiling, mulling things over. It’s been exactly two years since you moved to town. Though you finally have a commercial agent and a few student films under your belt, you still feel like you are drifting along with only a vague notion of what it is you really want to do. Remaining under the covers just seems a lot less stressful than getting up and attempting to figure out where to go from here. What now?

The good news and the bad news is that there is no single, well-worn road to success as an actor. There is no job placement program nor is there any temp-to-hire agency to help one get into the workforce. The options of how to pursue work are as diverse as the options of what work to pursue: on-camera commercials, animation voice-over, one-hour dramas, indie films, looping, soaps, and on and on. Your acting teacher and your career coach will tell you the same thing: “the work is about making choices.”

Organizing your thoughts is equally (if not more) important than organizing your environment. When you constantly delay making necessary decisions – because of fear or uncertainty — your mind can get cluttered and depressed. Goal setting is the organizational tool that helps you make choices and make progress.

THE PROCESS

For many actors, the process of:

1) defining your passion

2) choosing a focus

3) setting some goals

4) creating a plan

5) taking individual actions

seems overwhelming.

Others think “setting career goals” equals “setting career limits.” I hope the following guidance will provide a new perspective.

Step 1) Define your passion.

You will have the most fun and the best chance at success if you are pursuing a career based on your personal passions – rather than on someone else’s ideal or expectations. Take a moment to remind yourself of what compelled you to enter this business in the first place? Was it to write and perform your own material? Do you live to make people laugh? Is it your dream to work with the actors and directors you truly admire? Be honest about what really lights your fire.

Step 2) Choose a focus.

After all of your other commitments are met, there might be only a few hours left in each week to devote to your acting career. You can spend this time grazing at the buffet – simultaneously trying to “get into” voice-overs and TV and films. Or, you can sink your teeth into a meal by concentrating all of your effort towards an area of the industry that you enjoy and that suits your talents and type. If comedy is your passion, your focus could be sitcoms or TV sketch shows or studio films. Each of these areas is a world onto itself with it’s own players, terminology, craft and protocol to learn about. Once this depth of knowledge is acquired, you can proactively create strategic opportunities for yourself instead of relying solely on whatever opportunities happen to come your way.

Step 3) Set some goals.

Kevin E. West, founder of The Actors’ Network, advocates “5-3-1 goal setting.” For example: if your passion is comedy and your focus is sitcoms then your main goal for yourself five years from now might be to be a series regular on a sitcom. With that in mind, your goals for three years from now might be to have several guest star/recurring credits on your resume and to have an agent who has guided other sitcom stars. Based on that, your goals for one year from today might be to have met ten top sitcom casting directors, booked at least two co-star roles on sitcoms and advanced to performing regularly with an improv group.

Step 4) Create a plan.

An action plan for achieving the goal of “meeting ten top sitcom casting directors” might include: Finding the names and contact info of those who have cast the pilots and seasons of your favorite sitcoms. Researching info about these CD’s via written articles and your personal network. Dropping off your info at their offices. Getting generals or auditions with them. Attending industry events at which they are speaking. Sending them postcards when you book work, etc.

Step 5) Take individual actions.

With a detailed plan in place, you can now get out of bed and get to work! Break your plans down into little actions – a call here, a drop-off there — that you can tackle, week by week, whenever you have time.

Naturally, as you evolve, your goals, focus and passions will evolve too. The purpose of this process is to give you an organized place from which to begin.

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It’s Wednesday afternoon and your shift is over. You are off the clock and rest of the day and night is all yours. Should you catch an early movie? Take the book you are reading down to the beach? Visit the mall in search of a new shirt for auditions? As you ponder your options, you suddenly realize that it is the middle of the week and you have yet to make a serious dent in your lengthy acting-related to-do list. Just then it hits you that it is already the middle of June – which is almost the middle of the year! What happened to those plans you made in January? Where has all your time gone?

The pursuit of one’s acting career often exists without any sense of urgency. Hey, if you don’t get that mailing done today, there’s always tomorrow. As an actor, you are your own boss; the external motivators of most jobs – deadlines, goals, structure, consequences, and rewards – don’t exist unless they are created and enforced by you. Your days and weeks can easily become months (and even years) spent without any substantial progress made toward turning your dreams into reality.

