As the academic year ramps back up, managing responsibilities, practice time, wellness, and communication becomes a major component of student success. Read on to learn ways to better manage your schedule.
So much to do, so (seemingly) little time . . . unless, of course, you manage your time well. With college classes, homework, practicing, performing, responding to emails, and numerous other obligations competing for your attention, it is easy to become overwhelmed. This is especially true if you were not able to establish time management skills within the structured atmosphere of high school.
To help you navigate this “time-sensitive” landscape, with the disclaimer that not every technique works for every person, Classical Singer has rounded up the following tips.
Write down your tasks
“I don’t care how or where you write them down,” says Productivity Leadership Coach Ellen Faye (ellenfaye.com). “What I do care about is that the list is prioritized by delivery time, as if tasks are coming to you on a conveyor belt. Organize your tasks in a way that supports you.”
Figure out your priorities
Even if it sometimes feels this way, your tasks are not equally important. Productivity Consultant Helene Segura (helenesegura.com) offers the following examples of questions to ask yourself to figure out your priorities.
First, top-level importance: “What do I have to do this morning so nobody dies, nobody gets fired, or I don’t flunk a class?” Second: “What do I have to do this morning so I am not completely stressed by the end of the day?” Keep working your way down the levels of importance, ending with “getting ahead for tomorrow.”
One of your priorities is to practice—schedule time for it
“Your class schedule is not flexible, so look at the blank spaces and add practicing. If you don’t schedule it, it will always become ‘I’ll do it later’ and it will always get pushed,” says Michael Meraw, artistic director of the Undergraduate Opera Studio at New England Conservatory (necmusic.edu/faculty/michael-meraw).
Make practice time productive
When students are learning new roles, Meraw has noticed a tendency to focus on the “juicy bits,” such as arias. “I encourage a ‘reward system’ of practicing: study one thing, then reward yourself. Memorize something hard, then memorize something easy.” He says it is a good idea to create a practice schedule that reflects all the places where a singer appears in a piece.
Similarly, pianist Dr. Jessica Koebbe (jessicakoebbe.com), Instructor of Piano at MidAmerica Nazarene University and founder of Mindful Music Pedagogy, encourages her students to create a “rotation chart” and work backward on the calendar from the date of the performance. “We take each piece and each week and map out, by the end of each week, where the student should be with each piece. Then, we look at a day-to-day schedule for each week. Within the day-to-day part, I encourage them to start with what needs the most mental energy—and always start with new material to make sure you have time for it.”
Take time to plan and think things through
Your “to do” list might include “write thesis” or “prepare piece for recital.” But, as Faye says, those are projects, not actions. “Think about the individual steps. When you break a project down into small, manageable parts, you can plan better because you know the next step.” Carve out time to do focused work. Faye has noticed that people try to fit important, focused work between unimportant things. “If possible, block your schedule for uninterrupted time.”
Get enough sleep
“Time management is all about mind management,” Segura says. “Your brain decides how you’re going to use your time. Your brain has to make decisions. If your brain is not well rested, that drives down your productivity the next day—which makes you more frustrated, so you think you need to stay up later to get things done, and then the cycle repeats itself.”
Turn off notifications for texts, emails, and social media on your phone
“Neuroscience tells us that every time we switch tasks, it takes an average of 60 seconds to get back on track,” Segura says. “If you are allowing 100 different notifications to come in during the day and you’re checking your phone each time, you’ve cost yourself a minimum of 100 minutes—just from task switching and brain restart time.
“Turn off the notifications—I’m not saying, ‘Never check,’ but check when your brain is ready. If you’re nervous about missing something, check every 10 minutes if you feel the need. At least, that way, your brain is deciding when it’s time to check, as opposed to being interrupted throughout the day.”
You can even leave your phone somewhere else. This might not sound like a time management technique, but it is when you consider that it prevents distractions during a focused task such as practicing. “You need a distraction-free environment or else you’re not going to get done what you need to get done,” Meraw observes. “Create a situation in which you’re not responding to tweets or Facebook posts or texts. I try to instill in my students that the smart phone is a tool and, like a hammer, you don’t always need it in your hand.”
