I’ve recently become obsessed (again) with dialling in my days, getting lots done for my creative career in the least amount of time necessary.
The feeling of being truly productive is unmatched.
When you get more control over your time, energy, and attention, you feel like anything is possible.
Improving your craft.
Building your audience.
Making faster progress in general.
Making more space for meaningful things in life.
Actually enjoying work.
There are endless distractions out there.
If you’re not careful, almost everything you spend your time, energy, and attention on will be out of your control.
Your creative career will become bottom of the list.
Personal growth will stop dead because this chaotic world is luring you away from it.
If you want to build a creative career and a life you love, you must reclaim control.
You must learn to be truly productive—to manage your time and energy, become a master of focus, and get the important shit done.
But it’s easier for me to say this when I don’t have a 9—5.
And I don’t have that many responsibilities outside work.
Most musicians I have calls with don’t have the freedom to design their days in the same way I do, and many creatives are the same.
You might be in a 9—5, or have kids, or other life responsibilities you can’t ditch.
Things that use up energy, fill your days, and fragment your focus.
And building a creative career requires energy.
If you can’t give it enough—if you can’t find a way to bump it up the priority list—it simply won’t happen.
It’s a harsh truth, and it’s tough.
But can it be done? Can you create space in your busy life to give this dream the love it deserves?
Before I worked in the creative industry full time, I had the 9-5 life.
I was terrible in ‘real’ jobs. I desperately wanted to escape and do something I was actually good at.
Making more space for the dream became the only problem I cared about solving.
And I did.
It was messy, my way—definitely not the way I’ll recommend you do it.
But I did it, and I’ve since had a lot of practise learning how to take control of my time, energy, and focus, and become more productive than I ever thought possible.
Today we’ll talk about what I consider critically important if you want to make more space for building your creative career.
There will be sacrifice on your end. And it might hurt for a bit.
But if building a career in music or the creative industry is a must for you, what other choice do you have, right?
Why most creatives can’t get anything done.
There are plenty of common barriers for creatives who are struggling to find or make space to work on their dream:
- They’re constantly exhausted, too tired to put proper energy into it
- It’s hard to find proper chunks of time to do serious work
- Life happens
- They don’t know what to focus on even when they do find the time
- They can’t get nearly as much work done as they need to
- Mental blocks
- That feeling that they should be working on the craft every spare minute of their time.
I feel you. It’s hard.
Having a ‘normal life’ and aiming to build a creative career isn’t an ideal situation, given you need space to do your best work.
And on the surface, these problems seem impossible to get around.
You might look at your days and think “how could I possibly make this work?”
That’s what I thought too.
But it’s a “once seen, cannot unsee” deal.
Many people have the intention to focus and get things done, but they don’t know how to approach it to set themselves up for real success.
They might rely on willpower or getting pumped up about the work—and then end up feeling like it’s impossible because they can’t sustain it.
As you might know already, that won’t cut it.
If you want to make space; if you want to use your time effectively; if you want to see real progress…you need to learn how to be truly productive.
Productivity isn’t just about tools and automation.
Many musicians I talk to will jump straight to post scheduling tools and the like thinking this will be the difference between where they are and where they want to be.
Those things are cool, but there are much more important things to nail down first.
Our goal is to set you up to do the best and most productive, real work possible.
We’re going to talk about the things that have helped me more than anything else.
Not cheap tactics, or tricky tools—the real shit.
If you’re looking for “engage with x many people on x days, post x many times per week, etc”, this is not the letter for you.
I do have a post like that about social media, which you can read here.
But in this one we’re focusing on the biggest needle-movers.
I’m not a productivity expert (yet), but if you take this seriously, I can almost guarantee you’ll become more productive, and the dream will feel a lot more possible.
A quick note before we dive in:
Sometimes when I talk about being productive and prioritising your creative career, I get push back from people for whom “it’s not that simple” or “it’s easier said than done”.
I get it. Some people have responsibilities, ailments, priorities, or genuinely packed days and this stuff doesn’t work for them.
To these people: I’m not trying to tell you you’re not doing enough, or that you’re just making excuses, or anything like that.
There are real barriers for people—I know it’s not always so simple.
But most people don’t have their priorities sorted.
They don’t take control over how they spend a lot of their time, or where they put their energy and attention.
