Life By Design

How To Kill Procrastination, Balance Art & Business, and Have More Free Time Than You Can Handle

A longform essay by Tommy Darker.

Intro

It’s 9.00. I’m sitting in front of my laptop, trying to scribble a few words in an email. I’m not inspired. Even though I woke up at 6.00, I still haven’t done anything. Let’s go to the kitchen to make a coffee, I mutter. I go to the kitchen. I prepare some mocha with fresh ground colombian beans. Tastes good.

It’s 9.30. Words still won’t come out. Trying to figure out why. Probably because my campaign didn’t get any new supporters yesterday. I’m scared. What if it fails? The thought paralyses me. Snap out of it, I mutter.

It’s 10.00. I take a walk. I’m just a musician, I think. Why do I have to be sending emails for people to support my crowdfunding campaign? Why should I be begging? Gosh, I wanna go busking, it’s such a nice weather today. But that’s an easy thing to do, I can busk every day. I have to send these emails, or I won’t be able to fund the next project, I mutter.

Loud music, pints of beer coming towards us, laughter. We’re enjoying our time in a local pub in Brockley, London, UK. Five musicians around the same table. Awesomeness.

“So, how did the campaign go, man?”, Jeremy asks.

“Not bad, I hit the £3.000 goal 2 hours before the campaign deadline! So relieved it’s over. This month felt like ages.”

“Awesome! You rich. Beers on you, then? Haha.”

“Yeah, right…” I hope they can sense the sarcasm in my voice.

“Man, I so admire your courage to keep up”, Jeremy continues. “This business thing is driving me crazy — I’m not the only one, I think. You inspire me to keep going.”

If I inspire others, then what about the truly inspiring people, like Amanda Palmer and Trent Reznor? Gosh, did I even do anything right during this campaign? I barely managed to get through. And it was not even a high goal to reach. Some people make 3K in a day. There must be a better way to do business.

My thoughts get interrupted by Jenny. “So, what are your tips, Mr Successful Kickstarter? How can we do that too? I wanna release an EP, you know?”

Hmmm… Nice one. You got me, Jen. Let’s see how I can sound convincing now. Be desperate every day and bang your head against the wall? No, no. This is ridiculous. Wait till the last moment, so you don’t have much of a choice but work? NOOO. This sounds terrible! Think, Mike, think.

“Hey man,” John intervenes, “It can’t be that difficult. Since you did succeed, there must be a few things you’ve done right. I’m sure we can learn from your experience, since you’ve done something we haven’t. What were the key actions you took, without which your campaign would have failed?”

Shit. Did it take me so long to answer? Was there an awkward silence for minutes? Ok Mike, be a leader. What pops up in your head first?

“I did the work I had to, guys. I sacrificed a few hours of what I enjoy doing the most — music — in order to free some time for the amount of work that had to be done for the campaign to succeed. However, I wasn’t well-organised while doing it. I could have been so much more productive, you know? That caused lots of stress.” I take a big breath before the famous last words.

“So, my takeaways. One: do the work you have to do, even though you might not want to. Two: since you are going to do the work anyway, why not be productive and less stressful instead?”

Did I sound smart? I hear a round of applause. I hope it’s not ironic. What the heck, I feel like I cracked a code anyway. Feels good.

Well done, Tommy, I mutter. Beers on me.

Chapter 1

The Rule Of Thumb That Rules Us All

“If I spend much time on business, how the hell am I supposed to have time to make music? I’m a musician, you know?”

This is a common-phrase you will hear from musicians around the world.

As a global principle, people use a simple rule of thumb: sometimes you have to sacrifice something to gain something else.

You cannot be a great businessman and family man on the same time, they say. You cannot be a great risk-taker in your personal life, while also being a risk-taker in business. You cannot be an adventurous world explorer, while keeping your business thriving. Your life will be left hanging and imbalanced.

If you spend much time mastering a field of knowledge, like the 10.000 hours of practice in Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’, then it makes sense that focusing on one thing will make you better at it, instead of haphazardly taking on two things simultaneously.

