Daily Archives: May 19, 2007

Recently, I came across an article called “50 ways to increase productivity.” Inspired by this, I took a look at a few things that aren’t on this list that help me with productitivity in the studio. After all, the creative process can be lonely and tiresome and large tasks seem like they will never be completed. Here are my top 5 tips:

1. Use a paper-based desk pad. These desk pads are modeled after those large writing pads you see on easels in board rooms or “Win, Lose or Draw”. The idea is that you can make boxes around groups of tasks and then dilleniate the smaller tasks more frequently. Try to make those sub tasks about even in “time weight” so that you don’t have to work for hour just to scratch off a single thing! For example, don’t just have “finish mixing song A”. Instead, break it down and think about what you really need to accomplish with song A. Maybe instead you should have a few smaller tasks like “set trumpet part better in mix” and “adjust panning and reverb for more depth” and “edit bass part for better sync”, etc. It is extremely satisfying then to me to be able to cross things out as I go and see from a quick visual perspective how far I’ve come that day!
2. Put long term goals somewhere else, but still visible. The things on your pad should be ONLY things you plan to get done that day. That way, you can always go to bed feeling like you conquered the world today! For more long range things (with fat ambiguous names) I put these in various places, such as on stickie notes hanging like stray whiskers from my iMac monitor. It drives me insane, so I love the feeling of transferring one of those tasks to the pad for the day and tossing those out! (more…)