[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 142 of the Bandhive Podcast. It is time for another episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross and I help independent artists tour smart. This week, we're gonna be talking about your time because the problem for a lot of artists is that we don't have enough time to do everything we want to do between probably a day job between family, between hobbies.

What time is left over to work on our music and the business side of our band or our solo project. It's really difficult to get started if you feel like you don't have enough time to do all the things that you want to do. Let's say you only have a few minutes per day. What can you accomplish during that time?

If you're anything like me, if you have a few minutes spare, you say, oh, well I can't start anything right now. And then you pull out your phone and you end up scrolling through social media for a half hour. Does that sound familiar? It probably does. It can mean that you don't [00:01:00] finish any projects. You're constantly getting halfway through any project. You start before you run out of steam and then all of a sudden, you always think, oh, I don't have time to finish, but is it that you don't have time or is it that you subconsciously don't want to finish the project because that means you don't have anything else left to do on that project or whatever you're working on, or maybe it's you don't wanna start another project.

so we need to make sure that we find the time one. So we actually have time and two, so we don't use it as an excuse to stall or procrastinate on what we're working on. Neither of those is an ideal situation. Today I'm gonna talk about the solutions for that, so we can all get together and have more. The first thing that I would recommend is to schedule your time. and I know it seems really daunting to live your life by a calendar, but it's a lot easier than you might think, because when you're using a calendar that lets you block out time for the things that you enjoy doing, and it makes it easier to [00:02:00] commit to doing those things and doubly.

So for things that you don't wanna do. So, for example, if you block out time on your calendar to rehearse your instrument, that's a great start. The next step is actually using that time to rehearse. And ideally you enjoy that because if you like playing music, you know, rehearsing is part of that. But then the next thing is you could take it to the next level and start scheduling those tasks that you don't enjoy.

So for example, every Monday or Wednesday or Friday, whatever day you choose. Add in an hour on your calendar to schedule your band's social media posts via Publer or a similar app, which the link to Publer will be on our show's page at Bandhive.rocks/142. That's the number 142. and set aside an hour to just schedule all your posts. And during that hour, that's all you're gonna focus on near posts for the next seven days. Now that you have that reminder on your calendar, chances are you're gonna be more consistent posting on social media because you have that reminder every week to take this time, set it aside [00:03:00] and work on your social media.

Now you still have to execute that plan , but it's a lot easier if you have that consistent time. Cuz you don't think, oh, I can do this tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it tomorrow and keep delaying it when it's like, oh it's Monday. I have to do this. That doesn't mean you don't have to make content.

You still have to make your content and plan everything out. But you're one step closer and you can do this for any task that repeats or doesn't repeat, but it's easier to get it started and form the good habits with a repeating task. The next thing you wanna do is cut out as much wasted time as possible All you can do is take about 30 minutes to look at what you do on a weekly basis. So look at how much time you spend on video games, TV going out, whatever it is you're doing with your quote unquote spare. and look at what would happen if you reduced the time you spend on those non-essential activities by an hour a day, and use that time for your band or your music instead.

basically, if you do an hour every day, that's seven hours per [00:04:00] week, which is an entire Workday. If you factor in, you know, like an hour for lunch, that could be an absolutely massive difference. If you spend that time on something productive, instead of again, playing video games, watching TV or going out.

So why not do that? You've just given yourself an extra Workday that you don't owe to anyone. You're now able to use that for your career, for your band, for your business. What's better than that. Now, granted, you're not gonna sit down and work on this for seven hours in a row, but you are going to take that one hour per day and say, during this hour, it's on my calendar.

This is my productive time to work on my music, my business, my band. The next thing we have to do is understand why we don't have time. If you spend a lot of time doing those things, like going out, playing games, watching TV or any other kind of like habit that sucks your time. It could be social media scrolling through TikTok, whatever it is.

The [00:05:00] next thing to do is to figure out why you have so much free time that you're wasting on those activities. So maybe you're binging TV shows or video games is a form of escapism. You're trying to get out of what you're feeling of what your life is. Maybe you go out every night because you feel unfulfilled in life and you need social interaction constantly to feel validated.

Maybe you relax, but you're not actually relaxing. You're just going through social media posts, scrolling, aimless. No matter what it is. There's so many different scenarios and causes for those scenarios. if you can figure out the root cause you're gonna be able to navigate those roadblocks a lot more effectively to make time for yourself and for your music, which results in the outcome that you're gonna have more time for your music and your music related tasks.

So that's the outcome. If you do these things, you determine what's holding you back, how to more effectively manage your time, then you're gonna have more time. If you schedule your [00:06:00] time and reduce waste of time, you have that extra time to focus more on the things you need to do, which will allow you to become a better musician and move your career forward.

It'll also give you a fresher mind because if you're zombie out watching TV, playing games, social media, whatever you're gonna feel, healthier studies have repeatedly shown. If you procrastinate that leads to binging, which leads to a poorer image of yourself, which causes more procrastination and more binge watching.

It's an endless cycle. So you don't want that to happen. But if you fall into that rut, it's incredibly difficult to get out of it. Unless you take a step back and analyze why this is happen.

And put together a solid plan to get out of it. So, like I said, you can put stuff on your calendar, you can also set up to-do list. It's a great app. I use it all the time and it basically runs my day. Everything I do every single day is on to do list, which is basically a to-do list. And using that I can put [00:07:00] in specific actions for every time of the day during my working hours.

it helps so much. Just managing your life with a few simple tools, you can use whatever app you want. I use to dos and Google calendar. If you wanna use something else, that's up to you, by keeping these good habits or creating these good habits and then keeping them, you're gonna see long term growth, because if you have good time management skills and form those habits to hold yourself accountable in the long.

You're gonna be more likely to consistently put effort into your career, which means that you're gonna have more growth over time than other artists who put in the bare minimum amount of work.

So to sum all this up, plan out your time, don't waste your time and figure out why you do waste time. if you do those three things, you're gonna become a much more effective artist.

That does it for this episode of the Bandhive Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. I really appreciate it. And I hope that this quick episode has [00:08:00] given you some time to go implement this. I purposely kept this one really short because it doesn't need to be any longer.

It just needs to be a little motivation to get you started informing those good habits. So if you have any questions about this, Don't go to social media. I know every episode I say, go to our Facebook group. I'm not gonna say that today. We're trying to keep you off of social media.

Instead, if you have questions, hit me up directly. James Bandhive.rocks is my email. That's RO C Ks James Bandhive.rocks next week. I'll welcome you back to our Facebook community. But for this episode, I'm not gonna send you there, cuz I want to keep you off of social media and keep you from wasting time.

Even though our community is not a time waster, it's so easy to get distracted. As soon as you log into Facebook, we'll be back next Tuesday at 6:00 AM Eastern time with another brand new episode of the Bandhive Podcast, until then I hope you have a great week, stay safe. And of course, as always key for rockin'.