Regardless of one’s circumstances, every actor can and should create a weekly “actor routine” for themselves. This organizational tool will help you automatically devote a portion of every week toward taking consistent actions to move your acting career forward.

YOUR WEEKLY ROUTINE

Your initial reaction may be that imposing organization and structure onto your lifestyle will squelch your creativity and artistic expression. That won’t happen. What will happen is that the business aspects of your career will get the attention they require to produce opportunities for you to get paid to be creative and artistic.

The actor routine is built around activities that need to be done habitually each week in order to keep your ear to the ground and your instrument finely tuned. Before you begin, carefully consider your level of experience and how much time you have available to devote to your career. Too ambitious a routine can lead to overwhelm and burnout.

Step one:

Decide what general activities are most important for you to do right now on a regular weekly basis. Your routine might include any of the following: reading the trades, doing drop-offs, submitting electronically, maintaining your database, exercising, attending acting classes or improv workouts, mailing marketing materials, watching movies, reading plays or business books, etc.

Step two:

Refine your routine by adding specific quantifiers. Perhaps each week you commit to: having coffee with one new contact, reading the trades, attending one industry event, exercising three times, mailing postcards to ten people on your target list and practicing a dialect for one hour.

Step three:

Add some rhythm to your routine by linking your chosen acting activities to other regular weekly activities in your life. If you have a day job, use 3 of your lunch hours each week to do your actor reading. Update your database each week while watching a favorite TV show. Write thank you notes while doing your weekly laundry. First thing every Wednesday morning, get a coffee at Starbucks while doing your online submissions.

An actor’s schedule can vary widely from one week to the next so do not expect to tie each activity on your list down to a certain time on a certain day. Anchor as much as you can and then plug what remains into gaps in your schedule throughout the week. This actor routine is intended as the baseline of your career. Even if you do nothing else during a particular week but your selected routine activities, you are at least taking enough steps to move you steadily toward your goals.

YOUR SUPPORT SYSTEM

If you think you are the type of person who has difficulty sticking to anything “regular” or “routine,” get some support. If you have the means, hire someone to do your data entry, drop-offs, mailings, or online submissions. Work with a trainer to help you exercise or a coach to help you learn a dialect. Team up with a friend or colleague who will provide daily, weekly or monthly accountability.

Many people (especially those with ADD) respond well to what is known as body-doubling. They find that the presence of another person in the room helps them focus and complete tasks. This body-double is not actively helping, they are just in the room engaged quietly in their own activity. If this works for you, find or hire someone to come over for a few hours each week.

Having a weekly actor routine in place is especially beneficial when your life is at its craziest. Plugging away at your routine even when you are buried in play rehearsals or shooting on location can help ease the transition back to “regular life” and onto your next big gig.

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The day has barely begun and you are already overwhelmed and wishing you had forty-eight hours rather than a mere twenty-four to attend to everything that needs to get done. In an attempt to quiet your brain and regain some control, you grab a pen and a blank sheet of paper and start assembling a “fresh” to-do list. After transcribing your mental notes-to-self, you begin gathering up the scraps of paper on which you have written other pending tasks and add those to the master list as well. As the list grows, your hope of ever completing everything on it shrinks. What now?

An actor’s to-do list comes in many shapes and sizes: from hand-written on a legal pad or planner page to typed in a PDA or computer program. Some folks maintain several lists at once. A few people write and re-write their lists daily. Most everyone takes pleasure in vigorously crossing off completed items. And almost all list-makers have fantasized of a blissful moment when every single item has been completed and they are finally caught-up and at peace.

I suggest forgetting that fantasy and facing the truth: as a creative, multi-talented, ambitious professional with friends and family, you will always have a lengthy to-do list. The key is to learn how to utilize your list so it can be a helpful tool rather than a heartless tormentor.

IN THEORY

As 21st century Americans, we make to-do lists almost instinctively. The act itself can be comforting, momentarily slowing down your pace and restoring mental order to your life. However, these lists can also become burdensome reminders of all that you are NOT accomplishing. You can become enslaved to the beast, rushing to squeeze more into each day and criticizing yourself for not getting everything done. The more out-of-control you feel, the more frequently you write and re-write your lists. Let’s break this cycle by examining what a to-do list is actually meant to do.

