Tick-tock, don’t stop.
We can easily feel overwhelmed thinking there’s never any time to do all the things we need to do. Learn how to identify your priorities, ignore what doesn’t matter & manage your time like a boss!
You’re listening to Episode 34 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hey there! You’re listening to Episode 34 – Yes, There’s Time for That. Today’s episode is sponsored by The Music-Preneur Mindset Summit, which I’ll tell you all about at the end of this episode!
I’m your host, Suz – a mindset coach to help music-preneurs build sustainable careers in music.
Do you ever feel as if there’s never any time to do all the things you want to do? Are you overwhelmed by everything on your plate and see no end in sight to getting it all done?
Do you find yourself starting one thing and before you know it onto another project and then another and soon you have a bunch of things started and nothing finished?
One of the ways I help musicians build sustainable careers is by helping them find more time in their day with ways to get more done and it doesn’t involve uppers or magic pills or burning the midnight oil.
We do this by creating customized time management systems. This often involves understanding their individual productivity rhythm, priorities, and teaching them how to time block.
We’re going to touch upon all of those things today, but first I want to discuss some of the reasons we feel there’s never any time for doing the things we want to be doing.
One of the main reasons is because we’ve become accustom to “False Urgency.”
Much like CNN tells us everything is “breaking news,” our smart phones are attached to our hands and every bing ding and ring tells us something needs our attention NOW.
Think about it. How many times have you been in a conversation or busy doing something and your phone buzzes. How long before you grab it to check what it was telling you?
Hell, how many times do you look at your phone even when it doesn’t make a sound to make sure you didn’t miss anything?
Many of us have become addicted to responding to notifications as soon as they reach us. Not only does this waste time as a distraction, but it also makes us believe everything that enters our personal space needs our attention immediately, taking us away from whatever it was we were previously doing.
That’s false urgency.
What if you didn’t “Like” a post someone left you on Facebook the same day they left it? What if you didn’t respond to that email immediately? What if you missed a FaceTime call from someone and called them back at a more convenient time?
We kill false urgency by getting extremely clear on our priorities and why they’re important to us. We also train ourselves not to check our devices multiple times a day.
Believe me, it’s easier said than done. You may not realize it, but you check your phone A LOT during the course of one day.
Time magazine published an article in 2015, and I assure you the numbers they published have only increased since then. They reported that a study released by Deloitte, “found that Americans collectively check their smartphones upwards of 8 billion times per day.
“Those between the ages of 18 and 24 look at their phones most often, with an average of 74 checks per day. Americans in the 25-34 age bracket look at their devices 50 times per day, and those between 35 and 44 do so 35 times each day.”
So how do you begin to stop incessantly checking your phone? There’s an app for that! inc.com published a list of 6 apps to help you stop getting distracted by your phone. I’ve linked to it in the show notes.
One of the apps they recommend, BreakFree {now known as Space}, allows you to not only monitor how many times you check your phone or laptop browser, but also set goals to kick the addiction.
I also use the Forest App to help keep me from checking certain apps while working for a set period of time. If I make it the entire time without checking my apps a full tree grows in my forest! It’s the little things, right?
We’ve also become used to living in a world that revolves around us. It’s true. It doesn’t mean we’re all narcissists, but think about how many times a day we receive personalized emails, notifications, curated newsfeeds, even the ads we see online are hand-picked for us.
This increases feelings of self-importance and I believe we’ve grown to expect that we are needed more than we are when things happen. News moves so fast it’s also creates a fear of missing out on participating before it passes us by.
Social media has been able to make a very large world seem very small, and as beneficial as that can be, it can also make it feel as though the world would stop turning if we didn’t respond to everything that came our way.
Have you ever felt that way?
How many times have you felt those emails that pile up are all depending on you and your response?
How many times have you felt that popular story in the news needed your opinion or thoughts published on record so everyone knows where you stand on the matter?
How many times have you fell down the comment rabbit hole, reading, judging, and responding to strangers leaving their 2 cents on a matter?
I’m not saying you should feel bad about any of this. I’m simply saying how much time and energy would you have if you were able to turn off those impulses?
One of my favorite tools to help manage email overwhelm is unroll.me. It allows you to mass-unsubscribe from spam emails you don’t want and it allows you to roll up groups of emails you don’t want to unsubscribe from, but maybe don’t want to see in your inbox, and saves them all in one digestible email you can get daily or weekly.
