Do you ever feel like you just don’t have enough time in your day to get everything done? Are the tasks piling up, leaving you overwhelmed and frustrated? Do you think it’s possible to get anything accomplished in 5 minutes?
A while back I sent out a survey asking singers what their biggest challenges and difficulties were with regards to their singing and musical endeavors. The responses I received were largely what I expected: difficulties with vocal technique (breath support, range, projection, etc); difficulty with or uncertainty about how to get more gigs or better paying gigs; challenges with vocal health and the like.
What I DIDN’T expect however, was how many of you cited TIME (or lack thereof) as your #1 challenge.
But of course! It makes total sense. As creative types, we’re always juggling a lot of hats and it’s often hard to find the time to do it all. Time for practicing, writing or learning new tunes, booking the gigs, managing your marketing and promo, social media, websites….. It’s a lot I know. Additionally, you might also be working another job to pay the bills while you get your musical career off the ground.
When you’re trying to follow your dreams, time can be a big challenge.
There’s a fantastic book titled, The Bodacious Book of Succulence, Daring to Live Your Succulent Wild Life by SARK (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy). It’s a book about creativity, loving life and living your dreams and is fabulous for many reasons. The reason I bring it up here though, is that there’s a chapter titled “Micro-Movements”. In this chapter the author talks about breaking tasks down into what she calls micro-movements, those actions that can be done in 5-minutes or less. Brilliant, right!
Ok, I know what you may be thinking. “Jennifer, I can’t write a song in 5-minutes, or practice for 5 minutes at a time!”. Yes, that’s true, some tasks do take longer than 5 minutes. BUT you’d be amazed by what you CAN accomplish in 5 minutes. Maybe you can’t write a song in 5 minutes, but you CAN spend 5 minutes brainstorming song ideas. You might not be able to fit a meaningful vocal practice into 5 minutes but you CAN take 5 minutes to sit down with your calendar and mark out the times that week that you WILL do your vocal practice. You might not be able to get the gig booked in 5 minutes, but you CAN draft the e-mail to the booking agent. The idea is not that you’ll necessarily complete the task in 5 minutes, rather that in 5 minutes you’ll complete some part of it, bringing you, micro-movement by micro-movement, closer to it’s completion.
Break larger tasks into 5-minute micro-movements.
The other day I had 5 minutes between students. Not enough time to do much right? I guess I could have surfed Facebook, but instead I decided to send a quick follow-up e-mail to a client who was interested in hiring my band for a large gala event. The result of this brief action? A gig and a nice deposit check 🙂
What can you accomplish in 5 minutes? I’d love to hear your ideas!
If only we all added up our ‘5 minute’ slots in the day I think we would all be amazed at what we could not only get done, but the different that time and those small actions would make in the long run. I often catch myself surfing FB rather than retuning one e-mail or reading an article regarding my next client. My driving need is freedom so I often feel in a struggle to create small windows of freedom that actually help me be more productive. And other times I just need to hunker down and get stuff done. Regardless, I have the same amount of seconds in a day and if I don’t use them, I loose them. Time to choose.
Yes Aly! It’s amazing how 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there, really add up. So often it actually takes more time to “think” about what we need to do than to actually do it!
So true! I have a friend who says we don’t waste hours, we waste minutes. The other problem is that when I say to myself, “oh i don’t have enough time to do such and such so I’ll just check FB” I end up wasting more than the 5 minutes I only thought I had in the first place. And you can definitely practice an instrument 5 minutes at a time. More is better of course, but every 5 minutes helps. Thanks Jennifer.
Anne, that is so true! We absolutely waste minutes not hours. 5 minutes truly focused on an activity can definitely create results.
Jenn, this is awesome! I am going to spend my first pocket of 5 minutes making a list of all the things I could do in 5 minutes. And while you can’t perhaps have a meaningful practice session in 5 minutes, you could most certainly sing through a song in that amount of time which would be a hell of a lot more rewarding then cruising over to FB:) Thanks.
P. S. I am GETTING that book:)
I LOVE that idea Heather! What a great way to spend 5 minutes, making a list of all the things you could do it 5 minutes 🙂 Yes, The Bodacious Book of Succulence is great, I highly recommend it! Happy singing!
Jennifer,
In coaching, I teach my clients about “Time in the Cracks” which is so similar to what you are talking about here. We often have a hidden belief that we can’t start/do/finish something unless we have cleared a big space for it, when in fact there are many, many things that only take a few minutes at a time.
You can empty a dishwasher while the coffee is brewing, You can fold a load of clothes while waiting on hold for that annoying company…. Take one minute to toss away the junk mail and clear the desk. These tasks done in the “Time in the Cracks” free up more space for our creativity to breathe in the larger spaces!
Ha! I have been feeling adrift, lately, not closing in on what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve even been feeling like I was getting more done when working FT! Heaven forbid! And I think I can sabotage myself when I think “I’m going to spend the whole afternoon working on x.” BUT your method worked for me then, and it’s time to bring it back, just drag everything forward by little steps, which gives me time to think between steps, too. I had a theory professor once who recommended carrying around our copy of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (easily 3″ thick) and “reading in the interstices of your day.” And you know what? We all finished that book…. waiting for the bus, eating lunch alone on occasion, waiting for the next lecture to start… Thanks, Jennifer, for opening up my options with micromovement! xx Angela
I am going to combine your mentoring and Heather’s great idea. Love the 5 min list!
Great advice, Jennifer. One of my skill sets was operating a professional organizing business for over 8 years. My clients all had challenges of one type or another but one they all shared was time management. My experience has been that people get too wrapped up in the “how” and “when” and then spend a lot of time procrastinating and not doing it at all. Taking tasks and breaking them down into “small bites” or “baby steps” helps a lot of people get control. This can be done with big tasks, too. Take them and divided them up so they aren’t so daunting. 🙂
Great article, Jennifer!
Breaking tasks down into “do-able” segments is an excellent and effective technique and one that I personally use and recommend to my own clients. It is amazing how effective this is in helping to get a handle on overwhelm.