by Rachel | Professional Development
For almost my entire adult life, I have been an early riser. My alarm went off at 5 am every weekday morning, and then I’d go to the gym, come home, and spend the next couple of hours writing, working on songs, or other creative projects. Those morning hours were when my brain worked best.
After I went back to work following my maternity leave, I tried getting back into that routine. Some days, it worked; other days, Parker would wake up expecting an early breakfast just minutes before my alarm went off. Sometimes he would sleep in, sometimes he wouldn’t. To this day, he still has no consistent morning wake-up time. And neither do I, since he is still waking up multiple times throughout the night.
Needless to say, my productive early mornings are a thing of the past. And since I spend my days with Parker before work in the afternoons, I don’t have much time for creative projects (heck, I barely get a chance to check my email!) during daylight hours.
After I finish seeing students (usually between 7-8 pm), Zach and I give Parker a bath, put him to bed, and then eat dinner. By 9 pm, I’m ready to tackle blog posts, songs, music therapy interventions, and business-related work.
On a given night, I usually go to bed between 12:30-1:30 am, which to my former self would sound crazy! I never thought I would be a night owl, but then again, I never knew how much becoming a mom would affect every aspect of my life. I’ve actually grown to like the quiet hours when everyone else is asleep, and I’m getting used to sleeping in (usually 7 am at the latest, ha!).
At some point I would love to get back to my productive early morning routine, but I’m not counting on that happening any time soon. Until then I’ll just enjoy my new normal — and the late-night Facebook chats with fellow working moms who are up doing the same thing as me ;)
by Rachel | Uncategorized
Way back in 2008, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to wake up at 5 am every day and go to the gym. I was getting married in August, and looking great in my wedding dress was excellent motivation. So on January 2nd I dragged my tired behind to the gym. And it was hard. January 3rd was hard too, and the same held true a week later. But eventually, it got easier.
Four years later, I’m still getting up at 5 am and going to the gym. With a smile on my face and a spring in my step. How? Because I made it a habit.
People ask me all the time how I do it, and the answer is always the same. In fact, I give that same answer when they ask me how I was able to write a blog post every day for a year or if it’s difficult writing and recording a new Listen & Learn song every week.
The thing about long-term goals and big commitments is that they are always overwhelming at first — because we focus on the “long-term” and “big” parts. But if you break it down and just start taking action, it becomes manageable. Think about how many times you’ve heard the phrase take it one day/step at a time…it works.
Something that has always helped me create habits (and I’m talking about the positive, productive kind) is to set a designated time devoted just to that one activity. I’ve already given the example of going to the gym at 5 am. Others include writing and recording my songs on Saturday mornings, completing and emailing my lesson/session notes immediately after my last student leaves every evening, and doing my weekly accounting every Friday.
As I write this blog post, I’m wondering to myself if doling out such basic advice is a waste of my time and energy. Maybe it is, but I want to make it clear that the power of habit is really, really strong. Just keep doing something, day after day, no matter how difficult it feels; one day you’ll realize that you can’t NOT do it. And if you need extra incentive, make your intention known. Whether you tell your mom, book club, or entire Facebook friend list, putting it out there will help you to hold yourself accountable.
So what habits are you working on creating?
by Rachel | Uncategorized
At this time every year, I put aside a few hours to declutter, file, reorganize, and purge my office/studio. You’d be surprised at how many stacks of paper, receipts, and music books I’ve found stashed all over. It feels so good to start the new year with a newly organized work space!
Here are a few of the tasks on my list today:
- Scan printed sheet music
- Enter expenses and file receipts
- Finish thank you notes to students
- Frame and hang student artwork
- Clear out my inbox
- Part with unneeded programs, fliers, etc.
- Find homes for stray items in my storage closet
- Back up my computer on my external hard drive
- Put away Christmas music
- Reorganize music bookcase
- Put instruments and equipment back in their place
Yikes! That list is a little overwhelming now that I’m looking at it all written out. But there’s no time like the present to get everything done — especially since my week long break is quickly coming to an end.
This office organization is just the beginning of a year-long decluttering effort, thanks to Michelle Erfurt. She started a Facebook group to tackle the 2012 Declutter Calendar, and I am fully on board!
