Tips for music students who will be coping with a very busy fall schedule
First Tip
Oftentimes as music students, your schedules are packed. You have to balance a full-time course load, homework, at least 3 – 4 hours of daily practice with your primary instrument, and concert attendance, to name a few tasks. To manage such a demanding schedule, you should optimize your planner use. Whether you need to start using a planner or you’re a habitual planner user, here are some suggestions the maximize its effectiveness.
A) Make sure your schedule and due dates are written down. Whether you are using electronic or paper planners, make sure you jot down all your important dates and appointments (including classes and rehearsals).
B) Refer, reflect, and fine-tune your schedule daily. This will allow you to make periodic changes as your demands change throughout your day.
C) Routinize your schedule as much as possible. Routines reduce the cognitive energy you expend towards thinking about your day and allow you to redirect it to more important tasks.
D) Last but most importantly, make sure you schedule moments of pleasure, rest, & self-care. Healthy eating and sleeping habits are essential to your cognitive functioning and productivity. Further, all work and no play indeed makes Mozart a dull boy. A schedule without moments of fun and pleasure is a sure-fire way to quickly burnout and makes your work time less efficient. Make sure you schedule moments to breathe and enjoy your friends and family.
Second Tip
My second tip is related to my first tip. When you are planning your schedule try to be realistic about what you are able to accomplish in a day, week etc. Sometimes we have a tendency to over book ourselves. If you find yourself feeling overworked or missing deadlines, rather than ascribing it to your identity, non-judgmentally look at your schedule and rework points where you may have overcommitted or maybe were too ambitious.
Third Tip
Incorporate emotion regulation and stress management skills into your routine. There are a lot of skills out there that help to regulate/reduce stress and anxiety. Find the skills and activities that are salient to you and add them to your tool bag. Mindfulness exercises can be really useful here. They can take as little as 5 minutes to complete. Exercise, mobility stretching, and yoga can help with long-term stress management. In moments of high stress, breathing exercises can be used to reduce the physiological impact of your stress quickly. I particularly think using long tone exercises and warm-ups to focus on breath, tone, and relaxed/fluid muscle movements is are good way to be mindful while improving your musicality. Like all regulation tasks, it may not be for everyone, but I think it is for those who struggle with mindfulness. This can act as an alternative way to incorporate some of those techniques.
Bonus Tip: This tip is specifically for musicians. It can be hard to transition from music for pleasure to music for work. We will have a fuller discussion on this challenge later, but it’s important to find ways to make music for pleasure rather than for school/work. Find a musical activity that you can engage in, not connected to your profession, that can nurture your original passion, which attracted you to the field in the first place.