4 Habits That Will Bring You the Best Results When Starting Up
There are hundreds of excellent music schools today and thousands of young, eager musicians graduate every year only to be rudely thrust onto an unforgiving and oversaturated market. These 4 habits will help you to differentiate form the sea of competition.
Whether you are just starting out or you have already set yourself on the path of a professional musician, it is always a good idea to periodically re-evaluate our daily actions and question if our behaviour is aligned with our goals. It happens more often than not we find ourselves stuck mindlessly repeating menial tasks that not only do not add value to our lives but take us further away from what we have set out to achieve.
The stress we experience is in my opinion and experience only a tell-tale sign we are choosing to put our efforts more in finishing what is urgent than in dealing with what is important. Once we dare to have an honest discussion with ourselves about our core values, we will be able to prioritize our engagements in accordance with our most cherished principles and desires.
Although this is something that can serve our purpose and in return fuel our motivation, and even if the realization that we have to change something comes easily, since a genuine change demands a shift in our conduct, procrastination is something that frequently sets in. At the end of a week, month or perhaps even a year, a deep sense of regret may find its way in our psyche and cripple us even further, psychologically and emotionally. This is not a fun place to be although I do admit, spinning the role of a perpetual victim to our circumstances is attractive since it abolishes us form any sense of personal agency.
In this post I would like to suggest to you five habits to adopt in order to create processes that will make us operate with more ease in our daily lives. Remember, we are not defined by the circumstances we find ourselves in but how we respond to them.
1 - Time Management
No matter what we do, the time will pass anyway. So you better get in charge if you want to benefit from it. Having an agenda (digital or paper one) is a #1 accessory we should commit to. Once you get one, open up a monthly overview and first block any free days you wish to have. And by free I mean days on which you do nothing. You do not practice, go out with family or friends or clean the house. This is a sacred time you should always have in order to recuperate and recharge. It is in these moments of blissful leisure the spark of genius strikes and we get the best insights and ideas about something we have been pondering on for ages. Protect this time at all costs even if it means saying no to gigs or Sunday lunches with your mom.
Second, you wish to block all your work commitments. All concerts, rehearsals and side jobs including any potential travel time you need to fulfill them.
Third, block all the time you need for individual practice. Be very specific on what you wish to commit yourself to and choose the exact repertoire you will be working on.
Fourth, set a set time for working on your business. This might mean shopping for concert clothes or new wires, re-writing or translating your biography, setting short-term goals, writing propositions for grants, coding your website, posting on social media or recording clips for your patrons, reaching out to other professionals such as photographers, teachers or agents.
Fifth, plan all social engagements with friends and family. Do not feel like you have to accommodate timetables of others and do not let yourself be ashamed if someone calls you out and demands you to be on call when it suits them. Your time is your most precious commodity and you should guard it at all costs. People who care about you will understand and you will be able to find a solution that will fit you both/all.
Do all of the above without any excuse at the beginning of every new month.
2 - Healthy Sleep Routine
If you are chronically exhausted, you will most definitely not be able to perform at an optimal level. And even worse, you will delay progress of others if working for example in a chamber music ensemble and overall, you will not be fun to be around. You will become more irritated, short-tempered, slow and your level of tolerance will dramatically drop. Do yourself a favor and try to avoid this state at all costs.
And yes, I am very well aware of the fact musicians often have hectic performing schedules and come home late at evening. However, remember what we said above: it is not the circumstances that matter but what we do about them.
First, invest in the best mattress and pillow you can afford even if this means you won’t have the money for the bed frame or new concert shoes. You can always put the mattress on the floor and borrow a pair of shoes if you find yourself in dire straits.
Second, always air your bedroom and make your bed after you wake up in the morning. This means when you come home exhausted, a clean bed will be welcoming you. This literally takes a few minutes and no effort, but it makes all the difference in the evening.
Third, have a hot shower even for two minutes. Hot water helps relax muscle tension and prepare our body for sleep. A bonus is if you are using some aromatherapeutic soap or body wash with for example lavender that calms our brain and senses.
Fourth, by no means should you go to bed with your phone, iPad or laptop. You knew this one was coming, but do not take my word for how damaging this is for sleep. This is something that has been proven by scientists over and over again, and yet people still are mindlessly scrolling their phones well after midnight. Do not do it. There simply is nothing that cannot wait until the morning.
3 - Regular Decluttering
Develop the habit of regularly decluttering your environment. Your laptop, phone, closet, music sheets, kitchen, handbag, bedroom and so on. In essence, we want to own the stuff we have and avoid having them own us. The more you surround yourself with things, the bigger are the chances you will end up distracted and not focusing on what actually is important and should be attended to. You will find yourself perhaps practicing, but feeling guilty your dishes are still dirty or that a pile of clothes is sitting in the corner waiting to be ironed for weeks. Or perhaps you will find yourself in front of a closet full of clothes you didn’t wear for years or scrolling down your digital photos library unable to find that one shot you need and is now buried under thousands of shots you do not even remember taking.
Do yourself a favor and get in a habit of decluttering regularly. One week you may tackle your sheet music library and all those copies from past projects that have piled up, another week it might be your bathroom full of unused cosmetics. Clearing up your space will improve your mood, boost your serotonin levels, bring peace and energize you to bring the center of your attention to what truly is important.
When decluttering, ask yourself the following questions:
Do I really need this?
When was the last time I used a specific item?
How is owning this going to benefit me?
Is this representative of the person I want to be or does it belong to my past?
4 - Reading
Ditch your Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions in favor of books. And in order not to further clutter your space, go for a library membership or Kindle readers. Read novels regularly even if you have to start with one page per day. You might ask yourself: but Ksenija how is reading going to help me become a better music professional?
There have actually been quite a few scientific studies done in favor of regular reading habit. Reading can help you improve focus without distraction which is necessary for doing any kind of meaningful deep work. And it is precisely through deep work that we experience true contentment that comes from practicing our art. Simply put, in time we become able to produce better work in less time.
Reading will also improve your potential to empathize with others. Through exploring inner lives of fictional characters, we get better in understanding others’ feelings and motivations. Empathy is a form of social intelligence whose importance should not be underestimated as it can greatly help us in becoming better communicators all over. Professional musicians heavily rely on human interactions and one of the main purposes of musicmaking is making connections with people through our craft.
Since you came to the end of this article, I will be so bold to presume you find value in it, or that it has at the very least, made you think of ways how you can incorporate some of these habits into your daily routine. As with everything in life that is worthwhile, the key here is to always be aware of the compound interest. Consistency is the name of the game. Once you get in the habit of regularly practicing all of the above, the results will inevitably follow. At first slowly and perhaps without you noticing much, but after six months you will look back and be in owe of how your life has changed. When that happens, be sure to let me know.