For instance, if you want to continue to get CVS coupons and other deals from your favorite retailers but you don’t want to see 100 emails in your inbox at once, roll them up and you can quickly and easily sift through the list of them when you’re ready to do some shopping.
Keep only the most important senders in your inbox each day and your overwhelm will decrease dramatically. I promise, if you don’t unroll me, I won’t unroll you 😉
Labeling and filters is another great way to end email overwhelm. If you’re a blogger or music supervisor and are constantly being bombarded with music submissions, simply add a filter for any email that has the word submission in the subject line and move it directly to a folder or label it in all caps SUBMISSION and then you can quickly and easily see what is and what isn’t something that needs your immediate attention.
It also helps to request where you can that all people who submit put the word “submission” in the subject line.
It all comes down to managing the perceived urgency.
The goal is to realize what matters to you personally and what, in the long run, will mean nothing. It can be difficult to do that when there’s a perceived expert at every corner telling you to focus on 50 conflicting things if you want to succeed in music.
One will tell you it’s all about being on social media. Another will tell you you need to be creating exceptional video content every chance you get. Another will tell you it’s all about mastering online ads.
Or pitching your music to every music supervisor that’s ever lived.
Or perfecting your website.
Or crowdfunding.
Or copyrighting your music.
You done yet?
Most of them aren’t wrong – many of those things are important pieces of a successful career in music. However, there’s a time and place and only YOU can determine when that is in your journey.
Mastering your priorities comes down to being able to ask yourself tough questions and repeatedly checking in with yourself to see if/when your answers to those questions change.
For instance, it’s important to engage with fans online and grow your email list. It’s also important to create great content and market it to your fans consistently.
But what comes first?
Well, let’s think about it. Where are you in your journey right now? Do you have great content ready to post? Do you know who you want to target? Do you reeeaaaaalllly know?
Do you know their likes, their dislikes, what type of content they prefer to interact with, and where they spend most of their time online?
Understand that building a career is a process. It’s not about releasing one album. It’s about building a foundation so that you can successfully release many albums and singles for years to come.
So don’t cut corners, skip steps, or multitask.
If you don’t know who you’re targeting how do you know what type of content you should be marketing to them?
You can engage with fans online without having your own content out there. You can hang out on other artist’s pages and interact with their fans and get to know them.
You can hang out on lifestyle blogs and interact with people who leave comments on articles that cover similar topics to your songs.
Ask questions. Get feedback. Make connections.
This doesn’t need to take months and months. It just needs your attention and focus until you are clear on your next steps.
Understand what needs your attention and what can wait, and what has to wait so you can move forward.
Patience and priorities. Remember the 2 P’s.
And don’t sit there thinking you’re going to prove me wrong by doubling up on tasks. It’s not my career you’re messing with, my friend.
It has been scientifically proven that humans cannot do two things at once successfully. Multitasking is indeed a myth.
So take a deep breath in, exhale, and trust that you have time for all the things that matter. You will get it all done and you owe it to yourself to do it right the first time.
It doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes, but you’ll make fewer mistakes when you focus and act with intention.
Take time to think things through and ask for help along the way.
Understand that things will always take longer than you think they will, especially when you’re doing them for the first time. However, things you’ve done before, when you’re focused, can take a lot less time, so it balances out in its own way.
When you find yourself stuck on deciding what’s a priority and what’s worth dismissing, always go back to your Why.
Why are you on this path? What’s the end goal? What do you want for yourself?
Understand where you want to go, and then work backwards.
What’s needed to get there? Again, if you don’t know, ask questions.
As you work backwards and uncover the steps needed to get to where you want to go, take a look at what’s currently on your plate. If it doesn’t fit within the steps, put it to the side.
What about the tasks that don’t have a clear first, second, third feel to them? Those tasks that feel like they should all be done simultaneously?
If there’s no clear sequence, take a look at your resources and your interests.
What can get done first with what you already have at your disposal? If they are all capable of getting done with what you already have, what interests you more?
Or what interests you least? Maybe you’re someone who likes to get the boring stuff over with first.
What tasks can be delegated to others?
I do a lot of workshops at conferences on time management and I always go through a 2-pronged question with the audience.
