A proven strategy for maintaining longevity in your business, and in life, is measured by one’s willingness to “go the extra mile”. Research has consistently shown that people (clients, customers, anybody) tend to incorporate hard-to-quantify components into their decision making.

An important decision may come down to intangible qualities such as the likability of a person, or perhaps having some arbitrary connection based on a hobby, or movie, or maybe having friend in common. These intangible benefits can often “seal the deal” in both a metaphorical and a literal sense.

Unknown variables are out of our control, but there is one important personality trait that each of us can intentionally improve, and that is our ability to “go the extra mile”. If you develop the trait of always going the extra mile, it can make the difference between having a profitable business or struggling to survive.

How does a person learn to “go the extra mile”? A wise person once shared this process with us and now we’re going to pass it along to you.

The process begins with intentionality. Start by taking a thought and then think it fully through so that you reach a decision. Once you have your decision, take action to turn that decision into a reality. If you continually take action based on intentional decisions, you’ll begin to form a habit. Finally, once others start to notice your habit, you’ll realize that you’ve just developed a character trait.

The simple version looks like this:

Thought > Decision > Action > Habit > Character

When people know you’re a person who will go the extra mile on their behalf, you will suddenly become known as a dependable person. Dependable people are invaluable in business, since it provides extra assurance that the job will be done right, the first time.

Professional athletes will tell you that when an action is repeated frequently enough, it becomes second nature. As it is in sports, so it is in business. A person who has repeated a winning action often enough has that action ingrained in them, so that it becomes second nature. This allows the individual to transfer the energy that had been used to repeat a task, diverting it elsewhere to further benefit the end result. We’ll call this step “becoming habitual” about an action or activity.

When you become known for “going the extra mile” in all you do, your reputation will precede you and, as a result, business will find you. Relationships will find you. In addition to helping others find you, by going the extra mile in all you do, you will find life-long satisfaction in the profess of becoming the best you can be.

Engage the benefit of always “going the extra mile.” When your company has this as an element in your business strategy, you’ll see that “it” factor will consistently drive success and satisfaction your way.

Today I’m going to show you how to use Adobe Audition to create a seamless music track customized to whatever length you want.

Before I discovered the technique I’m about to show you, I used to waste a lot of time trying to get a seamless loop of music: I’d lay the music track in the time line, cut it in half, drag the ending to the end of the video, then drag the left side back to the cut, add a cross dissolve and hope it sounded seamless.  If not, I would play around with it until it worked. All of that process took a lot of guesswork and time. Thankfully, there’s a much easier way.

In this example, it’s worth pointing out that I subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud so my versions of Premiere Pro and Adobe Audition are up to date.

In the video embedded above, I have a talking-head segment that is 3:49 long, but my music cut is only two minutes thirteen second. If I played the existing music track under that video clip, the music would stop well before the video did, and that’s distracting to the person viewing the video. Let’s make our audio track match the length of our video clip  

First, determine the length of your project.  In my case, my project 3:49 so that’s the length of time I need my music to be but the track I have is only 2:13.  So let’s make a seamless loop timed to 3:49. Next, go to “Edit” and scroll to “Edit in Adobe Audition” and click “Sequence.”  Next, name it what you want.  I’ll name this “Loop Track” then click “OK.”  That opens Adobe Audition and imports the audio tracks from your Premier Pro project.

Next, I’ll create a new multitrack session.  So, go to “file > new > multitrack session” and click.  I’ll name it “music loop track” and click “ok.”  Next, in the “files” section, find the music track and drag it into track one of the multitrack session.  Next, go to the “properties” tab on the left side.  If it’s not visible, go to “Windows” and click “properties.  In the “properties” window is “Remix.”  Click “enable remix” and that will take a few seconds to remix the track.  Now we create the magic.

Here you’re going to change the target duration to whatever you want the new length of your music track to be.  My project is 3:49 minutes long so I will change the duration of the music track to 3:49.  Next, click enter and it will seamlessly loop the track to your desired length.   To see where audition made the cuts, you can zoom in to see the little razor lines.  Beautiful.

Next go to “file > export > export to Adobe Premiere Pro”. Click “export” and next it will open your project, where you will click “ok” for a new audio track and it will bring your seamless, looped audio track into the project for your use.  How easy and convenient is that?!

By the way, if you have other projects you are working on an you want to use the same music track, you can leave Adobe Audition open and change the duration time to meet the needs of the new project.  So there you have it.  I hope this tutorial has been helpful.  Please visit our website to see the type of work we do.  Thanks for watching.  

This blog will offer a time-management tip that I picked up many years ago which has transformed my most arduous and foreboding tasks into manageable segments and beacons of accomplishment.

How is it that some people can accomplish mounds of meaningful work when others seem to procrastinate themselves into a depression? As a partner in a video production company, I know that when we embark on complex projects, it is easy to get overwhelmed by the details. This is likely the case for many people reading this blog post as well.

The solution to many time-management problems is to create a proper To-Do List. 

The Power of Writing Things Down

My To-Do lists often begin as simple streams of consciousness that are then put to paper or the computer screen, itemizing things that must get done. These actions may be small and relatively unimportant, or they may be major events to accomplish a larger, specific goal.

By documenting your stream of consciousness in writing, you’ll be able to better visualize your tasks and goals. It’s unrealistic to think that you’ll remember everything you need to do, so keep this list as a working document, and freely add to it when other items or thoughts come to mind.

Your First List

To start out, and to give you a manageable starting point, begin with a list of the items that you hope accomplish within a single day or two.

Once you have this “to-do-list-in-progress” document, you are ready to get into the organizational mode. We’ll be using a numbering and lettering system to help you.

First, review your list to get a “lay of the land,” and acquire an overview of everything that you have annotated. This may inspire a few more line items and help formulate “next steps.”

Next, look over your list and identify the “important-but-easy” tasks that you can accomplish relatively quickly. Assign these important-but-easy tasks with the letter “A.” For any “not-as-important-but-easy“ tasks, assign the letter “B.” Continue down your list until all the easy tasks are assigned a letter.

Optionally, you can choose to further prioritize these simple tasks by assigning a number beside the letter. “A1” would be the most important-but-easy task that you have to do, and so forth.

Finally, identify any “important-and-high-priority” tasks for the day and assign them numbers: #1 is the most important task, #2 is the second most important, etc. These tasks that are given a number may not be easy and they’ll likely take longer than the tasks you assigned a letter.

Reviewing Your List

As you review your list, you may realize that relatively simple tasks have stolen much of your valuable time in the past, which prevented you from working on the really important stuff. This technique should help put an end to that.

As you begin working with this system, you will quickly come to understand how many of these big projects you can realistically tackle in an 8, 9, or 10 hour day. As a rule of thumb, I find that I can realistically accomplish around seven or eight of these high priority tasks in a given 8 hour day.

It can be demoralizing when your daily expectations are set beyond what you can realistically achieve. This does you no good and will often give you a bad attitude which will slow the entire progress of every item on your list.

One other thought: if you find that you have far more “filler tasks” in a given day than you can accommodate, try amassing several “filler tasks” together and make them collectively another higher priority item.

As you become comfortable with the system, you may soon discover that you are actually accomplishing more than you ever thought you could. In reflection, you will come to realize how majoring in the minors has cost you dearly in the past.

As an author of several books, a broadcaster and videographer, I can tell you from experience that orchestrating your days in the manner outlined will allow you to accomplish your dreams, giving them the priority that they deserve.