This letter is for those people.
So if you’re someone who’s determined to make this work, here are some of my best tips on how to create more space and be more productive when working on your creative career amidst a busy life.
Belief.
The first step for me on this road was to challenge the belief that I didn’t have or couldn’t make more space, time, or energy.
Belief is a tricky thing, because when you really believe something—like that you don’t have time or energy—your view of reality will shift to make that true.
When I was working in an office job, I had this exact belief.
I was frustrated by being people saying some version of “you do have time; you do have the energy—you just need to see it.”
One day I hit a point where I was so fed up with not getting anything done outside work that I decided I was going to just force more time and energy to exist.
Guess what happened?
I realised it was there all along.
It was like I’d taken off a blindfold. I’m not joking.
But up until that point, it didn’t exist in my reality.
I would have been offended if you tried to tell me it did.
I’m not telling you how much free time you actually have, or how you’d have more space for working on the dream if you stopped wasting time—I don’t know you and your life.
But I am strongly suggesting you challenge the belief that you don’t have more room for working on your creative career.
Unless you have an insanely busy schedule with zero downtime (be honest), you can probably find more space if you open yourself up to the possibility of it.
Many people will roll their eyes at this: “Just believe and it will happen, seriously?”.
That’s ok—let those people go through life thinking they have no control.
That doesn’t have to be you.
I’ve personally experienced what a shift in belief can do for expanding the time and space you have in life.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve decided to ‘just believe’ and realised I can make my own reality.
Highly recommend you try it out.
If you’re up for it, take a look at your calendar and get real about what’s on it.
And if you don’t have a calendar, that’s your next task: Get one.
The calendar: More powerful than you can possibly imagine.
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
Stephen R. Covey
Using a calendar has transformed my life.
So simple, yet so powerful.
A calendar is honest and confronting.
It basically forces you to be real about how you spend your time and what truly matters to you.
Get a calendar.
And once you get one, start experimenting with it.
First, schedule in the things that are truly unmovable—that might be work, or something with your kids, or anything that’s currently non-negotiable.
Then start messing around with the rest of your days.
Ruthlessly prioritise working on the dream.
Go in with the attitude that you simply must make space for it.
This will probably require you to take an honest look at the different things you want or ‘need’ to do.
Chances are, you can’t do everything you want—not all at once.
So get brutal about it: The dream comes first.
Don’t try to squeeze eight different things into your day.
You have to be real about the big things that matter, create the space for them and cut anything that’s not super important.
I don’t know what the big things are to you, but if I had to guess it would probably be something like the craft, social media, networking, and the IRL stuff (eg. shows).
Make sure you take advantage of time blocking.
Don’t create a schedule that has you constantly jumping between tasks.
Block out solid chunks of uninterrupted time to work on specific things.
During these blocks of time, you do nothing but what’s on the calendar.
No checking your phone, replying to stuff, any of that.
Uninterrupted.
Try to schedule the most important tasks as early as possible.
At least for me, this has been a game—changer.
It might not be so easy depending on your unmovable priorities but do your best.
The fresher you are to work on the most important stuff, the more you’ll move the needle.
I used to ‘work’ insanely long days—and not get that much done.
Once I started using a calendar, I realised the majority of what I was spending time on was doing absolutely nothing for me.
I felt busy, but in reality, half my work time was wasted on checking my phone, ‘busy work’ and other distractions.
Unless you work with social media like me, you have no reason to check it more than once a day—and often I don’t either.
Again, an honest calendar will be confronting.
You’ll be forced to look at how you actually spend your time vs how you think you spend your time.
Be honest.
Most people (unintentionally) waste an insane amount of time and wonder why they can’t get anything done—I was one of them.
Take back your power.
And if you’re thinking “the only way I could make this work is if I get up earlier” or “making this work would mean I have to cut out ‘x’”…
Consider that.
I’m not saying you have to, but don’t immediately dismiss things that feel uncomfortable.
Remember, what’s uncomfortable (what feels ‘wrong’) for you now only feels like that because you’re not used to it.
If getting up earlier or cutting something out of your life for a while will help you build your creative career (and discipline), I think it’s worth considering.
Plan ahead.
A golden rule I’ve found to be useful is to always go into a productivity session with a clear, specific plan.