Now that this blog post is finished, it’s time to get down to business. Are you doing any heavy duty organizing or decluttering before the new year begins?
by Rachel | Uncategorized
This past weekend was a bit of a bummer for me. I started losing my voice in the middle of the week, and woke up on Saturday with a full-blown cold. Turns out I’m not the only one: when Michelle, Kimberly, and I got together via Skype to record this month’s episode of our podcast, we realized that all three of us were under the weather! It’s just that time of year.
Being sick meant I had to cancel most of my weekend plans, which included providing music activities at Breakfast with Santa, recording some new songs for my students, singing in the choir at church, and making a “Sunday Singalong” video (thank goodness for my special guest this week!).
But even though I was stuck at home with no voice, I still managed to make the most of my weekend while getting the rest I needed to start feeling better. Here are the ways in which I stayed productive…and none of them involved leaving my couch!
- Learn new music. I’ve got some holiday gigs coming up, so I spent some time going through my Christmas songbooks and working on a few tunes. By working, I mean listening to recordings of them, and then playing them either on the guitar or piano (okay, so this does involve leaving the couch). It was hard to resist singing along, but the sound of my voice was so pitiful that even I couldn’t stand to hear it, let alone my husband in the next room :)
- Make lead sheets. I fell a little behind on making lead sheets both for performances and music therapy work, so I took this down time as an opportunity to catch up. Michelle Erfurt recently shared some excellent tips for making lead sheets here.
- Go shopping. And by this, I mean online shopping! I was able to buy almost all of my holiday gifts for friends, family and students over the weekend without stepping foot outside of my home. No traffic, no lines, no sales tax, and (in most cases) free shipping? It doesn’t get much better than that.
- Clean out the ol’ email inbox. All those unanswered emails that piled up throughout the week have now been replied to, and that’s a great feeling. I may have been a little cross-eyed last night from all those hours staring at the computer screen, but they were worth it.
- Tackle boring administrative tasks. There are many such items to do both on my computer and in my office that don’t require much thinking at all. I was suffering a bit from “sick brain” this weekend, so even when my head wasn’t so clear, I was able to cross a lot of these items off my list.
- Above all else, REST! None of the things I did over the weekend were overexerting, but I made sure not to go overboard. I took plenty of naps, drank hot tea with honey and lemon, and used my voice as little as possible. Now here I am on Monday morning, feeling one hundred times better and ready to take on a brand new week.
Do you try to stay productive when you’re sick, or do you prefer to hibernate both physically and mentally? (There are most definitely times that I have done the latter.) Let’s raise our cups of tea and toast to a (hopefully) healthy holiday season!
by Rachel | Uncategorized
I’ve lost track of how many times I have mentioned here on the blog that I’m a list-maker. I’ve also lost track of how many lists I have running on any given day — on a notepad in my office, in the “Reminders” app of my phone, a Pages document on my computer, and now, in the cloud.
I discovered today’s “Friday Fave” while catching up on my Google Reader one day last month. John Jantsch writes the blog Duct Tape Marketing (and also wrote the book The Referral Engine, which I loved and learned a lot from), so I have him to thank for this new resource.
Workflowy is hard to describe, because calling it a list-making tool would be selling it short. The interface couldn’t be simpler: it’s just a blank page where you can add items, and then add bullet points to those items, and bullet points to those items, and then notes to those items. My Workflowy account contains an outline of all of my to-do’s in every area of my life, broken down into the smallest detail.
When I sat down earlier this week to outline my presentation for the national music therapy conference (yes, this is happening next week, and yes, I am completely guilty of procrastination), I decided to go the Workflowy route. You can see a portion of my outline above. The entire outline is nested within the rest of my Workflowy space, and I can minimize and maximize it as needed. This tool is too cool!
You know what else is cool about Workflowy? It’s totally free. It’s also accessible anywhere. I can pull it up on my computer, iPhone, or iPad — there’s no dedicated app; just type the address in Safari, sign in, and there are my lists.
I’m going to stop trying to explain and just let you go check it out for yourself. Have you tried Workflowy, or do you have another favorite organizational tool?