A to-do list is a tool to organize and track the individual tasks related to moving your life and your projects forward in the direction you wish to go. In order for the list to provide support for your goals, you must know what your goals are. Having clarity concerning your personal and career goals allows you to make judgments about the items on your list. Maintaining your list is not just about keeping it neat and legible. It is about evaluating (is this task still important?), selecting (what needs to get done today?), prioritizing (what needs to get done first?), and setting deadlines (what needs to be done before I go out of town next week?).

Avoid becoming subservient to your list. Telling yourself that everything on it is equally important and must get done is unhealthy and untrue. When you no longer have the desire or the time to tend to a particular task, remove it from your list without guilt.

IN PRACTICE

Having tinkered with the structure of my to-do lists many times throughout the years, I can assure you that there is no format that will magically make your life perfectly organized. As always, it is about creating a simple system that meets your needs and then consistently working that system.

I recommend sorting the tasks on your master to-do list either by activity (career stuff, personal stuff, family stuff, household stiff, etc.) or by action (calls, emails, errands, notes-to-write, etc.).

Sorting by activity enables you to shift your focus to one area of your life at a time. When you have an hour to devote to catching up with personal business, you can get right to work if all of your personal to-do’s are easily identifiable and/or grouped together. Sorting by action enables you to grab the phone and whip through your list of calls all at once. Also, sorting your errands by geographical area can help you maximize each trip across town.

Using a computer program capable of color-coding and/or automatically arranging your master list into categories is incredibly helpful. However, if you prefer hand-writing your lists, you can either a) create a to-do list form with 3-5 blank columns in which to group your tasks or b) use highlighters to indicate similar tasks on your comprehensive master list (highlight all of your calls-to-make in blue, etc.)

We need to-do lists because relying on our brains to remember all of this information is risky! I carry a digital tape recorder to capture new to-dos and ideas throughout each day. Get in the habit of doing a mind-dump every evening — add new to-dos to your list and delete the completed tasks. Then, review your entire list and select 4-6 items to accomplish the following day. Of those 4-6 items, you should determine which one is your highest priority. Also, especially if you chronically underestimate time, you should decide what tasks on this mini-list can be dropped if necessary. The more realistic you are about how much you can handle in a single day, the less stressed you will feel.

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On Friday, you will be presenting a new monologue in your acting class. You have reserved this entire evening to prepare the piece. After running it a few times, you are feeling a little stiff, uncertain and a bit anxious. Thinking some appropriate music might help you connect with the character, you start rummaging through your CDs for that Coldplay album you know you have but can’t ever seem to find. Flash forward to three hours later – you now sit triumphantly in front of your newly organized music collection, arranged alphabetically by genre. Your sense of accomplishment soon begins to fade, though, as you realize that your evening’s energy has been spent and you still don’t have a polished monologue. What now?

Even the most devoted and experienced actor occasionally wrestles with feelings of doubt and fear while working on his or her career or craft. When such disconcerting thoughts surface, the natural human reaction is to restore comfort by avoiding, escaping, repressing or controlling the negative thoughts. That is why, when compared to struggling with the emotional life of a scene, the chore of organizing one’s CD collection suddenly sounds like fun!

Usually, any effort you make to get more organized will have a positive effect on your life. However, the process can also be used as a stalling mechanism that wastes time and energy. I want to illuminate what I call the “dark side” of organizing so you can catch and re-direct yourself if you start gravitating towards organizing projects for misguided reasons.

PERFECTIONISM

Self-sabotaging thoughts – a hallmark of many performers – can create a feeling of internal, emotional chaos. Sometimes people attempt to “fix” this internal chaos by tackling any evidence of external chaos. They jump on an organizing treadmill, arranging and re-arranging their spaces and stuff, hoping that a sense of order and peace in their environment will eventually transfer to their emotional state. It usually won’t. While an orderly environment can certainly clear literal and metaphorical space for one to attend to deeper issues, significant emotional repair always comes from the inside out.