I suggest you write in your calendar the specific tasks that you’re going to work on.
Not just “work on music”—specific, like “EQ drums, bass and pads”.
Not just “go on social media”—specific, like “post the post, engage with these people”.
This takes a lot of mental load off you.
You go into the session knowing exactly what you’re doing, and you can reduce a lot of the friction that stops you getting started (more on this soon).
I’ve started doing this more recently and the difference is crazy.
We must use a lot of mental energy simply deciding what to do.
It’s one of the reasons high performers wear the same clothes every day—it conserves energy.
So, plan ahead.
Ideally, plan your day the night before.
Make it as easy as possible to slip into work the next day and build your creative career.
And you can do more than simply writing out specifics on your calendar; I put my laptop and any other important work tools in my ‘work room’ the night before, so I can get up early and get into it, no friction.
You might like to have your gear set up in advance, or whatever helps you get into the work quicker.
I cannot stress enough what a difference this makes.
Deep work.
This is a term coined by Cal Newport—he wrote a book of the same name.
He’s referring to work where you’re properly focused in on and engaged with what you’re doing, and you’ve entered a state of flow:
“In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity”—Wikipedia.
Put simply, it’s deep work that allows you to access your true genius, get more done, do better work, and be truly productive.
Yet 99% of creatives rarely do deep work outside of working on their craft—and sometimes even including working on their craft.
One of the single biggest changes in productivity I’ve noticed in my life is when I started taking deep work seriously.
A 2-hour stint of deep work is worth more than a week of shallow work, at least in my experience.
The idea is you need to be able to become focused enough on your work for a long enough time that you slip into flow state and tap into your genius.
This means you need to eliminate distractions (which we’ll talk about shortly) and make sure your focus isn’t interrupted, not even for a moment.
According to Cal Newport in his book Deep Work (and who also coined the term) there are different approaches to deep work, but I won’t go into them here because I only have real experience with one and I feel it will be most relevant to you.
The way I go about it (and the way I recommend you go about it) is to schedule deep work sessions at the same time every day (or every few days depending on what’s possible for you).
Again, this is uninterrupted time where nobody can reach you, not even for a moment.
At the beginning of these sessions, you fight to stay focused.
If you do it long enough, you’ll lock in, slip into flow, and magic will start happening.
You’ve probably experienced this when writing music or working on your craft.
You lose track of time because you’re so absorbed, and you feel like everything you do just works, like you’re a creative genius.
This is the magic of flow, and it’s what makes deep work so powerful.
When you’re doing deep work, you’re not operating at your usual level of ability; you’re accessing a next-level version of yourself.
It’s in these sessions you’ll discover what you’re truly capable of, which I guarantee is more than you think.
I highly suggest Newport’s book Deep Work if you want to learn about this properly. It’s seriously life changing.
So how should you use these sessions if they’re so powerful?
The most important stuff.
I don’t know what this will be for you but be smart about it.
It might be on some days it’s your craft—making music, writing, painting, whatever.
On other days it might be creating next-level content that’s going to help you cut through the noise (yes, this is important for a lot of creatives nowadays).
Do not use this time for shallow tasks like engaging with people on social media, replying to DMs, or anything that’s necessary but not hyper important.
This time is sacred, and it should be reserved for your best work, the bit stuff.
I do this in the morning because I can. If you can too, I think this is ideal.
Usually I’ll start between 5am—7am.
No one bothers me, and (after a coffee) I’m mentally sharp.
You might be thinking “get up at 5am? Not doable for me.”
If that’s true; if you’ve got an honest calendar and it’s truly not possible; that’s ok.
You can schedule your deep work whenever (although I’d recommend as early as possible).
Or if you simply don’t want to get up early, that’s ok too.
But don’t knock it before you try it; it’s life—changing.
Remember, just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t make it wrong, and the more adaptable you are to make this dream work, the more likely you’ll get there.
I know it might be hard for some to block out a good chunk of uninterrupted time for this… but I can’t stress enough how much of a game—changer deep work is.
Do your best to make this happen.
This may mean that time to unwind after work or that sacred extra hour of sleep in the morning takes a hit.
I’m not going to tell you what to do, but I urge you to consider that sacrifice.
