Those of us in the performing arts are very familiar with long workdays as well as rehearsals and performances during the weekends. Our schedules also include additional work responsibilities, projects, personal goals, and commitments to friends and family. As we juggle our daily agenda, we recognize that in addition to everything, we also have a to-do list that seems to grow in length, rather than shrink into oblivion. Our tasks can seem incessant.
As members of the music sphere, we all want to be productive and efficient. We also want to cross items off our list on a regular basis. Usually, the problem seems to be that we just don’t have enough time to fit it all in. So how can we restructure our schedules to actually allow ourselves to accomplish more and stop feeling overwhelmed? Let’s take a look at some suggestions to better manage your time and take charge of your schedule.
The first thing that will be helpful is to take inventory of how you are utilizing your time and understanding where you are allocating your hours. If you don’t want to work with a mere guesstimate, it can be useful to use a time-tracking app for a week or two to get an accurate account of your time. As of this blog entry, a free popular app is Toggl, but we recommend you always do your research so you can decide if you want to use one, and if so, which one you would prefer as we do not have an affiliation with any particular one. Once you have a good idea about how your time is being used, the next thing to consider is how you would like your schedule to look ideally. Don’t forget to also include items that you would like to categorize under non-negotiable time. Under this category, these are things that you know contribute to your personal well-being and that as a rule, you never sacrifice as they become part of your lifestyle.
Once you have considered these preliminary details, you can now take steps to structure the bigger picture. Examine areas where you can discover you may be overcommitted, stretched too thinly, or where pockets of time are being wasted that you didn’t previously realize. Are there any commitments or time-killing habits that you can reduce or eliminate? Are there any tasks that you can delegate to others? Structure solutions for those items and incorporate them for the following week. Then, look for areas in your schedule that can be restructured or shifted to allow for more efficiency. Next, decide upon the items you feel are most pressing and which ones are most important to you. Understand those two qualities are not the same thing, because if we honestly want to have a life that feels more balanced and fulfilling, it’s helpful to live with the mindset that we should also do what’s important, not just what’s urgent.
A couple of methods that can be helpful include chunking and timing. An example of the chunking method would be a task that needs to be done each week, but is difficult to squeeze in on a daily basis. For instance, perhaps you are working on research that you need to complete within a few months. You can structure your schedule to work on this task a few times per week, but for longer segments of time—in a large “chunk.” Decide which days of the week will allow for you to chunk this time, then put it into your schedule. This allows for a deeper focus and creates momentum to work on the task. Knowing that you have this special time to focus only on that one item instead of putting it off or getting behind is valuable. Then, for any tasks that require serious focus, be sure to turn off any distractions while you are working in this type of focused zone.
The timing method is helpful when you are trying to squeeze in tasks that need frequent attention, but you often find yourself skipping entirely. This method is also helpful when procrastination is knocking on your door. Perhaps you want to exercise, or you need to organize your digital files. Simply set a timer to force small pockets of time to be utilized efficiently. For the timing method, just think of those tasks that take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes that you could accomplish between fixed-schedule obligations. Need to edit a document? Set the timer for 5 minutes and do what you can. Need to clean out your inbox? Set the timer for 15 minutes. Once the timer goes off, give yourself another minute to complete the task, then go about your day. This method provides an external tool to motivate you and allows you to gauge how you are feeling about the task. If you have found inspiration to continue working in the moment, keep resetting the timer until you need to move on to something else. This method is helpful because it takes advantage of small windows for getting things done and it also helps shift your thoughts to a smaller task when you need to take a break from something else, thus, helping you attend to more items on your list.
If your list is rather long, it helps to have a way to prioritize your tasks. This is also helpful if you have projects that are larger in scope that involve a number of segments. A helpful weighting system that can be used is the one suggested by Jeff Sutherland in his Scrum framework. Scrum was developed for the tech industry and for teams of people, but it has proven to be useful in other sectors and can also be applied to individual projects. The weighting component this framework utilizes is a Fibonacci sequence of numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 and so forth. Each number is the sum of the two previous numbers and the sequence can be extended as far as you need it to go. Simply examine the list of items you need to accomplish and assign one of these numbers to each task according to how difficult it will be to accomplish. For instance, let’s say you have some items on your list, such as: (1) write a 10-page essay; (2) reserve a book online from the library; and (3) learn the repertoire for the next concert cycle—prior to the first rehearsal. You might give each item the numbers 8, 1, and 21, respectively. The essay might take you a few hours or days, the book reservation might take a few minutes, and the repertoire might take a few weeks to complete. Since the numbers have a large gap in between them, they readily identify the complexity of each task. This helps you to have a plan for what to prioritize, to have a better gauge on how much time each task will likely take, and where certain tasks can quickly be accomplished as you move through your list.
Utilizing different methods for a variety of tasks can help you accomplish more. As you become familiar with these methods, you will be able to quickly know which tasks lend themselves to which methods. Taking inventory and creating a plan allows you to honestly know what you have in front of you and how best to accomplish it. Keep it simple, don’t overcomplicate, but use these tools to maintain a trajectory. Just remember to take things in stride, because the work we have to do is always there, waiting for us to finish it. Although some days can be more productive than others, we cannot allow ourselves to get flustered if we feel we did not finish everything we intended to. Do your best, reassess, and maintain your motivation.
Finally, when you consider everything you are focusing on, just keep things in perspective, and try to eliminate any tasks that are not truly contributing to your goals. If you ever question yourself about what you have before you, just remember this quote by Henry David Thoreau, “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?”
References
Sutherland, J.J., and Jeff Sutherland. Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.
New York: Crown Business, 2014.
What is the biggest challenge you regularly encounter when trying to manage your time?
What has been one of the best methods you’ve used to accomplish more?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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