When you are starting an organizing project, make sure you are doing it to fix external problems. If you want to re-do your closet because you hate the fact that your clothes are crammed together and you can never find the mate to any shoe, organizing will definitely help you eliminate those frustrations. But what if you are dismantling your closet at 9 p.m. with the hope that if your audition wardrobe is better organized you will perform more confidently in the room tomorrow? In that case, organizing will do little to ease your nervousness and worry.

Perfectionism is another pitfall to be wary of. Too many people equate “getting organized” with “achieving perfection.” They believe that once things are perfect, they will have control. Then, once they are “in control” of their life, they will finally feel courageous enough to take action toward their goals. Meanwhile, they endlessly tinker and tweak systems and materials in search of the perfect planner or filing system, the ideal headshot and resume layout, the best database or tote bag.

I encourage you to embrace the notion that “good enough” can actually be good enough. By forcing yourself to take action toward your goals even without having a feeling of complete certainty, you will become more accustomed to making adjustments as you are moving along.

PROCRASTINATION

Perfectionism is merely one head of the ugly Hydra that is procrastination.

Procrastination, in any form, is about creating justifications for not taking those actions which make us feel anxious. Since organizing is a perennial task on many to-do lists and it is considered a worthwhile activity, it is often used for the purpose of procrastinating. “I can’t send out a mailing until I re-categorize and change the font on my target list spreadsheet.” “Before I do any drop-offs this season I have to assemble a headshot file bin for the car.” Hiding out in this mode of constant preparation can feel very safe; the whir of risk-free activity replaces genuine productivity and represses negative emotions.

Another way organizing reveals itself as procrastination is with knowledge gathering. If you find yourself postponing starting a project or choosing a photographer or auditioning for a theatre company until you have done exhaustive research on every available possibility and translated your notes into colorful graphs, you have probably gone past organizing to out-right stalling.

Most of us yearn for the comfort of control and knowledge – we attend seminars, try to get organized and seek out advice. Yet organizing cannot give you control over your life. It can only help you remain flexible enough to meet the changes and challenges that life brings. Avoidance of the “dark side” of organizing requires having faith in yourself – faith that who you are and what you know and what you have at this very moment in time is good enough to power your next step forward.

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The cast party that you hosted at your apartment was a smash. Everyone had fun and, thankfully, no one opened the closet in your office where you hid the mounds of papers that usually live in stacks encircling your desk. In fact, with all of those ubiquitous piles out of sight, your office looks rather spacious and inviting. Sadly, your little filing cabinet is already stuffed to the gills so you have resigned yourself to a life of maneuvering over and around the abundance of paper. What now?

Keeping track of paper is an unavoidable requirement of being an actor. Breakdowns, sides, scripts, contact sheets and contracts are just some of the important documents that regularly flow in and out of your life. Not being able to quickly locate the information you need when you need it can be a small but stress-inducing irritant that may, over time, erode your enthusiasm for the business of show business.

Creating a simple, accessible storage system for your paperwork is a must. Once your files are organized, you will have a valuable tool that can be adapted to suit your needs for the rest of your life.

FILING VS. PILING

Folks are, by nature, either filers or pilers. That said, I suspect some of you true filers are currently piling because your cabinet or bins are completely dysfunctional – with drawers that don’t open properly, papers packed tighter that sardines, and illegible tabs (if any at all). Under those circumstances, it’s understandable to consider file cabinets “places where paper goes to die.”

The purpose of a file cabinet or plastic file bin or cardboard file box is not only to store papers but also to enable rapid retrieval of them. Hanging files should actually hang and slide with ease so the containers seem roomy rather than resistant. Tabs should clearly guide you to what you are looking for.

Rather than arranging all of your files alphabetically, I suggest organizing them by categories. Each file drawer (or bin or box) that you have should be assigned a single, broad category. At the very least, you need two drawers, one labeled “household/personal” and one labeled “career.” If you have a four-drawer file cabinet, label the drawers from top to bottom: “household,” “career,” “personal,” and “archive.”

Inside each drawer, the main category is divided into sub-categories with the use of colored tabs. A typical “household” drawer will contain sections for finance/bills (green tabs), health (blue tabs), auto (red tabs), and general (yellow tabs). That way, if you are looking for your car insurance paperwork, rather than searching through all of your files, you only need to look through one section of one drawer.