With the same approach in mind, you cannot combine two seemingly juxtaposed concepts: art and entrepreneurship. Art is about creating questions, while entrepreneurship is about solving problems, right?

Whether you agree with the aforementioned statements or not, they are all common beliefs which we usually use to organise our lives.

Rules of thumb like this can work great when it comes to making our lives easier. But rules of thumb are created to serve humans, not for humans to serve them. And the latter is what’s happening today.

The world is changing and the music ecosystem is getting reformed.

Labels and managers don’t build careers anymore, now it’s you and your music career. In the modern ecosystem, taking care of both art and business is a need for survival, rather than a fun concept. Simply said: focusing on merely making music and becoming really good at it will take you no-where.

As the Nobel-winning economist, Vernon L. Smith, said:

“An economist who is just an economist will never become a good economist.”

Replace the word ‘economist’ with ‘musician’ and you get my point.

And, by considering this rule of thumb as a hard-and-fast rule, musicians, artists, professionals, and human beings are struggling to live a fulfilling life, to succeed personally and professionally, to make their passion a living, and to discover the world full of possibilities.

For artists and musicians specifically, focusing on art alone — while ignoring the commercial sustainability of it — leads to lack of incoming resources to create more art. Which, in succession, leads to desperate choices, such as getting a crappy job you’ll never love, and wasting loads of time on unfulfilling activities — because you need to survive somehow, you know?

Unfulfilling life, misery, lack of freedom. Sounds about right.

Why? All because we insist on following the rule of thumb: you can’t be good in something, unless you sacrifice everything else. In our case, musicians sacrifice structuring a sustainable business, because they are ‘supposed to be an artist’, and artists would rather work in Starbucks — because they need to survive somehow, you know? — than take themselves seriously as a value-providing business.

Artists voluntarily choose to tune out the necessity of the symbiotic relationship between art and business.

“I have no time to make both art and business” is the number one reason why a musician might take a part-time job that she hates, in order to survive and pursue her art.

Did I say ‘reason’? I meant ‘excuse’.

The world is changing, though, and commands us to revisit this anachronism.

Let’s see how this might work out well.

Chapter 2

The ‘Renewable’ Money

Let’s take a moment to do the math.

We’ll use the ‘day’ as a main metric of our study. Each day has 24 hours. 8 of them for sleep. Because, you know… sleep is important. 2 of them for lunch and dinner (except if you’re Mediterranean — then add at least 2 more hours). Ok, cool. We got the basic needs covered.

24–10 = 14 hours to live, love, create, and be meaningful. Let’s put this aside for now.

Now, here’s an improbable scenario: if somebody gave you $50.400 every day, allowing you to spend that money wherever you wanted, how would you choose to spend them? He gives you only one rule: you cannot pass the money to someone else, and you cannot invest the money or save it for the next day; you can only spend it. For instance, you can buy gifts for people with that money, but you cannot give the money directly to people. By the next morning, no matter how much you’ve spent, the account balance would go back to $50.400.

Would you choose to spend that money? If yes, how would you spend that money? Wouldn’t you try to make the most out of your ‘renewable’ dollars?

Of course you would. Who wouldn’t. Right?

No. Nobody does. Most people don’t spend that ‘money’ wisely.

50.400 are the seconds in 14 hours. If you sleep for 8 hours and eat for 2 hours, you got 14 hours left (or 50.400 seconds) every day, which you cannot pass on or store somewhere. You can only spend them. The next morning, you still have 50.400 seconds left in your lifetime’s account.

Most creatives and artists do not spend their time wisely. If you have no interest in a 9–5 day-job routine, how would you spend that time to create your own ideal lifestyle?

My speculation:

• Making art (what you’re mostly passionate about)
• Socialising (being a human, connecting, interacting, discussing)
• Structuring a business (to survive and maximise the value you provide)
• Living randomly (because, hey, life is not only about having control)

You have these activities. You also have 14 boxes, 1 hour each. You job is to allocate the activities to the boxes, so you can create your ideal lifestyle.

