Meet Ethan Harbour

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ethan Harbour a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ethan, thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout

When I first started out in the film music industry, everyone used to say, “say yes to everything”, so for years I juggled school, working for other composers, and my own projects, performing quite the balancing act, but eventually burnout was unavoidable. After getting some time to rest and recover, I had some takeaways from the experience. The most important being that burnout is sadly sometimes necessary to achieve your goals, but you have to be careful not to forget yourself in the midst of the work. I would never have gotten to where I am without adopting the “say yes to everything” mentality, but at the same time, I realized the need to evaluate the work I was doing, to make sure it was propelling me forward. There is no point in continuing to say “yes” to a dead end. The other big takeaway was that now that I knew where my burnout level was, I could better plan my work to be able to sustain myself. Obviously, the energy in the human body is limited, and one of the problems with burnout is the time it takes to recover. If an opportunity comes along in the midst of necessary recovery, you might miss it.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

As a film composer, I write music for movies and TV, aiming to capture the emotions of the characters to help the audience feel and connect with their stories. I love the way film music leads you to new sounds, instruments, and musical ideas you never would have dreamed of, in pursuit of creating sounds for new worlds and stories. Some recent highlights include contributing drumline arrangements to season 2 of Severance on Apple TV, as well as scoring an independent feature, “Stronger Than Pride”, coming soon.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Effort, resilience, and passion have all been incredibly impactful in my journey. So much of developing a skill is literally just effort and practice. I think people spend a lot of time thinking about what to do, afraid to fail. Yet, just trying things, failing, and correcting can be so much more productive. Now when failure hits, it’s key that you have resilience. Failure is inevitable, and if you’re like me, it will happen A LOT. It’s important not to let it detract you from your overall passion, even if the moment seems insurmountable. And lastly, passion is important because the other two become so much easier when you LOVE what you do,

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

I’ve found a couple things to be highly effective when navigating overwhelming situations. The first, is to be extremely honest and logical about yourself and the situations you find yourself in. It doesn’t do any good to ignore the truth (whether positive or negative). Once you’re able to accept the truth, lay out your options, make a decision, and live with the consequences. If there’s something you can do to change the outcome, then act accordingly, but there’s no point in worrying over something you can’t take an action to fix. The second thing I’ve realized, is that so much of my feeling overwhelmed can be solved by planning. More and more, I’ve found that anxiety comes from not knowing if I have time to get something done, as opposed to the actual task itself. Sitting down for thirty minutes and coming up with a plan of attack, gives me so much relief because I know how much time is allotted, and I feel free to just focus on the work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ethanharbour.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethan_harbour/. (@ethan_harbour)