I recommend using hanging files to store your papers. Manila folders, when used alone, tend to slip down amongst one another. Some folks place each manila folder into a hanging folder but I find that choice creates redundancy, adds bulk, and obscures tabs. Every so often, you might use a manila folder to sub-divide the paperwork within a single hanging file.

I am not a fan of using colored files because they require a true commitment in order to avoid causing visual clutter. For example, if you are using blue folders for your acting paperwork and you need to add a new folder to the acting category but you are out of blue folders then you must get more blue ones! Substituting other colors will ruin the visual system. A cheaper, better choice is to select a single color for all of your hanging files. Olive green folders provide a perfectly plain background that enhances the effectiveness of brightly colored tabs.

Colored tabs can be created in two equally effective ways. If you want to print them with a label maker, then you’ll need to keep an assortment of colored plastic tabs on hand. The cheaper method utilizes the clear plastic tabs provided with the olive green hanging files. Use vivid highlighters to manually color the paper inserts and then label each one by hand. Instead of staggering your tabs, align them in a single row either along the far left or far right side of the hanging files. A single row of tabs enables you to flip through them quickly without missing any and to add new files without disrupting the pattern.

FEEDING AND WEEDING

Files need regular feeding and weeding. Annual weeding (archiving or purging older papers) makes monthly feeding (placing papers into the files) much easier. In January or after tax season are good times to weed your files – keeping current, relevant papers in the drawer and moving archival paperwork into deeper storage.

In your home office, have a container labeled “to-be-filed” where you can temporarily toss such papers. Then, once a month, schedule time to empty that container. Regular feeding requires you to visit your files and remind yourself of what’s actually in them. The more you visit your files the less you’ll worry that storing papers “out of sight” keeps valuable information “out of mind.”

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This is the fourth year you’ve spent in your apartment, and it just doesn’t feel good anymore. The office you set up in the spare room has devolved into a storage area because you work in your brightly lit dining room most of the time. As your career has grown, paperwork generated by the increased activity has filled your file boxes and overflowed into piles and stacks you must maneuver around. Your home, which seemed to have ample room when you moved in, has become stifling. What now?

Most actors, especially at the start of their careers, live in very small spaces. Whether you have a house, an apartment, or merely a room to call your own, your habitat should not be undermining your efforts to reach the next level in your lifestyle and your career. As you evolve, your surroundings should also change to accurately reflect and fully support your life.

Often, the root cause of an organizational problem is that your life and the configuration of your home don’t match. Every year or two, it is important to step back and examine the layout of your living environment to make sure you haven’t become spatially stuck.

Problem: You are forgetting your home is an important tool.

Unless you are already living the life of your dreams, think of your abode as a tool to help you get where you want to go. The more your current home enables and encourages you to work on and succeed in your pursuits, the quicker you will be able to move into a bigger, better space. I am not advocating that your environment be completely utilitarian. I am suggesting you identify frustrations that can be alleviated with reprioritizations of space. If your closet is minuscule and you hate that your audition wardrobe always has wrinkles from being crushed, you might consider temporarily putting some of your books or memorabilia into deeper storage—maybe under your bed—and letting go of one of your bookcases to make room for an extra clothing rack.

Problem: You are taking a traditional approach.

It is completely natural and logical to set up your living space according to tradition: “A dining room must have a dining table, and the coat closet is for storing coats.” I, however, am an advocate of nontraditional use of space. Years ago, when we were living in a one-bedroom apartment, we made the bedroom into an office and put our bed in the living room. Our friends joked about it, but we knew that the office was the engine of our lives, and sticking it in a cramped corner of the living room would never have worked for us. Let yourself think outside the norm: Turn a utility closet into a media library, or a dining room buffet into a headshot mailing center.

Problem: You are living in the future.

A peaceful, productive dwelling is a balanced one, with room to work and relax. A balanced dwelling is one that supports your current life—not your ideal life, not the life you expect to have in a few years, but the life you have right now. Eventually you will be hosting formal dinner parties and keeping a cozy room for overnight guests. But if that is not your current reality, perhaps there is a better use for the space taken up by your large dining room table or spare queen-size bed. Carefully consider the items you are holding on to because you may “need them/use them/have a place to put them someday.” Make sure they are not taking up a disproportionate amount of room and impeding the flow of your daily life.

