Time Management for Musicians
What is the MOST important factor to consider when managing your time?
Making sure that you spend most of your time making music, right?
Of course, you also want to make music full-time. So you do have to fit in all the business and entrepreneurial stuff that turns your music into your career.
Easier said than done.
As a Musicpreneur, it is easy to roll out of bed at 7 a.m., go right to your computer and work through to 10 or 11 at night. What’s worse is getting stuck in a rut of busy work and failing to spend any time on music, which is why you are doing this in the first place!
Here are some principles to keep in mind that will help you make smart decisions about your time:
Time is more valuable than money.
Think about it. No matter how rich you get there is ALWAYS more money to be had. But there is no amount of money in the world that will give you a twenty-five hour day. Time is a limited resource and you only have so much of it.
People will value your time more when you do.
When you respond to emails and social media messages immediately, people will take your time for granted.
But… if you check email and social media in batches at predetermined times, you’ll find that nothing is so urgent that it can’t wait for a couple of hours. After all, you’re not an ER Doctor!
The benefits of batching your communications are threefold:
- You’ll save time by not switching between tasks so often.
- You’ll avoid many-a-rabbit-hole.
- People will respect your time more.
Give it a try!
Productivity is not about doing the most things. It’s about doing the right things.
My never-ending, always-growing “to-do” list used to torment me. I’d work at it for 16 hours a day and whenever some new idea, or strategy would come my way, I’d add it to the list.
I spent so much time and energy working that I wasn’t able to focus or be fully present for my work. So I would pick the easy tasks, which ended up being mostly busy work. Then I would end up spending all that time working nonstop and not get anything valuable done.
That was not helping my career at all. In fact it led to complete burnout which almost made me give up altogether.
What I realized is that that getting thirteen things checked off my “to-do” list wasn’t very useful. It’s MUCH more effective to pick four or five things that need to get done each day and focus on them.
Limitations force creativity.
Set your work schedule and STICK TO IT. Make sure to account for your personal life, music making time, and sleep. And with whatever time remains in the day decide how much of it you will allot to building your business.
Limiting your working time will force you to prioritize. It will force you to look critically at what actually needs to get done. Then you can focus on what’s going to move the needle forward, and eliminate everything else.
Make time to live life.
I alluded to this already, but it’s worth repeating.
Take a couple days off per week if you can (weekends aren’t just for clock-punchers). Don’t work overtime. Set up an “away message” in your email so that anyone who contacts you on your days off will know that you’ll get back to them later.
Don’t ever forget that work revolves around life, not the other way around.
Eliminate Distractions.
Turn off ALL the notifications on your cell phone. Check your messages when YOU decide to, not when your phone tells you to. In fact, go ahead and put your phone on airplane mode when you’re working.
While you’re at it put some “parental controls” on social media so that you’ll get cut off once your daily allotment is used up. Too often, musicians waste their music-making time arguing about politics on Facebook. If you REALLY want to make a difference write a song about it.
Prioritize.
Remember earlier when I said it’s best to pick 4 or 5 things to focus on each day?
Well, I use a very high-tech system of stickers and a wall calendar to track and reward myself for doing my daily walk(1), meditation(2), email(3), legacy project(4), and music-making time(5).
Set SMART goals.
By that I mean Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and with Timelines.
If you want to dive deep into that topic, check out “Smarter, Faster, Better” by Charles Duhigg.
And finally, PLAN!
It should go without saying. But more often it goes without doing.
Instead of waking up each morning and picking at your “to-do” list, sit down once a week to schedule your working hours for the next week AND decide what you are going to do with that time.
That will help you avoid false urgencies, and keep you focused on the tasks that matter most.
Hopefully I’ve given you enough principles to patch together a time-management system that keeps you moving forward!
Time management is SO important that I have dedicated an entire module to it in the Musicpreneur Apprentice Program. So if you’d like to dive deeper AND have my personal support as well an entire community of accountabilibudies, we’d love to have you join us!
