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In this episode Travis breaks down the five productivity tips that help him find work life balance and still deliver on a high level for his clients.
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Credits:
Guest: N/A
Host: Travis Ference
Editor: Travis Ference
Theme Music: inter.ference
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If there's one thing that will keep you working in the music industry, it's following
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through on your word, aka getting
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done. And this video will help make sure that happens. Whether you're a
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full time audio professional already or working to get there,
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these five productivity tips will help you hit your deadlines and balance your
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life.
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Welcome back to the show. I'm Travis Farents, a Grammy nominated blah, blah, blah doesn't
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really matter for this one. What matters for this one is I work three days
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a week and I probably mix close to 200 songs a year while doing this
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podcast and YouTube channel and being a dad. There's a common
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misconception that hard work is better work and that if you're
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always working, then you must be productive. Now,
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there's no denying that putting hours of hard work in will get things
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done, but that definitely doesn't mean that you're productive. I've had seasons in my life
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where I cranked 18 hours days regularly, and they definitely helped me learn a lot
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and build my career to where it is today. But eventually, it's
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just not sustainable. And even if it was, are you really
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doing your best work on hour 17? So before we dive into these, I
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have to say that I am fully a productivity nerd, but I am also
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not perfect at times. I've taken these productivity hacks so far
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that I think they've actually made me less productive. But these five tips
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have proven to help me every time when I do them, and
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that's the key. You've got to do this stuff. If you can't
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sit here and commit to actually trying these things, then you should probably just click
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on to whatever the latest plugin review is. So with that,
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onto the five tips that I do every day that help me
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deliver for my clients. First up, have a plan.
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Nothing says failure to launch like walking into your studio with no
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clue what you're gonna do that day. When I sit down at the computer without
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a game plan, I immediately find myself in my email or
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down some rabbit hole checking out some piece of gear or productivity trick,
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which is pretty ironic, right? But my most
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productive days start the day before I try to stay in the habit of
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having a shutdown routine to help me close out my day. And part of that
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routine is to look at what I was trying to get done that day and
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decide what I need to focus on for the next day. And the bonus to
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this is that it helps keep overwhelm at bay when you've
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got an open loop, like not knowing when you'll find time to finish something.
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Then you have this constant layer of stress just wearing you down
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a little bit minute by minute. But if you
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end your day by planning the next, you can rest easy that
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night knowing that you've made time for everything. The last piece
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of the have a plan equation is that you need to know what your priorities
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are. And remember that priorities are not always goals. Goals
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are often more long term. Example, one of my goals right now
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is to hit ten k subs on this channel,
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but that's not a priority. I have a priority based on that goal,
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which is to put out the best content I can once a week. Now
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this is a good time to pause the video and ask yourself, what are
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my top three priorities? And more importantly, are they reflected
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on your calendar? How would they be reflected on your calendar, you ask? Well, because
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you do some form of time blocking, right? Which is our second tip.
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Time blocking is the act of putting actual blocks of time in your calendar
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for specific tasks or projects, essentially planning your day
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from start to finish based on what you need to get done. Now, from my
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experience, it is possible to overdo this and also very possible to
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underdo it. I've tried going over the top blocking five minute intervals and
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entering stuff like drive time or lunch into my calendar. When I went that far,
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I found that I was mostly just wasting time physically entering all of these
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things. And on the other side of that, I've put general blocks in my
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calendar for 4 hours that just say podcast, and I find that leads
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to very little forward progress because it's so vague.
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When you time block, it has to at least be specific enough for you
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to know what you're supposed to do during that block. Now, there is a
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huge caveat to time blocking though, which is that you need to
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understand how long things take you. Otherwise you'll be planning an
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unrealistic day. And that's pretty self defeating when you never get what you need to
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get done. I've spent years running a timer while doing projects, so I have a
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pretty good idea of how long things take me. Let's look at a mix. For
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example, I know that I need about 6 hours, give or take, to get a
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solid first mix ready to go out to the client. I'll typically break that up
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into two days, probably two three hour blocks. And do things take
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longer? Sometimes, definitely regularly. But
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rarely do they take double or triple my expectations. A couple hours here
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or there is easy enough to manage if you're doing some kind of
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end of day planning routine. Now, the answer to why time blocking
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works lies in Parkinson's law, which states that
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work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This is
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essentially why we're always racing to hit a deadline, even if the project has
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been going for weeks. If you don't set bounds on the work,
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it'll drag on. I experienced the power of setting time bounds
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firsthand when my daughter was super young. You'd be surprised how much
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you can get done during a two hour infant nap if you set out with
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a plan for that time. So, to summarize, if you understand your time and
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block things in your calendar properly, then you can avoid overcommitting yourself.