Pursuing a music career requires work—be sure not to underestimate the amount of work
Meraw puts it this way: “Most students at NEC have been the ‘big fish in the small pond’ and now they’re with a whole bunch of ‘big fish.’ The bar is different [in college] than excelling in high school. Here, the starting point is to have every note right, every rhythm right, and every word right.” Within this guidance, Meraw advises music students to make the time to keep practicing “the stuff you suck at” and to practice repetitively “to make something your own.”
Manage your email and plan for tomorrow today
Do not wait for emails or texts to dictate your day. With so much correspondence taking place via email today, it is imperative to make time to manage, and even double check, your inbox to make sure that nothing is missed.
Few things are as frustrating to the sender of an email as not hearing back from the recipient or following up and being told something along the lines of, “Sorry, I didn’t see your message” or “Sorry, I meant to write you back.” Here is some guidance:
- Check emails a few times each day, but not all the time—Meraw believes that checking frequently wastes time. “All you’re doing is partially reading messages and then marking them as unread [to come back to them later] . . . you’re not getting a full sense of what the message is and [if you’re responding] you’re not giving reasoned answers. So, you’ve wasted time looking at your smart phone, to do nothing except maybe to get anxious about what you have to do later, which distracts you from the present.”
- Do not leave all your messages in your inbox, or you will not be able to find anything important. Faye refers to the FAD method: file emails you want or need for future reference, leave action items in your inbox to make sure you act on them, and delete garbage.
- If your email program allows for it, consider scheduling a response instead of responding in the moment. For example, if you’re checking email at 2:00 a.m., scheduling your reply for 8:00 hides when you were at the keyboard. Scheduling can also help if you don’t want to give the impression that you will always answer emails right away. In the case of a draft, you can schedule it and, if necessary, unschedule and modify it. Otherwise, if no changes are needed, the draft is not forgotten.
Estimate the time needed for a task
If you struggle with underestimating:
- Segura starts with a person’s “gut feeling” and then tracks how much they miss by. “Often, a pattern develops, and we use that pattern for a time-estimation formula,” she says. For example, if the person consistently underestimates by half, multiply the “gut instinct” by two.
- Faye also asks people to consider their “conditions for success.” “What else do you need to do to be prepared for a task? Do you need to exercise first? Do you need to eat first? Do you need to check email first? Whatever you need to do, build that time into your schedule.”
Keep track of tasks on the computer or on paper
For those who prefer paper, Segura recommends finding a system that works, such as compiling a list of all possible tasks and then pulling from that list every day, perhaps with each task on a sticky note.
In the computer world, adding tasks to a calendar, along with meetings and events, can be visually helpful to see what work needs to be completed. For people whose calendar feels cluttered this way, Segura recommends finding another digital system to manage tasks.
Take advantage of your commute
If you are commuting on public transportation, the time can be invaluable for accomplishing tasks or planning. If you are driving, make sure that your tasks don’t distract you from the road. Segura recommends a low-level brain activity, like visualizing the day or having a casual phone conversation. For some people, the commute can be a fantastic time for continuing education (such as audiobooks or lectures).
Create margins in your schedule.
“Allow room for reactionary time,” Segura says. “Your day is never going to go according to plan. Allow room for the proverbial ‘fires’ or new opportunities.”
Sometimes, the best thing to do is schedule times of “nothing” so that you have “down time” during your day. Just like the margins on a piece of paper can provide space to react to, or make notes about, the main content, “margins” during your day are “buffers of time to absorb the unexpected, or not to have to answer to other people,” Koebbe says in her Mindful Music Pedagogy podcast (Episode 1: Margins). “Micro” margins can last for 5-10 minutes; “macro” margins could last for several hours or several days.
Koebbe says it is important to have space to think, choose your reactions, be aware of your and other people’s needs, and make better decisions. Speaking for this article, she says, “When looking at the calendar, it is easy to think of ‘free time’ as available. A margin can be used to make it unavailable, to have built-in ‘down time.’”
And, very importantly, learn to say “no.” In her podcast, Koebbe points out that people are often reluctant to say “no” to opportunities, but it is always important to understand the motivation behind saying “yes” or “no.”
Also speaking for this article, she says, “If it’s fear or regret based, I think that’s worth a second look. Fear alone isn’t a good enough reason. If you’re excited, or want a professional relationship, or the work is fulfilling, or the project fulfills a larger goal, it’s worth considering. It’s not wrong to say ‘yes’ a lot, but it’s important to understand why you’re making that decision.”