Problem: You are avoiding the space.

When you first moved in, that spare room, loft, or garage seemed ideal for a home office, gym, or crafting area. If, however, the space is too dark, too hot, too cold, too noisy, too cramped, or too isolated, you won’t use it. You will always gravitate to where it feels best to work. Give in to that urge. Create a portable home office so you can work in your bed or outside. Turn your dining room into an edit bay. The happier you are in your environment, the more productive you will be.

Problem: You are ignoring your growth.

In the beginning, you may have been able to manage your budding career with a desk the size of a postage stamp, but is that still working for you? Not giving your career the physical space it requires can stunt its growth. A couple that was fine sharing an office for several years may find that now each needs his or her own space. Perhaps your voiceover career is picking up steam, and now you need a dedicated recording area. When moving to a larger place is not an option, a judicious reconfiguring of your current space is required.

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Staring at the cramped, tangled mass of clothing in your closet, you consider digging in for an outfit. However, with rehearsal starting in less than an hour, you resign yourself to slipping into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from the pile of clean laundry. Then, to avoid un-stacking and re-stacking the dishes in your cabinet just to get out a plate, you simply grab a napkin and eat your breakfast standing over the sink. Finally, with no time left to rummage through your overflowing make-up bag, you rely on a quick application of the “emergency” lipstick in your purse and leave your house looking and feeling much like you did the day before.

Actors live in a constant mode of striving for success. Often, we measure our progress up the ladder in terms of the amount of things we accumulate; if you own more stuff at the end of the year than you did at the beginning, then it must have been a successful year. However, if the constant inflow of new possessions is not balanced by an occasional purging of old ones, then you may find yourself spending more time wrestling with or ignoring your belongings than actually using and enjoying them.

Taking time to weed through your stuff is especially relevant during and after the “accumulation bonanza” of the December holidays. I promise that your efforts to pare-down will be rewarded because I truly believe that you will actually have more once you have less.

MORE VS. LESS

Let’s say your kitchen cabinet is jam-packed with cups. Maybe forty mugs are wedged in there like a ceramic house of cards. If that’s the case, of the forty, you are probably using and re-using the same two cups that can be placed right at the front of the shelf without disturbing the delicate balance of the other thirty-eight. Now, what if you cut your cup collection in half, keeping only twenty mugs that can be stored in your cupboard with room to spare? Instead of using only two cups out of forty (5%) you would have easy access to twenty cups out of twenty (100%). Although you’ll own fewer cups altogether, you will actually have gained the use and enjoyment of eighteen more cups. (I know, some would still say you lost twenty cups. But is purging something you weren’t utilizing really a loss?)

This concept of less being more is certainly applicable to most actors’ wardrobes. Between street clothes, audition clothes, event clothes, my-ideal-weight clothes and costume pieces, most actors have never met a closet they couldn’t fill. Yet when clothes are crushed together on a rod or awkwardly stacked on shelves, the natural tendency is to avoid them. Often people find themselves wearing and washing the same small selection of clothes – usually about 20% of their wardrobe. These clothes never return to the cramped closet or stuffed drawers; they remain in easy reach (usually draped over a chair or a treadmill in the bedroom.) However, once a closet is thoroughly purged and organized so that the clothing becomes accessible and visually appealing, the owner is able to take full advantage of 100% of the wardrobe he or she retains.

KEEP VS. RELEASE

Purging is the process of deciding what you need/want to keep and what you need/want to release (a.k.a. donate, recycle or throw away). When evaluating your possessions, first look for items that are past their prime: broken, stained, missing parts, duplicates, outdated, never used. Once those types of items are eliminated, you will be left with the items that you deem “good.”