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And when you get really good at time blocking, schedule yourself some
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downtime, which is our third tip. If you want to be more
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productive, then you've got to be operating at your best.
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The only way to do that is to actually take time off to
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rest. If you push yourself to the limit every day, I
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guarantee that you are not getting work done as fast or as well as you
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could if you weren't. This quote from Greg McKeown is a pretty good rule
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of thumb. Don't do more today than you can completely
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recover from tomorrow. I caught that in an interview he did with Matt D'Avella,
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I think, and they were discussing his new book, effortless, which was immediately added
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to my reading list. And in that conversation he brought up a concept that really
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resonated with me. He mentioned having not just a lower bound for
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the amount of work, but also an upper bound, basically a
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maximum. And he used an example from history, which was super interesting.
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Two teams of explorers racing to be the first to reach the South
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Pole. One, a british team who basically trekked as far as they
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could every single day, regardless of the weather. And a norwegian
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team who did no more than 15 miles every day,
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even if they were physically able to. So by having that upper
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bound, the norwegian team maintained a steady pace for
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the entire journey and ultimately reached the South Pole
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first, more than 30 days before the british team did. But more
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importantly, they also had the energy and stamina to
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return to their ship, unlike the british team,
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who never made it back from the South Pole. Now that's obviously an
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extreme example, but I think the point is pretty clear. In today's
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super connected world, it has never been more important to make sure that you are
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eventually done for the day. You need that upper bound so
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that you can go home and recharge. And by the way, leaving the
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studio and then checking your email on the couch all night, that doesn't
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count. That keeps your brain in work mode the whole time. And I'm super guilty
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of this. I often think about work long after I'm done, but I have
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found that when I'm diligent about doing my shutdown routine,
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I'm way more likely to actually be done working and be present for my
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family. So you've got to close those open loops for yourself. Which brings us
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to the next tip. Write things down. Now, it
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sounds basic, but we just don't really do it. Here's an example.
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What's the next thing you need to do for a current project? Who do you
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need to text back? What do you need to invoice for? What do you currently
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need from the grocery store? Okay, so how many of those things
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I just mentioned do you have written down? If you had all that bouncing around
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your head, then I'm guessing you also complain about having a hard time focusing.
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David Allen, one of the OG productivity authors, says it best with
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the mind is for having ideas, not holding them. Our brains
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might be super powerful, but psychologists suggest that they function best
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when only focusing on a few things, like two or three. So
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if you want to be more effective at everything you're doing, then you don't want
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to be storing every commitment and task you have in your mind.
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Get all those things down on paper, calendar, or in a task manager
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so that you can focus on the task at hand without your mind telling you
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to get milk on the way home. Anytime I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed, it's
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usually because I need to do a huge task brain dump. Getting
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all that down into a database and then assigning a time to do it
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immediately relieves a ton of stress. So as you can
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see, this is where all these steps start to come together.
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If you're planning and in control of your schedule and you have a trusted to
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do list, it all starts to snowball into actually becoming
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more productive. And lastly, you've got to do
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focused work. If pro tools crashes, the first thing I
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do is grab my phone and start swiping,
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which is probably the worst thing I could do. I was in the zone
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and now I'm going to wander down 30 different rabbit holes. Here's a
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shocking statistic that I think will really hammer the importance of this home. It
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takes an average of 23 minutes to
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refocus after a distraction, so that computer glitch and
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swipe fest essentially just cost me a half hour, which is pretty
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crazy. So here's what you do. Don't check your email while you're in the
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middle of one of your work blocks. In fact, make a time block for
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checking email, because it is the ultimate distraction. Next,
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silence your phone. Better yet, leave it in another room or on the couch
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behind you. Now, a lot of people might say I can't silence my phone. What
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if my kids school calls or something like that? If you've got an iPhone,
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the focus modes are now customizable. They have been for a while. I have one
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called work. The only notifications that come through are from my
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wife, my parents, and the home security and babycam apps. Remember,
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99% of the notifications that pop up on your device are
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not urgent, and they can for sure wait until you are out of
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your deep work block. I mentioned earlier how much work I could get done during
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one of my daughter's naps. This is why I had so little focused work
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time then that I had to be sure that there were zero interruptions.
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So now that you're a more productive music professional, it is time to fast track
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your career. Shave a couple years off your journey with this video here.
Here are some great episodes to start with.
