How to be more productive as an artist

Making music is always fun, but moving towards your goal of making music your full-time career can become overwhelming at times! There is so much that needs to be done and it can be hard to make time or focus on the task at hand.

The question here is: ‘How can you improve your productivity as an artist?’. How can you move faster towards your goal and achieve objectives that will move your career forward? The secret hides in consistency, organization, and good management of your attention and time.

Be consistent

Consistency with your craft is key! If you wait for inspiration to hit you before writing, you will end up making music at sporadic times, which will lead to good music, but not quantity.

Scheduling a time each day to work on music is a great way to generate inspiration. It could be every morning for a couple hours or as you get home from your day job until you go to bed. Inspiration won’t come naturally at first but as you get into the habit of sitting down and focusing solely on writing, you will associate this time with creativity and ideas will come to you easily!

Organize and prioritize

Staying organized during your day will help you be more efficient when working on the different tasks you need to complete. A short to-do list, ordered by importance and given deadlines will boil down your day to essential tasks, moving distractions out of the way.

Releese's to-do lists can help you organize your day :

Do one thing at a time! When working on one of your list’s tasks, don’t stop to work on another one. Crossing lines off your list by wrapping up tasks one at a time will motivate you as your day goes by and boost your productivity.

Don't forget to take breaks

While working and feeling like you are making good progress feels great, don’t forget to rest! A short 10 to 30 minutes break every couple hours will help you cool down from the work you are doing, and you will be able to return to what you were doing with a fresh, relaxed mindset (and ears if you are making music!).

During these breaks, try to find an activity that relaxes you and helps you tune out. The more you can eliminate stress generated by the hours you put in, the better you will be able to get things done.

Eliminate distractions

It is estimated that over two hours of our days are lost to distractions, and that it takes close to a half hour to be fully focused on a task again after having been distracted. Eliminating these disturbances will make your workflow much smoother!

To do so, when you don’t need it to accomplish a task, put your phone in another room, close the forever open social media tabs in your navigator and make sure to check your e-mail only once or twice a day! It is fine if you don’t reply straight away to mails or messages, give yourself time and tranquility to focus 100% on what you are doing.

Use templates and tools

When it comes to creating music, making templates for writing, mastering or producing will be a massive time saver for you! Parameters on effect chains or instruments can also be saved and quickly accessed if you tend to use particular settings a lot.

Tools for organization can also be used such as planners or Releese’s task organization tool! Using them will optimize your planning and help you manage your time as much as possible.

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