How would you allocate them?

Mine looks like this:

The point is, there are no excuses, such as ‘there’s not enough time during the day’. We don’t use our time properly. Or, even worse, we do allocate time properly, we make plans and schedules, but we just don’t follow that ideal lifestyle we’ve designed for ourselves. We procrastinate instead.

Most of us, instead of living a life by design, we live a life by default.

I know: following a schedule and being disciplined for a long time can be very daunting. That’s why most people live a life that others chose for them. They give up their freedom of creating a dream lifestyle and allocating their time accordingly, to delegate these decisions to their employers, in order to have survival budget available.

Artists are rebels, though. Right?

You wouldn’t expect for an artist or creative to give up that easily. Because that’s what art is about: not compromising, not conforming, but questioning everything and experimenting.Yet, for these questions and experiments and art-making and love-making to go on, at least a survival budget is necessary. How do you do that?

Each artist needs to learn how to maximise the value they provide and conduct commerce. Or, in short, build a business around their art.

Oh, and yeah. There are thousands of artists doing this right now. They make a living from their art, despite not being rich or famous. That’s why you’ll never hear about them in the press.

The only difference between most people and them? They have the discipline to follow routines.

Yes. No harder work, no sacrifice of their art, just smarter and more productive work. How do I know? I’m one of them.

I challenge you to spend 30 seconds and Google ‘habits/routines of successful people’ and see what comes up. It seems, whether an artist or entrepreneur or family-man, an essential element of success is to:

1. Create habits that serve your lifestyle
2. Follow them with discipline

Hard to believe? Well, don’t rush to the conclusion till you try it for yourself. Below I will outline some ways on how you can get started today, so you can see for yourself.

If you dare, of course!

Chapter 3

Life By Design

If you did Google what I proposed in the previous chapter, I guess by now you must have spent quite a few minutes browsing articles about successful people and their habits. They look amazing, don’t they?

Hah. You fell in the trap of procrastination again.

But don’t worry, this chapter is all about helping you move from ‘browsing habits’ to ‘action-taking routines’. Because taking action will reduce your urge to get inspired.

As mentioned before, we have plenty of hours available every single day, waiting for us to do the most out of them. They cannot be passed on, they cannot be stored for later — they can only be spent wisely.

The most dazzling insight, to begin with, is this: we have the choice on how to spend them.

If you are reading this essay, you probably belong to a group of people who can survive, have Internet connection, and can exercise their own choices. And this is an eye-opening fact.

You can choose. You can choose to live a life by default or a life by design.

Yes, even living a life by default can be a choice, if exercised sensibly.

An example? You are a musician just starting out, and you write music on your spare time relentlessly; you don’t miss a day. On the same time, you chose to mainly have a part- or full-time job, in order to save money for recordings and musical activities, and build strategic assets for the future. When you work in a coffee shop as a part-time barista, you give up some of your choices and time, in exchange for part-time safety and budget to survive (or create a buffer). This might look like life by default, but it’s really life by design, working as a stepping stone towards your upcoming music career — except if you finally end up becoming the manager of the coffee shop and liking it, giving up music forever!

So, talking about life by design, how will you choose to spend your 50.400 seconds daily? It all has to do with what you consider as your priority.

Pub fact about the word ‘priority’. It is defined as the fact or condition regarded or treated as more important than others. The word appeared in the English language in the 15th century, in singular. It was strictly ‘priority’ for 500 years. In the 20th century, we started talking about ‘priorities’, as if we could bend reality by changing the word. But, really — can we have multiple ‘first’ things?

(This insightful anecdote comes Greg McKeown’s book ‘Essentialism’. Do read it, because it’s brilliant and, once you start creating the routines proposed in this essay, you’ll have plenty of free time to kill.)

Let me propose a routine, which has worked great for me, and might work great for you as well. The point of this proposal is not to create a life by design for you — that would defeat its purpose — but to give you an example and the rationale behind it.

