Wu Daozi - Chinese Sage and Painter

One of the great secrets to success, handed down through time from the earliest sages and philosophers, is the power of three. It is one of those “magic” numbers that we can naturally focus on with ease.

As an example, if you’re ever presenting or teaching and you want your audience to remember what you talked about, give them just three points to focus on. Not two or four or ten – just three. Psychotactics describes it like this:

The brain finds it relatively easy to grasp threes — elements, colours and fonts. Push that marginally up to four and the brain gets confused about where to look and what to do, and sends the eye scampering like a frisky puppy on a sunny day.

It works, and it can also work with helping you to be a success in your art career. How so? Success comes from big dreams and big focused effort. The ability of our minds to easily grasp the concept of three things makes it much simpler to achieve the focus needed in our efforts.

Try this – focus on three primary words to build your art career in 2010. As an example, I’ve chosen:

1. Technique – Developing and mastering my technique by practicing my craft and learning from experts and mentors .
2. Marketing – Telling the world about my art.
3. Community – Developing and nurturing a group of fellow artists, art lovers, and arts professionals who make me feel good about being an artist.

Those were my choices but yours will probably be different. Think about what is important for you to be successful and write down your three words.

It doesn’t end there! Within each of your three words you can create three focus areas. For example

Technique

• Commit to two hours in my studio, three times a week, every week.
• Enroll in and complete that 2-week workshop with Mr Art Expert
• Buy that stellar set of oil paints in 3 months

Marketing

• Finish my website by March
• Mail out 10 intro letters to galleries every week
• Hold an open studio every month and promote it professionally

Community

• Go to an art-event every week
• Have an artist-date with a fellow artist every week.
• Spend 1 hour, three times per week on my facebook artist’s page, focusing on connecting with fans.

Get the spirit? Following this principle of the power of 3 will help you to be very clear and focused on the important things you need to get done to be successful. Try it and you’ll be literally inviting all those ancient sages to come and help you with your success!

So – what will be your three words?