Does this task serve my goal? And if yes, can I delegate it?
Two things can get done at once if two different people are doing them, right?
Aside from False Urgency, another big part of mastering your priorities is finishing a task before you move onto the next one.
When we drop what we’re doing to give our attention to something that just popped up, without deciding if it does in fact take precedence, I call that an S.O.S. moment – Shiny Object Syndrome.
You finally focus on a task and then you get a question or need to stop and as you search for a solution you remember something else that needs to get done at some point, and in an effort to not forget about it, you start looking into completing it now.
Sound familiar?
You know the phrase stop, drop and roll? It’s used to describe what to do when you’re on fire. I like to think that when our brains are ablaze with thoughts and worries we need to stop, drop, and prioritize.
Stop what you’re doing.
Drop the urgency.
And prioritize what’s in front of you.
Is what just came up for you more important than what you were doing? Can it wait? Can someone else do it for you?
Most times it can wait and that’s when you’ll want to write it down so you don’t forget and then go back to what you were doing.
If you get in the habit of reviewing your ToDo list daily, you’ll be able to reassess the next day’s priorities when you look at what you’ve added and think to yourself, “Has my plan changed? Where does this new task fit in?”
The next piece after prioritizing is creating time blocks for yourself. I think of them as boundaries around your day.
Remember in Episode 18, we discussed the importance of boundaries? Boundaries actually give us immense freedom.
As humans we crave routine. Even when we want the freedom to do what we want when we want, we still crave structure around our freedom.
Time blocks, when used right, can allow us to draw boundaries around how much time, focus and energy we give a certain priority throughout our day and week.
Time blocking is a large, dense topic all it’s own, but I dug into a bit in my interview with CD Baby on their DIY Musician Podcast. I’ve linked to it in the show notes and invite you to take a listen.
I’ve also provided a step-by-step tutorial for it in my free 3-Day Get Sh*t Done Challenge, which you can subscribe to in the show notes.
As you go through the rest of your week, keep in mind the 2 Ps – Patience and Priorities.
Trusting in the fact that there’s time is half the battle.
Cut the distractions, understand your goals, and act with intention. What matters will get done, I promise.
If you’d like to learn more about time blocking, head over to www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep34 and take a listen to my interview with CD Baby as well as my 3-Day Challenge and start getting more done in less time!
When you subscribe to the 3-Day Challenge you’ll also get a bonus download – your Productivity Rhythm Tracker.
That will help you figure out what time of day or what part of the week you’re most productive with certain tasks.
Lastly, if you like what you heard today, there’s more where that came from! Mindset and work/life balance are at the core of The Music-Preneur Mindset Summit and it will all be going down during the last weekend in September in Long Beach, NY.
The Summit, the inspiration for this very podcast, is a 2.5 day event at one of Long Beach’s newest hot spots – Junction – with more than 20 respected industry professionals all focused on one goal – providing you with digestible information you can learn to apply that very weekend to your own career in a way that works for you.
More wonderful speakers have just been added so be sure to take a look at what’s to come!
Head on over to the show notes page to find more details and purchase tickets.
You can also join us via live stream, catching all of the classes, panels, and workshops inside a private FB group!
Thanks again for turning in!
You can access all current episodes of this podcast using your app of choice, including iTunes & Spotify, or by visiting www.therockstaradvocate.com/podcast.
If you’re looking to figure out your next steps, find time to balance everything on your plate, or learn how to time block and get it all done, let’s talk!
That email again is suz@therockstaradvocate.com.
Until next time, Rockstar! Have a wonderful week and I hope to see you back here next week so we can get grounded to get rising! Take care.
Key Highlights
- False Urgency [01:23]
- The smartphone addiction [02:33]
- Saving time with emails [04:57]
- How to master your priorities [06:04]
- The 2-pronged test [09:52]
- The importance of boundaries [11:16]
Links/Rocksources
- Theme music brought to you by DC-based Indie/Pop band Sub-Radio
- More podcast episodes can be found here
- You can download a copy of the episode’s transcript here
- You can read Time magazine’s full article on smartphone usage here
- The Space app and Forest App can help break addiction to your devices
- Check out Unroll.me for your email inbox clutter here
- My interview with CD Baby can be found here
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