Here is a routine: 3 hours of productive work in the morning, 3 hours of art in the evening, every day, no matter what. It’s all about doing the work, whether inspired or not.

Here are other routine ideas:

• Waking up at 6am every morning.
• Wearing only black/white clothes.
• Having the same breakfast every day.
• Not checking emails and social media in the morning.
• Scheduling the next’s day’s tasks before sleep.
• Meditating.
• Restricting the Internet access after 8pm.
• Documenting the day’s lessons before sleep.
• Drinking 3 glasses of water.
• Exercising for 20 mins daily.

And so on. These are habits that could be part of your lifestyle, if they make sense and serve your purpose. Some of them have been a part of my life for quite a while now. Some of them are hard to follow consistently. Others come automatically.

I noticed that we all have habits we exercise effortlessly in our lives:

• When you brush your teeth, you don’t think about how you will apply power on the teeth’s surface with the brush; you just brush ‘em.
• When you drive, you don’t think about the clutch and how to shift gears; you just drive.
• When you take a shower, you don’t waste time thinking about the order of the body parts you’ll wash; you just enjoy a shower.

Have you noticed that, while conducting the aforementioned activities, you can simultaneously spend time thinking about other stuff?

That’s because they are simple routines you’ve mastered, not occupying brain space. In fact, if mastered, any activity can turn into an effortless routine of automated procedures.

The greatest thing about highly effective routines? Once in place, you stop thinking and making constant, distracting and time-wasting choices.

Instead, you are delegating many of the day’s choices to your own routine, as if it’s your boss. The beautiful realisation: it is done by design, not by default (because an employer commands you to).

Do your start seeing the beauty of routines, if placed strategically in our lives?

Now the question is: what can I, a modern Musicpreneur or music professional, apply today to increase my productivity and get more free time during the day?

Here’s a series of actions that work, which could improve your own lifestyle today:

Embrace restrictions

Decide how many hours per day you’ll devote to work and art creation, block these hours for nothing but these activities, and respect these restrictions religiously. Let’s say, 3 hours of work per day. If you haven’t completed the daily tasks you had in mind, don’t stress; the pending tasks will have to wait till tomorrow. That’s the rule. This way, you’ll start pushing yourself to become more productive, because of the restrictions you’re set.

Make a list of goals

Visualising your goals will make things more tangible and approachable. Make a list of tasks to be accomplished by the end of the month. Make sure you only include the absolutely essential ones. Then start allocating them on your calendar, creating deadlines for each one. If possible, distribute the deadlines evenly throughout the month.

Break down your work

What tasks do you need to complete, in order to accomplish the aforementioned goals? Break each goal down into small, actionable steps. You might need a few sheets of paper for this step. Once you’ve completed the list, start allocating each task to each week. It will help you see the big picture and how feasible/realistic your plans are.

Prepare tomorrow’s schedule before sleep

When you’re tired, your brain discards unnecessary information and gets closer to the ‘survival mode’. It helps you prioritise, because survival is about the absolutely essential. Before sleep, make a list of things you have to do for the next day or days. This way, you’ll wake up with specific tasks in mind, starting the day with nothing but the essentials.

One main task per day

What is the daily priority? Put it in the schedule first, and start your day by working on it. Build the day’s schedule around this main task, including other, of lesser importance activities.

No-information-influx mornings

Don’t check social media and emails when you wake up. Most people do, and this creates an influx of unnecessary information first thing in the morning. You can survive without them, and this will help you focus on your morning routine, which is your most effective time of the day.

Don’t break the chain

Andrew Dubber proposed the numberless calendar as a great way to build a chain, helping you acquire new daily routines. Simply mark an ‘x’ for every day you’ve successfully completed. Once the boxes start filling up, one after another, you’ll feel worse and worse when thinking about breaking that chain. Simple game, big rewards.

