After the birth of my second son, there were many days where I longed to be sitting in my studio writing and recording music. I missed the process of being creative and the magical feeling you get when an idea evolves in to a 2-minute composition! I missed playing my instruments, wearing my head phones and pressing record, I missed mixing and editing BUT I’m so glad I had time away from writing because when I returned I felt so energised and excited to start the process again! However, I’ve never written an album before with so little time in the week to actually write it! The only allocated writing time I had-in-between a little child care from nanny and daddy-was when the little munchkin napped and as all parents of baby’s know, naps can fluctuate in both time and duration! My main window of opportunity was around 9am-11am, 2-3 times a week. As soon as his little eyes closed and he went off to the land of nod, I would seize my writing opportunity, and thus begun ‘the nap time album’!
Just over three months later, I completed my ten-track album and felt super proud of what I had managed to accomplish with little sleep and little writing time.
My conclusion today is to encourage you not to obsess about how many hours you’ve worked in a day, but moreover to reflect about how efficient you’ve been during those working hours. Perhaps if I was working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week I could have completed my album in half the time, but maybe not…perhaps I would have only been using my time efficiently for 2 hours each day, so may be there’s no benefit after all to having more time during the day dedicated to work. Anyway, this is just my humble opinion and I accept everyone works differently, but next time you find yourself twiddling your thumbs or staring out to space during your workday, maybe take 10 minutes out to regain your focus. It’s really hard to work mindfully and efficiently for a whole day so how about we all give ourselves a break!!
