You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How to Manage Your Time Effectively - #47

Episode Date: March 18, 2018

Peter and Adam discuss time management skills that can help keep you focused. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today we're going to tell you how to manage your time effectively. I'll tell you what, if you give me some extra time, I'll manage the heck out of it. Until then, I don't know how to help. And I'm sorry, I came across a little strong there telling you how to manage your time effectively. We're going to give you some tips. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our ideas on it.

How about that? We'll start there. So, you know, the first thing that's important for me in managing time, and let me just say, I'm at a point in my life where I'm trying to do more things than I am. ever have. So this is definitely something that's on my mind. I remember being a child way back in the 1980s. Some of you may remember that time period, but spending a fair amount of my time bored where like managing my time meant trying to find something interesting to do to put it in. Dude, I can't even picture you bored. Oh man, I was, I spent a lot. I remember I'd just be

bored. I was like staring at the wall or something, you know. So now it's kind of the opposite. it. It's trying to manage all these interesting things I want to do. But I would say, you know, the first thing before you start, you know, getting with all these time management techniques and lists and calendars and all that is you have to think about what it is you're doing and probably removing some things. Because if you've got so many different things that you're trying to do, there's no way you're actually going to be able to manage your time effectively. Now, you could probably spend thousands of dollars going to seminars and reading books and listening to podcasts on how to try to do that, and you could get marginally better and maybe optimize your time a little bit.

But, I mean, the fact of the matter is if you want to do things well and deeply and effectively, you're going to have to cut down on the number of things that you're doing. So that's the first step, is just to make your list smaller. Yeah, and the way to do that, and you, I know, are a big proponent of this. I do this every day is to start your day out with a list of your priorities and where to put your time, prioritize those tasks that you think are the most important top down, and that will help you decide where to put your time and energy on any given day.

I mean, you can, you know, we, I know, both expand on that from, you know, out to the week, out to the month, even out to the year, about how we want to put our time. That really helps me to see it. There's something about seeing it in front of me every morning that helps me to accomplish those tasks and organize my week. my day, my hour, down to my half hour and minute.

Right. Wow. Impressive. Yeah, we got to go, man. We have a daily podcast here. Well, yeah, and I think that, you know, one thing that I play around with and is fun and can be kind of effective is as you come up with those daily priorities is to list some of those, write them down the night before

the next day, but then also experiment with writing them down first thing in the morning. And then what I end up doing is sort of a combination of both because a lot of the night before, I've got sort of a different mindset than I do in the morning, depending on my kind of mood and stuff. And I usually get very creative in the evening and the nighttime. So I have some very creative ideas. And then in the morning, a lot of times I'm more like, you know, analytical and like, let's get this done. Let's get this done. So I get a little more practical in terms of parsing through all these creative ideas from the night before. But you have to kind of find the mix that works for you. And I would say with anything with time

management, that's very important. You can take our advice or many folks that understand this probably way better than two jazz dudes do. But I mean, I think the key is to, you know, take different ideas just like you do to learn how to improvise. You know, you never could find one player, even if it's John Coltrane or Duke Ellington or Keith Jarrett or something. You never want to latch on to one improviser and just say, oh, they are so fantastic. I'm going to learn everything that they're going to have ever played and I'm going to become them because that's just not going to work for you and it's not going to let your personality come out. So I think in terms of organizing your day and your time, learn things, experiment, try them out and then find the system that works for you. That's right.

The next tip, and this is one that I'm a big believer in, and that's to whatever is, to put whatever is on the top of your priority list, do that as early as you can in the day. do it as close to when you wake up as possible because you are fresher in both physical and mental energy and you know it's like we're talking musicians here so people always ask about practice routines and I say you know the number one thing you can do

is practice in the morning for me because I know I'll get more done I'll get at least something done and then if I have time later I can practice later but that practice in the morning that really brings my playing together because I'm fresh I'm not, you know how your day goes.

It's like by 2 p.m. You have a million things sitting on your, the day is taking you over. Right. And then by like 6 o'clock, all you want is a glass of bourbon and like to watch Netflix. 6 p.m. Let's be clear on that.

Yeah, that's generally. No, but I do find whether that's, whatever your priority is, if that's practicing, if it's going for a run, if that's, you know, writing a letter to your mom, whatever it is. Like, do it first thing and it'll get done and it'll get done with energy and creativity.

Right. And I remember, actually, no, I don't remember who I heard this from, but I remember the concept very well. So whoever said it or came up with it, thank you in advance. But that was the analogy of you're putting, you've got a bunch of rocks of different sizes and then all the way down to like sand, all the way up to some kind of, you know, gravel and rocks. And you have to fit them all into a jar. And they will all fit in there, but only with a certain order. Like if you put the sand in first and then the smaller rocks, the big rocks won't fit in. You got to put the big rocks in, then fit the kind of smaller, the medium-sized ones,

and then the sand can kind of fall anywhere. And if you think about like the big rocks being those big ticket items that you really want to accomplish, like practicing, for instance. And everyone's always saying, you know, how much should I practice? I can't find time to practice. I mean, you have the same 24 hours in every day minus, you know, seven hours to sleep or whatever long you sleep, spend time with family, all that. Like we, you have hours there.

It's a matter of what you prioritize. So if you prioritize those big blocks, those big rocks, those larger blocks of time, not even necessarily larger blocks of time, just larger tasks that are in terms of importance and priority to you. And get those into that jar first. Then you can do some of the middle ones. Then the sand and stuff, either fits in or not. It's not as big of a deal.

Dude, I'm just going to say, I don't know who said that, but that's the second time I've heard you say it. So I'm just going to, from here on. out that's a Peter Martin idea. You know what? I'm cool with that. I'm cool with that. So, yeah, you'll hear it. Oh, come on. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast.

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