Reward yourself

It’s not just about work work work. Have you completed a series of chain pieces (say 5)? Did you complete a long-pending task? Reward yourself by rejoicing something you love. Remember, productive work is all about enjoying life more. Rewards are an essential part of the game, and they will reset your attention and hunger for more.

How does it all sound? Easy? Hard? I would like to hear your perspective in the margins of this paragraph.

Finally, as a gift for your attention so far, I’ve prepared two pocket guides for you, so you can print them out and organise your information/goals/tasks more effectively.

Click on this link to download the Productivity Pocket Guides.

Here you can watch the instructions on how to assemble them. It’s fun!

How do I use these guides and how did I come up with them? In the next chapter, I’ll analyse my own routine and practical examples.

Read on.

Chapter 4

A Personal Challenge

It all started as a silly idea on May the 1st, 2015.

What if I wake up every day at 6am, for 4 weeks, and do only 3 hours of productive work in the morning?

3 days later, I started the project ’30 Days Of Productivity’. Just like that. No time to overthink the details or rationalise the project.

Why did I start it, in the first place?

• I knew that I had to be super-productive from May till August, since September will be abnormally hectic, and pending task will drag all projects — artistic and entrepreneurial — behind. I did not want this to happen.
• It is normal for me to wake up early, around 6 or 7am, but that was not a ‘rule’ or something. I just liked doing it.
• I love creating small projects around my ideas, so I can test them, measure them and share them publicly under a name.

The project fit well in my schedule and plans. So I started it.

As an outline, the project had the following rules

06.00 — Wake up, have breakfast, shower (optional)

07.00 — Start working

(1,5 hours of work, 30 mins break, 1,5 hours of work)

10.30 — Stop working, have an activity arranged (optional)

(2 hours of free time: have a coffee, go for a walk, read a book)

12.30 — Cooking, lunch

14.00 — Free time

(Think, brainstorm, read a book, make music, Internet/chat/Skype, write, have a coffee, have dinner, groom, have a beer, go for a walk etc. Pretty flexible.)

20.00 — No Internet time

22.00 — Sleep

The objectives of the project

• Measure the exact time it takes to complete each task scheduled.
• Record on a dictaphone the daily takeaways/lessons/difficulties/successes at least 3 times a day, record the day’s recap before sleep.
• Record how I spent my free time.
• Follow the 06.00–10.30 schedule religiously. The rest of the day would be quite flexible and I could skip parts of it.
• Apply the ‘No influx of information in the morning’ principle. No emails or social media till I finish work.
• Discover new methods of productivity.

The goals of the project

• Get more productive within a month.
• Create a routine to follow, even after the completion of the project.
• Write down as many takeaways as possible.
• Push my limits on how much work I can get done in 3 hours.
• Create a lifestyle where I can fit music — entrepreneurship — free time in a harmonised and balanced way.
• Publish the results of the experiment publicly in an essay.

So, did it work?

• I did follow the 06.00–10.30 schedule throughout the duration of the project. Not a single day was missed. Some days I even woke up earlier (at 5am).
• I worked for only 3 hours per day. It worked perfect. By the second week, I was way ahead of my deadlines’ schedule. Most of the ‘priority tasks’ had been eliminated.
• Twice I decided that I had to work a bit more (4 productive hours more). That’s because I was in the middle of a campaign and had to talk with people about it. And talking with people cannot always be fixed in a schedule.
• There was no way I could keep the ‘No Internet after 8pm’ concept. It was almost impossible, despite how many times I tried to moderate its use. Better luck next month.
• Four days I decided to spend an hour in the evening answering emails. I reached inbox zero by the end of the project and de-cluttered it.
• Most of the days I was sleeping early, around 10–11pm. Some days I didn’t — either I stayed awake procrastinating online or simply went out for a drink/dinner. That’s cool, since I never skipped my morning wake-up call.
• My free time was not invested optimally. Is it because it was the first time in my life I had so much free time? Still don’t know. I’ll try to make better use of it next month ☺
• I discovered how powerful an effective routine can be.
• I reduced my stress levels and felt in control.
• I found out that walking in the park is something I love doing every day.