This is the point at which you might get stuck. A common refrain I hear is: “I can’t get rid of any more of these because they are all equally good.” When the group of things you are evaluating all seem equal – equally good or equally valuable, etc. – that just means it is time to change the criteria you are using to make your judgments. If a group of items are all “good” then you can no longer use “good” as the criteria for making the choice. You must change the criteria and ask yourself a new question: Which of these are most useful – or most comfortable or most versatile or make you happiest? If you have an over-abundance of books but room enough in your home for only two bookcases, the key to reaching your goal of paring down your collection to fit in the available space is to change your evaluation criteria every time you feel yourself getting stuck in the I-like-all-of-these-books-equally trap.

If the amount of your cups or clothing or activities becomes overwhelming, if you start to loose track of what you own, then you know the “more” you are surrounded by is becoming less and less… less helpful, less enjoyable, less valuable. You will use more – a greater percentage – of what you have if you reduce the quantity to a satisfying yet manageable amount.

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After three years, this is the last night you will spend in your studio apartment. Tomorrow, you will be the happy occupant of a one bedroom condo. Your excitement, however, is tempered by the fact that you are surrounded by mounds of boxes, packing supplies and possessions and you are quickly running out of time. As usual, in a last-minute rush, you start shoving your stuff into vaguely labeled boxes, hoping you’ll have time to sort it all out when you get to the new place.

From headshots to residences, one constant in an actor’s world is change. While you may have hit town with just a suitcase and an invitation to crash on your friend’s couch, eventually you will move on (and on and on.) As your natural human desire to have plenty of space competes with your natural human desire to fill all the space you have, moving your belongings usually becomes a bigger hassle each time you have to do it.

Even if you are being pushed out, moving into a different environment always represents the start of a new chapter in your life. I want to suggest an approach to the task that takes advantage of this opportunity to create organization and embrace transformation.

URGING PURGING

Most people think of moves in two stages: packing and unpacking. However, purging your possessions is a third, equally important stage that should, if possible, be done before packing. After all, why pay (in time, energy and money) to haul stuff around that you don’t want or need?

Purging encourages you to ponder the type of new life you want to have in your new home. Ask yourself which of your belongings will help you create that life and which will not. Though I am a fan of keeping mementos that remind you of your history, you want to avoid living in a stagnant environment that merely reflects who you once were.

The purging process has two common stumbling blocks: trash and gifts. Some folks hate the idea of throwing something in the trash because they equate it with labeling that item as “unworthy” or “unwanted” and condemning the item to a horrible fate. How can one possibly do that to stuff that was once liked or useful or a gift? Try to consider the act of purging as the act of releasing an item back into the world to find its next home. After all, you really have no idea how your “trash” will be used or recycled in the future; the desk I am sitting at right now was once riding in a dumpster across a college campus.

What about when you love the giver but hate the gift? Even if you don’t like, want or need an item you might feel guilty about releasing anything that was given to you. Yet I believe that, in every exchange, the “gift” you are given is not the object but the intention of the giver. The givers are giving (one hopes) because they want you to be happy, they want you to feel and remember their love. The object is a token of that love, not the love itself. Releasing the object does not diminish the love that was given to you. If an item doesn’t lift your spirits when you see it, then keeping it actually goes against the true intention of the giver.

ATTACKING PACKING

The more you purge, the less you’ll have to pack. The better you pack, the easier you can unpack.

My simple system is based on a traffic light. As you pack an area (kitchen, desk, etc.) your items will fall into one of three categories: Green for “love it/need it/use it all the time,” Yellow for “like it/want it/use it occasionally,” and Red for “on-the-fence-about-keeping.” Each box should hold items in only one color category. As you fill each box, label it on the outside with the contents’ room and category color: “Bedroom / Green.” The Yellow and Red boxes need more detailed labeling as you will be opening these boxes gradually. You can either list the contents directly on the box, or you can assign the box a number and, on a master pad of paper, list each box’s number and contents.

Once in your new home, open all of the green boxes first, as those boxes contain everything you need for daily living. Then, as you have time, open the yellow boxes and integrate those items into your environment. Any unpacked red boxes that are still sitting around after six months or more, indicate that those are items you can probably live without.

Though moving can be stressful, it can also be an opportunity to get out of your rut and reinvent yourself a bit. Try unpacking slower than usual. Live in your new, empty space for awhile and give yourself time to make clear, conscious, satisfying choices about what you want to bring into it.

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