Don’t get me wrong, you need rest. Lots of it.
It’s essential for productivity and growth.
But if your current idea of rest is getting home from work, falling on the couch, and getting on your phone (like mine was), that’s not real rest.
All it does it keep your brain wired.
This time can be used much more effectively: Either for real rest (without distractions), or for important work.
And before you dismiss important work as a possibility here, try it.
Just see what happens.
Aim to go deep, either after work or before it.
Because—for a lot of creatives—without deep work as a regular part of your life, you’ll find it incredibly tough to make waves nowadays.
Optimise your environment.
Most people don’t have an environment that helps them be productive.
This used to be me.
It felt like shaping your environment just wasn’t a big deal—like it was a 1% difference thing.
I was wrong.
Setting up my environment to eliminate distractions and maximise productivity has made more of a difference that I can express with words.
Now that I know more about how powerful real focus is, it’s crystal clear to me how your environment can make or break your ability to be productive and do next-level work.
And honestly, my setup isn’t even that great.
There’s a lot more I could do.
But even with the few tweaks I’ve made, the difference is unbelievable.
I’m going to keep this bit simple and focus on the three environmental changes that have helped me the most (and will hopefully help you).
Thing #1: Absolutely no phone in the work room—or at least it can’t be within reach of where I sit to work, or in view.
It’s laughable how simple yet powerful this is.
To disable access to checking notifications, or even just looking at my phone has turned me into a different person while working.
It’s allowed me to get into flow much more often, and therefore do more and better work.
Here’s the thing a lot of people don’t get about these tiny, seemingly insignificant interruptions like checking your phone:
When your mind is switching between different things (like working on your craft and checking your phone), you’re fragmenting your focus.
And an hour of fragmented focus is worth significantly less than an hour of completely unbroken focus.
It’s night and day.
Proper uninterrupted focus produces magic.
Fragmented focus produces shallow, generic, low-quality work.
I look at musicians’ content regularly and often it’s evident they’re not properly focused when they create it (or generate the ideas for it).
This is not an attack on them—musicians are expected to do and be a million different things today, and it’s no wonder they’re not able to do consistently high-quality work in all areas.
One thing that’ll help, though, guaranteed, is taking your phone out of the equation when it’s time to get to work, as simple as it might sound.
You might also like to disable internet access depending on what you’re doing.
It’s not something that seems to matter too much for me, but it may for you.
Get to know yourself and what messes with your focus (be honest), then remove them completely.
Trust me on this: It’s better to be safe than sorry.
Don’t bring your phone into your work sessions assuming you’ll be able to keep your hands off it with a bit of discipline.
Even if there’s a 1% change you might pick it up, just don’t bring it in.
Thing #2: Boundaries.
No one is allowed to interrupt my sacred morning work time.
As I keep saying, not even for a moment.
This might sound crazy, but something as simple as your partner popping their head in to ask if you need a glass of water can destroy your focus and progress.
Even those slight breaks in focus can throw you off.
Do not let anyone or anything interrupt your focused work time.
And it’s not just physical boundaries.
When you block out time to do real work, you’re unreachable.
You’re not only not answering the door or talking to your partner, you’re also not answering your phone, emails, or anything.
This is you time. Don’t let anyone take that away from you.
I know this might sound a little over the top, but I stand fiercely by it.
One small distraction can lead to broken focus, which can lead to other small distractions creeping in…
…until all of a sudden you’ve spent four hours doing essentially nothing.
I’ve personally experienced the damage a lack of boundaries can do.
And it’s small things like these people don’t take seriously, then end up saying, “I’m doing everything (well, most things) right, but I’m just not getting anywhere.”
The small things matter—take it seriously.
This may mean (like it did for me) you need to have a talk with the people in your life—especially your partner—and let them know how important it is to not be interrupted during your sacred work time.
Explain to them that even a moment of interrupted focus can reduce the effectiveness of your sessions, and that you request they kindly respect your boundaries.
And once they see what amazing work you can do because of this, they’ll be fine with it 🙂
Thing #3: As few visual distractions as possible in your environment.
The less things to catch your eye and distract you from doing the work, the better.
I love a tidy space, and although my little work room often isn’t perfect, I generally do more and better work when it’s neat and tidy.