Clearly, I overestimated bits of the project, while others worked out perfect. The point is, I did manage to become more productive, create a meaningful routine, get each day’s work done in 3 hours, free up time for all the things I love, and build a lifestyle that can make life enjoyable.

Now, I know you’ve been waiting for this part.

What were the takeaways from the project?

(Written in chronological order.)

• Not checking your email/social media before work can help you skyrocket your productivity. Have a breakfast with no unnecessary information input.
• If you stay focused on the absolutely necessary, you can achieve great productivity.
• The days pass with no stress! This can only be positive. It is fun.
• It feels great to have lots of free time!
• Consistent productivity builds momentum and enthusiasm. It makes me feel it is meaningful to wake up early and do the work. It also helps me believe in my own projects/mission.
• Beat the fear of keeping up. Don’t give yourself another option. Force yourself to follow the sleep/work/free time schedule. It’s the wisest thing to do. Once the first days/weeks pass, you’ll get used to it.
• You’ll be getting more used to the routine and better organised (time-wise, productivity-wise) every day.
• Brainstorm for 30 mins on your spare time and come up with new ideas, using just paper and pen.
• Restrictions and consistency helped me feel confident and complete tasks I was postponing in the past. I’m not afraid of daunting tasks anymore.
• Managing free time is equally important as managing work time.
• Arrange a call right after the end of scheduled work (or go for a walk), so you can stop working. Changing environments is essential.
• If you have to, wake up even earlier to get work done.
• Managing the sleeping schedule is super-important to keep up. If one night you don’t get enough sleep, make sure you recoup it by sleeping in the afternoon or by going to bed early the next day. Hear your body’s signals.
• Having a morning routine is very important for stability and great start without distracting thoughts.
• Coffee might not be a necessary stimulant. Try starting your days without coffee. Use a good breakfast and your excitement as a stimulant.
• After 4 days in the project, I started not having the urge to go online. That’s because there are so many great things offline, that I didn’t need the Internet as a constant stimulant in my life. I wanted to slow down.
• Monitor and observe your energy levels.
• When low on energy, it’s great to complete tasks that are enjoyable, but nevertheless necessary to be done. Next step: recoup energy, take a break.
• Taking a 20 min nap in the afternoon can be vital sometimes, but not a substitute for normal night sleep.
• It’s no worth risking to stay without energy. It’s about planning correctly, managing things in advance and responsibly.
• Being ahead of the deadlines is a positive and encouraging feeling that inspires more productivity.
• Being productive should be a priority, over other unnecessary daily ‘tasks’.
• Once you find your productivity pace, you can start pushing your boundaries bit by bit, adding some more work in the specific 3-hour timeframe.
• Before my productivity project, emails and social media were triggers of excitement. Now they’re just a part of the schedule, to be completed productively — just like all the other tasks. Procrastination is getting killed bit by bit.
• Completing early most of the major tasks of the month is a great sign that your productivity schedule works.
• Strategising and spending time on really important tasks is vital. Work that revolves around mundane tasks is merely bubbling and fooling yourself. When your schedule is filled with mundane tasks, start re-evaluating your work.
• Breaking down a 3-hour task to three 1-hour work sessions per day (instead of three hours of work on the same day) can help monitor the situation, calculate better how much time is needed, and create a time buffer for security. Things are getting less stressful this way.
• Switch off the Internet and all other distractions. Force yourself to sleep. It might be the wisest thing to do sometimes.
• When stressed, look for the reasons that made you feel this way. Spend time solving the problem by the source.
• When stressful whether you can complete all the pending work, write down what’s left to complete by the end of the month. Then, allocate these tasks in your schedule (again). This will reassure that things are feasible, you’re in control, and it will help you eliminate work-related stress.
• The focal point when waking up is to do the work, not sleep some more. Having the day’s tasks next to you can become an effective wake-up call for the day (a ‘call for adventure’).
