If you’re an independent artist, time is a currency. If you’re not looking at your time that way, you may be leaving money on the table. Every minute you spend promoting your music, booking yourself for shows, and exploring avenues to earn money directly relates to how much money you make as an artist.
The bottom line is, the more time you spend on income producing activities, the more money you make. It’s a pretty simple equation, however figuring out what exactly an ‘income producing activity’ is might take a little more thought.
Musicians, your time is money! Use it wisely, efficiently, and strategically. Whatever you spend your time on will reflect in your income.
— The Crafty Musician (@IndieArtistsDIY) July 30, 2018
I spend way too much time on social media. I need it to promote my music, but when I see memes, the latest news, political headlines, and what my friends are doing, I get sidetracked. Case in point, I caught myself wasting an hour on social media just the other day. So that was at least one hour wasted. I won’t say how much more time I wasted that day reading and responding to every email that came through and doing a lot of what I call ‘busy work’ – work that you do to make it look like you’re working but in reality it doesn’t bring in any revenue.
P.S. If you’re not careful too many days of spending your time like this will leave you in this rut…
It’s the rut where you’re not sure where you’re going, what you’re doing, or even who you are. I know it all too well. Just coming out of such rut, I’m here to tell you exactly how to get out of it and return to your former glory or a new glory depending on your situation.
Get Yourself a Boost
The first thing you’ll need is a boost. Everyone has different needs when it comes to getting a boost. A boost will renew your mindset and set you on the right track. Some ideas that come to mind are taking time off, reading an inspirational book, taking a related course, reading your mission statement to remind yourself why you’re here in the first place, reading positive words of encouragement from fans, and meditation. Any of these things can help spark motivation and a renewed way of thinking.
Re-Tool Your Schedule
Look at your schedule from the past few months. Review all the tasks and activities you’ve worked on over that time. If you don’t have a written schedule, just think back on what you’ve been working on recently. What things have taken up the bulk of your time? Which of those activities actually produced results? Which of those activities actually brought in revenue? You need to prioritize activities that make you money and demote activities that don’t produce results, such as ‘busy work.’
For example, over the past month or so my ‘busy work’ consisted of writing blog posts, social media, updating my website, polishing up my logo, cleaning/restringing my guitar, continuously checking email all throughout the day, making videos, etc. These are things I actually did this past month that really didn’t equate to generating revenue. Although, they are legitimate things I still need to do as an artist, I’ve decided that I need to spend less time doing these things in favor of prioritizing revenue generating activities.
The goal is to figure out ways to streamline the ‘busy work’ so that you’re spending less time doing that and more time doing revenue generating tasks. You can hire a virtual assistant to do some things for you (which can be quite affordable believe it or not), such as updating your website and social media, editing videos, etc. Or you can pre-schedule social media posts and only allocate certain times a month to work on videos, blogs and other content.
On the other hand, I also did booking, flyer artwork, updating merchandise, promoting shows, networking, and learning/writing new material that all directly equated to earning money. These are things I will prioritize in the future.
Time Management
Finally, in order to actually get things done, you need to have some time management skills. I’ve learned that I’m at my best in the morning. So all tasks on priority are scheduled for the mornings. You might be the opposite where your best work is done in the afternoons. In that case, you should plan on doing priority tasks during that time.
Also, a timer will help you stay on track. Set the timer for one hour and work non-stop for that hour. After you’re done, you can move on to the next thing or keep working. This way you are in control of your time and not the other way around. You can use the timer on your phone, but it might help to get an actual kitchen timer. That way you can see it ticking which would incentivize you to work quicker to meet the deadline.
Be on the lookout for time traps. Social media and email can be huge time wasters. They tend to suck you in and keep you off track. A good tactic to avoid this would be to only spend time on these tasks at certain times a day. I had a rule once where I only looked at social media and emails twice a day once before lunch and once at the end of the day.
Plan Ahead
The biggest time waster is lack of preparation. For example, when you sit down to promote your music you’ll be more effective if you already know what you need to do. If you don’t have a plan in place on how you will promote your music, you’ll likely waste that time away doing other things. To avoid this, see if you can get organized and plan promotion activities ahead of time. Get a list of actionable things you can do to promote your music and work on that. You can start with this article I recently wrote as a guest blogger on Musician With a Day Job about 5 Quick Things You Can Do To Promote Your Music without Being Annoying. If you haven’t already, go and check that article out. You’ll get some actionable ideas you can use to promote your own music with minimal effort. Likewise, when it comes to practice make sure you have a plan in place. What will you practice and for how long? What is the goal of practice for today? A plan will help you keep on task and be more efficient with your time.
Your time is money. Literally. Whether you’re a full-time artist or doing music part-time, what you spend your time on will reflect in your finances.
Mindset Makeover Challenge
for Musicians to Manifest Their Creative Dreams
[bctt tweet=”Your time is money. Literally. Whether you’re a full-time artist or doing music part-time, what you spend your time on will reflect in your finances. ” username=”IndieArtistsDIY”]
So be strategic about how you spend it. Ultimately, remember that you’re only one person. Don’t put more on yourself than what you can do. Identify things that suck away time unnecessarily and avoid it. Commit to spending more time doing the things that matter. When you do, you’ll start to see positive changes in your outcomes.
Enjoying this content? We’d love to send you our latest posts fresh off the press! We’ll deliver new posts directly to your inbox. Plus, you’ll be notified when we host giveaways, webinars, and other fun stuff. Join our mailing list here.
Want to showcase your product to our audience? Take a look at our advertising options here.
Some of the links in this post could be affiliate links. This means if you click on the link and make a purchase, we could get a commission payment as a result. We are an Amazon Associate, so a lot of our links go directly to Amazon, one of our fave online retailers. The products we recommend on this site are personally recommended by us because we either have used the product personally or know close friends who have. There is no extra cost to you by clicking on our links. Plus, it helps keep this blog going. Win-Win! If you have any questions about our affiliate policy, click here to view our terms of service.
