Using scheduling to effectively plan your day as a producer
Being in the entertainment industry, it can sometimes be pretty hard to get things done. After all, with an abundance of tasks & ambitions that constantly need achieving, it’s often hard to fit everything into your daily schedule. Making a plan is something that is absolutely crucial to effective time management. By prioritizing activities and writing how long they’ll take, it allows you to clearly paint a picture of what your day will look like. With a bit of effort and dedication, this article will teach you to deploy good habits that will allow you to be even more successful within your music career.
Firstly, you need to consider the activities that you’ll be doing. As a general rule of thumb, it’s best to write down everything the night before so that you have a clear mind of what you plan to achieve the following day. This may include things like music production, music theory, cooking, eating, and even sleeping. Here’s an example:
- Breakfast
- Shower
- Instagram Post
- Music Theory
- Book plane tickets
- Book hotel
- Meetings
- Grocery shopping
- Instagram post
- Work
- Cook dinner
- Make YouTube channel videos
In order to improve your schedule, try to write out an appropriate estimate of how long each activity will take. Try and ensure that you’re realistic so that you have a good amount of time to complete each task. But also allow a “buffer zone” for related activities. For example, after cooking dinner, you may need to allow 10 or 15 minutes for washing dishes. By creating a list of times for each activity, it allows you to schedule them easily within your day.
Then, write out a daily schedule, and add your activities into it so they have set times during the day for completion. If it motivates you, feel free to write out a daily quote so that you are inspired to achieve success. Here’s an example of a completed schedule:
“The world will only give you what you refuse to give up on”.
6am – 9am:
- Get up
- Have a shower
- Put on clothes
- Post to Instagram
- Email check
- Facebook messenger check
9am – 12pm:
- Work
- Meetings
12pm – 3pm:
- Work
- Book plane ticket
- Book hotel
3pm – 6pm:
- Work
- Grocery shopping
- Cook Dinner
6pm – 9pm:
- Make YouTube channel videos
- Work
9pm – 12am:
- Family time
- Facebook news feed check
- Facebook messenger check
- Email check
- Bed
Something that many people have a habit of doing is procrastinating. More often than not, there will be tasks that you simply don’t want to do – and therefore you will be inclined to put them off to a later date. If you decide to check social media midway through the day for a “break”, try and time limit yourself so that you don’t spend time watching endless hours of Facebook and YouTube videos. It happens.
One useful theory is the rule of “10x”. By scheduling 10 times more activities that you would normally achieve, it encourages you to work a lot harder and faster so that everything within your schedule becomes accomplished. Even with your goals and ambitions, this theory can be put into practice. Instead of wanting to achieve 1 million views, aim for 10 million. This is because by aiming for a higher target, you’ll reach the initial goal much quicker as your ambitions will be higher.