• The purpose of deadlines is not to cause extra stress, but to motivate and help organise the schedule better. Make sure you’re ahead of them.
• Some tasks might take more time than expected. That’s why it’s good to plan in advance and have a time buffer, so you don’t start stressing about their completion.
• As a rule, try to only do 3 hours of work daily. Any unexpected, extra work should be an exception, not a substitute to the rule.
• Doing extra work is fine, outside the 3-hour work schedule. Things don’t always go as predicted. Getting work done in time will help you be prepared and flexible when unforeseen events occur, calling for extra work.
• Accept and embrace the unpredictability of life. When unexpected events happen, being a perfectionist won’t help. Don’t get angry and emotional.
• A bit of stress can be helpful, actually. It’s an indicator that you’re motivated and ready to get things done. Don’t resend stress, it’s normal.
• When feeling unwilling to get work done (or wake up), remember that it’s all in the brain. You have a choice to make: get things done or procrastinate. Choose to get things done. After a while, it will come effortlessly. It took me 2 weeks to feel this way.
• Once you get used to the routine, you’ll start congratulating your past self for ‘doing the work when you had to’. This is a powerful feeling!
• It’s a great thing to invest time on workload that can be re-used in the future. It’s like building an asset for the future. It might take longer time than expected, but you’ll be actually saving time in the future.
• Make sure you complete the long and ongoing tasks. It will take stress away.
• Completing heavy tasks are small successes, providing motivation for the future. Once a demanding tasks is completed, reward yourself.
• Getting rewarding breaks for things you enjoy is absolutely essential.
• Use the PocketMod guides as a productivity tool.
• Make sure you stay offline. Not being connected is empowering.
• After a while, your body wakes you up in the morning. It gets used to the schedule.
• Once your work schedule is disrupted, for whatever reason, take a step back and find the next steps to stabilise it. Don’t keep up with an unstable schedule.
• Finishing the main workload at 10.30am is great, because it provides a lot of time to monitor and assess the situation, enjoy life and have less stress.
• Results will start coming faster, once you get great work done consistently. This builds momentum and great results don’t happen by luck.
• Here’s an insight for campaign-related projects that involve other humans (like fundraising): they don’t only require a few hours of work per day. They might require you to block a few full days off.
• Campaigns and on-going projects might be more demanding than expected. They require constant real-time interaction with other humans. And humans are unpredictable by nature.
• In your spare time, give yourself a few moments to re-organise, refocus and recreate. It brings everything all back together.
• Documenting your actions (and re-actions) can help a lot. It’s a nice way to see how you felt in the past and avoid mistakes.
• Get breaks. Don’t only focus on doing a lot of work during the day. It will get you tired, and working more will have reverse results. Don’t overwhelm yourself.
• Walking and emptying the mind is a great way to get the creative juice flowing.
• Pending tasks carry stress. If a task goes pending for a long time, make sure you complete it.
• Distribute completed tasks, expectations and small successes strategically throughout the month. That is, manage your deadline distribution.
• In your life, it’s good to have people that respect your routines. Disturbance is no good.
• When the day doesn’t start great — you got your routine disturbed, let’s say — make the conscious choice to see things positively and make them work. Work still needs to get done.
• Having a public audience and sharing your progress will help you get more motivated, because you are accountable to them.
• 30 mins of productivity works great as a motivational force. Try that: instead of a day with 2 tasks of 1,5 hrs each, try 6 tasks of 30 mins of work. Once done, you’ll feel the satisfaction of completing 6 pending tasks, which will skyrocket your willingness to stay productive.
• After 3 weeks of experimentation, I start discovering how to spend my free time optimally.
• My stress levels have dropped — I feel in control, confident and have space/time to let go.
• The project is successful. I still gett impressed about how amazing it feels to finish the day’s work at 10.30am (or earlier)!

All the aforementioned insights came across because I was documenting my thoughts frequently. I’m pretty sure that, hadn’t I documented them the moment they were occurring, I would have missed most of them in the ether of my mind.

