What comes up to interfere with your effective use of your time? Perhaps you have heard yourself think the following thoughts:
To be a successful musician—or indeed successful in any enterprise—time management and prioritization are essential skills. Musicians are busy people! It is essential for them to manage their time AND their energy. And often, things crop up that interfere with smooth time management and create obstacles to career success. Read what time management challenges the students at the Yale School of Music are facing and how we went about solving them.
One of the biggest reasons that we do not have time for ourselves is that we say yes to other people and take on commitments that we really do not enjoy. Often, it stems from a place of not wanting to disappoint these other people. Learn how to set healthy boundaries and say no to others so that you are saying YES to yourself.
Some people seem to breeze through life knowing exactly what they are doing at any given period of time. As busy as they are and even when a crisis hits, they keep their cool, focusing on the big picture and not getting distracted by minutiae. What is their secret? They live by setting values-based priorities.
If you are like many people, you are juggling a lot of things: your career or school, creative and personal development activities, your relationships, your health and wellness-not to mention having some fun once in a while! And when you have a lot to do, it is often hard to know what to do first. Moreover, if you spend most of your time in one area like your career or school, you may be feeling out of balance and resenting the fact that that you do not have time for anything else. You start to view time as your enemy and you find that your energy is sapped and your feel even more out of control. The key to getting yourself out of this cycle is to change your relationship to time and learn how to manage yourself around time.