I’ve found that physical clutter can lead to mental clutter, and that’s the last thing you want when you’re trying to do deep, important work.
Ali Abdaal (productivity expert) talked in one of his videos about how he likes to make his workspace aesthetically pleasing to increase productivity.
I’m limited with what I can do in my current space, but if you can make your space feel nice and “work friendly” I can totally see how it would benefit you.
And honestly, that’s about the extent of it for me.
I’m sure there’s plenty more you can do to optimise your environment for productivity, but these three things have done it for me, at least for now.
If you have control over your space, I highly recommend tidying it up.
Remove anything that could fragment your focus or get you thinking about other stuff in the middle of your work sessions.
Again, this is something that on the surface seems like it’d be a 1% thing, not something that makes a massive difference to your likelihood of achieving the dream.
But it was when I started taking these little things much more seriously that I saw a huge increase in productivity and progress in my creative career.
These three simple things (no phone, boundaries, fewer visual distractions) are deceptively simple, yet unbelievably powerful.
Again, don’t knock it before you try it.
Getting started.
Most people think they don’t have the energy to work on their dream around their 9—5.
But really what they don’t have is the energy to get started.
I watched a video from Matt D’Avella the other day in which he said:
“Our brains actually don’t mind hard work. We just don’t like the idea of it.”
I’ve found this to be extremely true.
So many times, I’ve thought “I’m just too fucking tired—I can’t do it”, only to try anyway and realise getting started is by far the hardest part.
Once you’re in and working, your brain lights up.
And if you’re set up for doing deep work, what was going to be a wasted 90 minutes doing nothing on TikTok after work becomes a highly productive session working on your creative career.
So how do you get started when you feel it’s just impossible?
There is where the 5-minute rule comes in (what the Matt D’Avella video was about).
You tell yourself you’re only going to work on the thing for 5 minutes.
That’s all you have to commit to.
What seems to happen (based on my own experience) is you almost always end up doing a lot more than that.
Once you’re through that initial barrier, you’re good.
The problem of getting started is one of the single biggest things that holds a lot of creatives back.
Once you train yourself to understand that it doesn’t have as much power over you as you initially thought, your world starts to open up.
I’ve had days I initially thought were write-offs that have been turned into some of my most productive days simply because I decided to just get started.
Don’t be tricked into thinking you’re useless just because you’re tired.
Try the 5-minute rule and see what happens.
A quick extra note before we wrap up:
Self-care sets you up for success.
Did you know that even a very small drop in hydration can lead to a drop in productivity of something like up to 50%?
Isn’t that insane?
And it’s not just hydration.
Sleep is critically important.
The “sleep when you’re dead, hustle till death” attitude is not the right way to go for most people—it often makes you do worse work.
Good sleep will change your life.
It will make you sharper, more productive, better able to deal with emotions, and a lot more.
Get your hours in.
And on top of that: Exercise.
It does all kinds of good for your body and brain.
Sometimes for me it feels counterintuitive to put aside extra time for some form of exercise because I feel it takes away from actually getting work done.
But the fact is doing it makes my work time infinitely more productive.
It’s worth it, every time.
So to recap. If you…
- Believe you can make space to work on the dream
- Tighten up your calendar
- Plan ahead
- Embrace deep work
- Optimise your environment
- Use the 5-minute rule to get started even when you don’t think you can
- And take care of yourself
…you can make this dream work.
These are some of my main rules for productivity.
It’s not a complete list, but it’s an honest list of my best tips so far.
And they’re not complicated tips.
In fact, you might have known all of them.
But how many of them are you truly embracing?
I used to laugh at stuff like this. Until I actually tried it.
As I’m finding out with a lot of things in life, the seemingly insignificant things make the real difference.
I hope you’ll take this seriously and see what’s truly possible. I want you to win.
And as always, if you’d like some help from me, you can check out your options here.
All the love, and you’ve got this.
Alex
P.S. The first round of the Awaken Your Music Brand course / coaching program is amazing—we’re only about a month in and musicians are already gaining a lot of clarity and changing the way they look at social media.
If you’re interested in joining the next round, you can join the waitlist here.
Just a heads up, I’ll be limiting the spots available for next round so I can focus more on helping each musician personally to make more progress, so stay alert.
Talk soon 🙂