Great. Enough with my productivity project.

Time to take the situation in our own hands, shall we? Let’s see what the final chapter has to say.

Chapter 5

Conclusion & Takeaways

That was an interesting journey, but it’s time to put an end. Because, at this very moment, I invite you to start your own quest in the world of productivity.

Productivity presumes action. If you never start, you will never be able to achieve your dream life by design.

Before we wrap up, I would like to make a quick summary of the essay:

It is widely accepted that we need to sacrifice something to gain something else, and that we cannot combine two seemingly juxtaposed concepts. We have to choose: it’s either a family or a successful career, either art or business etc. However, thing are changing and we’d rather start reconsidering the aforementioned rule of thumb. [Chapter 1]

The reality is, this is simply an excuse. There is lots of time available every day, so we can create our own life by design (instead of life by default). We just don’t allocate our time properly and procrastinate a lot. We don’t create routines and don’t discipline ourselves. We’re wasting time, blaming others. [Chapter 2]

Time to change that. Let’s start by realising that we have a choice to make: design our life or live by default? If the former, then setting your priority and routines is absolutely vital, because this way you can automate part of the day and free space/time. By embracing restrictions, breaking down goals and tasks, preparing your schedule in advance, and staying disciplined, but also rewarding yourself when necessary, you can start creating a productive schedule and meaningful life by design. [Chapter 3]

More specifically, there’s a lot we could learn from my own ’30 Days Of Productivity’ project, where I designed specific routines and followed them for a month, religiously. I set objectives and goals, monitored my response, documented what worked and what didn’t, and identified key takeaways. Did the experiment work? YES. By the end of the month, I managed to create a meaningful routine, get more productive and work for only 3 hours a day, building a sustainable lifestyle, reducing my stress levels, and learning a lot along the way. [Chapter 4]

So, what could your next steps be?

Well, I think you don’t really need my help, because you pretty much know what to do already.

There is another person who needs more help than you do.

Remember the story of the guy in the intro of this essay? Yes, the procrastinator that barely completed his crowdfunding campaign. Well, I think it’s time to give him some advice, shall we?

Let’s put together some takeaways, so that he doesn’t rush to his deadlines anymore.

1. There is work we enjoy doing (art) and work we have to do to make things work (business). When we procrastinate, we turn a blind eye to the latter. You know that a meaningful life needs both elements, and being productive can create a balanced life by design for you.
2. In order to become more productive, you’ll have to face your own fears, confront and beat them. Most people won’t, that’s why procrastination is the norm — unfortunately.
3. Unproductive time can have a snowball effect in your life: lots of pending tasks, not meeting deadlines, accumulating stress, not meeting your goals, and, finally, living a miserable life — for no reason! Discipline and productivity can help you avoid all that.
4. Don’t work harder. Design habits that serve your lifestyle and follow them with discipline. Not being ‘busy’ is actually the goal!
5. Take control of your schedule: create restrictions, identify your priority, set your goals, break them down to simple tasks, create deadlines, and allocate the tasks throughout the month.
6. Make sure you enjoy your free time. Control what you can control, but don’t go further.
7. Being productive should be a priority over all the other seemingly ‘necessary daily tasks’. Time to reconsider your life and eliminate the non-essentials.
8. Spending 3 weeks of your life to create a meaningful habit is absolutely worth it.
9. The best part: the situation is in your hands.

That’s it. Go ahead. Live a productive life by design.

And, if you want a motivational kick in the arse every now and then, call me. I’m serious.

Tommy Darker is the writing alter ego of an imaginative independent musician and thinker about the future of the music industry. His vision is to simplify scalable concepts and make them work for independent musicians.

He is a writer about the movement of the #Musicpreneur and founder of Darker Music Talks, a global series of discussions between experts and musicians. He and his work have been featured in Berklee, TEDx, Berlin Music Week, ReThink Music, Midem, SAE Institute, University of Westminster, Hypebot and Topspin Media.

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