How to Stay Present and Reduce Stress for Musicians

Greetings and welcome back! As we all embark on the busiest time of the year, I wanted to share with you some of the strategies that I use to not only survive, but thrive during this push towards the new year. What’s my secret? Maintaining a stable mental space and minimizing anxiety.

The last two months of the year can be an incredibly taxing time with stressors like the holidays, travel, auditions, finals, juries, audition tapes, and more, and it can be easy to shift into survival mode until New Years’. However this time can also be incredibly rewarding if you stay organized and focused on your goals and intentions. Here are my strategies to having a productive and stress-free end of the year:

Self Care

It’s no coincidence that this is the first item on the list. Your first priority should always be to your physical and mental health, but unfortunately it’s usually the first to go when things get tough and time becomes harder to come by. Personal development and professional success often go hand in hand, so if you take one thing from this post, take care of yourself.

There are four main ways that I practice self-care on a regular basis, which are unassailable to my routine:

• 8 hours — every night

  • I know. Every night? Getting enough sleep, and more importantly getting consistent sleep is the only thing that keeps me going all day. As a regular coffee drinker, trust me when I say that it’s no substitute for getting enough sleep.

• Healthy eating

  • If there’s one thing I’ve learned in college, it’s that if I feel like crap, I work like crap. Choosing to pick healthier options and balance my diet keeps me feeling healthy, and tends to come with other health benefits, like getting sick less often.

• Regular exercise

  • I wrote an entire blog about this one recently, so I won’t go into too much detail, but regular exercise relieves stress, improves mood, and comes with a whole host of health benefits. Even 20 minutes of exercise 3-4 times a week make a huge difference!

• Taking breaks

  • It may seem counterproductive in the moment, but taking breaks often actually increases productivity! I like to break up my practicing or studying by working for 30-45 minutes, then resting 15-20 minutes. Like rebooting a computer, I often come back refreshed and with a better focus on the task at hand.

Plan Ahead

A lot of deadlines creep up on us simply because we forget that they exist. I'm a total freak about planning and making sure I know exactly what I have to do day to day. In fact, my friends will often see me making plans in my:

• Calendar

• Google/Phone Calendar

• Planner

• To Do list/Spreadsheet

• Sticky notes...everywhere

It can take some setup and a little while to create the habit, but scheduling all of my commitments and planning my whole day in advance has taken a huge weight off my shoulders.

When you’re shopping for a planner, I highly recommend one that lets you plan hour to hour each day -- having each event in a row one after another and knowing the precise time to be there frees up your mind to think about more important things.

Time Management

It may sound like I’m beating a dead horse, but the most effective strategy I’ve found to manage my time is getting and using a planner. Often, I can plan an entire week at a time and fill in smaller details the day before so that I never have to worry about what’s next or if something in my schedule was changed. Don’t forget to schedule breaks!

Front-Loading

One of the traps that I often fall for if I’m not careful is putting off my big projects until the last minute. I get so caught up in my day to day tasks that before I know it, I have some huge assignment or recording due in just a few days and I have to drop everything to finish that in time. The easiest and most effective way to avoid this problem is front-loading my work, or doing as much as I can as soon as it's assigned in order to free up my time later. And nothing beats the thrill of turning in a project or a recording the week before it’s due. I can’t stress enough how much front-loading work has changed my life for the better!

What strategies have you used to stay at the top of your game during the holidays? Where are you traveling? What are your intentions? I’d love to hear about them! As usual, if you have any questions or want to share your thoughts about today’s post, don’t hesitate to DM me on social media or Contact Me. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to my email list to get notified when I post my next blog!