This post is the third in a multi-part series on time management for music professionals.
How do you want people to remember you after you die?
I hope my family and friends will talk about the music I made, the lessons I taught, the words I wrote, and the way I made them feel.
Sometimes, when day-to-day stresses distract me from my purpose, I remind myself that no one is going to stand up at my funeral and proclaim “Her house was perfectly clean, and she was perfectly thin.”
And yet, we high-achieving women of a certain age (think grown-up Hermione Grainger) put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be perfect. It’s not enough to be at the top of our professions, we also have to be perfect mothers, run marathons, and live in houses that look like something out of Better Homes and Gardens. It’s a lot of pressure.
To put things in perspective, we have a finite amount of time on this planet. I hope to spend as much of mine as possible doing the things that matter most to me. Time with family, playing and teaching cello, writing, travel. I want to spend less time on the things that are necessary, but less meaningful to me, such as housework and exercise.
Therefore, I figured out a way to spend the great majority of time doing just that. When I used to get sucked into quotidian things that I didn’t enjoy, like housework, I got angry and resentful. Then I figured out The 15-Minute Rule.
It’s simple. You spend no more than 15 minutes doing boring tasks, and then you get to spend way longer making music and being with your loved ones.
To do this, conditions must be prepared. This part isn’t necessarily easy, but it sets your work and household up in such a way that makes day-to-day life flow easily and enjoyably.
- The once-a-year course preparation binge. I write all my syllabuses, quizzes, lesson plans, and handouts during the summer months. This takes a few weeks of intense work, but then during the semester, my class prep consists of hitting the “print” button, which actually takes considerably less than 15 minutes. This gives me hours and hours more time for practice and creativity during the semester.
- Let your technology do your worrying for you. The Google Keep and Google Calendar apps are great at notifying you about deadlines. I set multiple reminders for everything, so deadlines never take me by surprise. Because my ADHD brain is useless with schedules, I let airline apps on my phone send me reminders about check-ins and itineraries. I’m not exaggerating when I say that smartphones have literally saved my career.
- Suitcase packed, ready to go. I’m always ready for work travel, because I keep a case pre-packed with everything from shampoo to spare strings. The only things I have to pack the night before a trip are clothes and scores. 15 minutes and DONE.
- A place for everything, everything in its place. At all times. Sounds impossible? Just do everything Marie Kondo says, and all will be well. I decluttered and organized my house using the KonMari method several years ago, and cleaning is quick easy now because my house is tidy and clutter-free. (I know this sounds insufferably smug. Please don’t smack me.)
Once your conditions are in place, creativity and family can take precedence. Everything else can be accomplished using the “little and often” methods I described in Part 1 of this series. I have a rule with myself that I’m not allowed to spend long stretches of time doing things I hate. My top three? Housework, meal preparation, and exercise.
Housework
Order and cleanliness are, unfortunately, necessary working conditions for my aforementioned ADHD brain. I need my space to be tidy, otherwise I can’t concentrate enough to be creative. I also detest housework, and for a while I muddled through in, well, a muddle. Then I discovered Marie Kondo, and figured out that if you KonMari the heck out of your house and make sure you take care of your dishes and clutter every day (little and often, little and often), you can fit any other housework into 15 minutes or less. Hooray!
Basically, if you’ve prepared conditions, you only need to do one household task per day. So on Monday, you might dust the furniture. Tuesday, vacuum the floors. Wednesday, scrub the bathroom. Now, the exceptionally houseproud among you might argue that doing a task properly needs a lot more than 15 minutes. I counter with the “something is better than nothing” rule of housework. I do my 15 minutes and call it clean enough.
For this to work, every member of the household has to participate. Children do create unbelievable messes, but once they’re big enough to pick up after themselves, they can do so. I convinced my seven-year-old daughter, who loves chaos as much as I love order, that the KonMari method was delightful and that folding laundry the Kondo way was like doing origami for your clothes. Now she not only folds hers, she folds mine. Her room is tidy. She’s a little angel, I tell you what.
Meal Preparation
I appreciate fine cooking, but I don’t want to do it myself. I solve this problem by eating at restaurants a lot. At home, we eat very simply. I call it the SSS Diet — Soup, Salad, Sandwiches. Pick two, and you have a balanced meal that you can make in 15 minutes or less. If you’re worried about nutrition, the MyFitnessPal app can help you adjust so you get whatever you’re missing. It is absolutely fine to feed your family frozen vegetables and soups that come from cartons. They will not get scurvy. I’m a professor and I say so.
Exercise
Many people enjoy exercise. I do not. Vanity and a right-on-cue midlife crisis have intervened, however, so I schedule 30 minutes a day for exercising. Things I have learned: it doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you do for your 30 minutes. Yoga, weight-bearing exercise, running, walking, they’re all good. My doctor assures me that as long as you do your 30 minutes, setting a timer if you’re as exercise-resistant as I am, all will be well. I do my exercise when I’m mentally tired, so it doesn’t take away from my creative time. In fact, it energizes me towards another burst of creative time.
What do you do to make best use of your time? Let me know!
Further Reading:
Time Management for Musicians Part 1: The Priority To-Do List
Time Management for Musicians Part 2: Optimal Brain Time
Miranda Wilson 
I decided that I had cleaned my house badly for 30 years and I was tired of it. Now I have professionals come in once a month. I can maintain what they do in between, and twice a year they can do the deep cleaning as well. The cost is well worth it, and if you choose your company well, you are contributing to a small business and not exploiting poor cleaners. Now if I could only talk myself into getting the yard taken care of in a similar way…I shall report back.
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