Procrastination is the action of delaying or postponing something. People are world class procrastinators and we musicians rule them all! Let’s see how this affects us and our everyday life.

Why do we do this?

The main problem is in ourselves. Our brain loves it when we run on autopilot: daily routine, nothing special, nothing new to process, nothing to stress about. But every new task that we’re dealing with is a stressful thing for us and our brain. Usually it’s something new that we’ve never done before and we’re a bit scared of the task which provokes stress. So, what do we do? We try to avoid the stress and we go and do something else instead. Or we postpone it. Or both. You surely know the famous sentence: “I’ll do that tomorrow.” Yeah, right!

It’s the one thing that it’s unique to us and for example animals don’t do: we think about the future! Animals don’t! Let’s say you have a herd of zebras and they’re drinking from a water hole with crocodiles in it. When a crocodile grabs one of the zebras the whole herd is in stress. But when they see that the crocodile got his prey and they are good for the day, they all calm down again. We humans can’t do that. We immediately think what will happen tomorrow when we come to drink again so we are already stressing out about a thing that’s not even happened yet! It’s build in our brain!
And the procrastination in our life as a musician comes exactly from this place: “I’m not good enough for this!” or “Everything I do is crap!” or “Are people going to like this?” As a matter of fact we’re thinking about these “problems” before any of the work is done or even started yet.

The second thing that we have to understand is that procrastination has nothing to do with time management, it has to do with managing negative moods around a task! We don’t like and want to deal with self-doubt, insecurity, frustration, resentment, even anxiety and more. But exactly these emotions come up when we think about the upcoming task so our brain wants to “manage and repair” them and make us put the task away. The worst thing about this is that we immediately feel better so we are actually being rewarded for procrastinating! And we know something for sure: always when we’re rewarded for something, we tend to do it again…

What to do?

Well, different things work for different people but some of them work for almost everybody.

Usually it starts like this: we take a look at our task and think that it’s too difficult. We then conclude that we don’t have the knowledge and/or skills to complete it so it will take a lot of time. And if we still do it we’re scared that everybody will see how we screwed up. The solution: procrastination!

Let’s take this down one by one.

Every new thing in life is more or less difficult. The more times you do it, the better off you are and you also learn how to do it better. With more skill, time is also reduced, so it leaves us with the last problem: fear. Let me tell you a secret: everybody screws up from time to time, especially at the beginning! It’s just the way it is! Don’t make a big deal out of it and keep working. You’ll get better at it and so will your work. Here are some simple tips:

• Find a time slot when you can work on your music every day. It is very important that you show up every day and do it. This way you will establish a routine and with the time everything becomes easier, better and not to forget – more enjoyable!
• Don’t be too strict with your To-Do list. You can write a list of things you want to accomplish but don’t try to force it. Let’s say you want to finish the song that you started yesterday. Give yourself 10-15 minutes. If you “fall in” again then just keep going. But if you don’t make any progress in this time just let it be. Don’t push it! Take another task from your list and do that instead…
• Always take some time to improve your skills on instrument/voice, songwriting, arranging and even learning some new piece of software that you need for you music. That will later shorten your time needed for the project and the quality of your work will also get much better.
• At the end of every session take a minute and look back at your today’s work. Reward yourself for the good job that you’ve done and write down everything that you can do better tomorrow.
• If you have somebody you trust, show him/her your work and ask for opinion and maybe some tips. But it should be somebody who will tell you the truth and not your mom or dad (sorry mom!) – they’ll always tell you how great you are… 😜

At the end there’s this last enemy that I want to mention separately: the perfection!
A lot of musicians don’t publish their work because it’s not “perfect” yet! What does that mean?! “Well, there’s always something to improve.” Yeah, there is! Billy Joel once said that a song was never finished and he was right! You just write, arrange and record it and that’s the song in that moment in time. If you want to change something, you can do that later for your live concerts and give your audience something fresh.

Once again: don’t overthink it! You can’t and you won’t do EVERYTHING right EVERY time! It’s impossible to eradicate all the mistakes. And oftentimes the mistakes are the good thing so you better leave the good ones in. So, how do you know that your work is finished? Ok, let’s say it’s a song. You have your mixed song and you play it on your studio sound system or your stereo or boombox or whatever. Put the loudness waaay down so you can barely hear everything. Press play and listen through the whole (!) song. At the end write down if anything jumped into you. Can you hear everything? Is something much louder than everything else? Should it be that way? Things like that. Don’t bother yourself with guitar or synth parts – it’s too late for that…
Then put the loudness back to normal listening level, press play and leave the room. Leave the door open and listen to the song outside. When it’s finished go in and write down your impressions this time. Same questions. Compare the two lists. If there are any common problems, go and solve them in the mix. If they are all different, I think you’re good.

The last tip: you should invest some money in a good mastering engineer. You’ll get a fresh pair of very well trained ears, he/she will definitely make your song better and most of them will even tell you if you have to correct something in your mix before they master it. A good one is worth every penny invested…

Now, go and make some great music – today!