Time Management
Effective time management is a complex subject. Whole books could - and indeed have! - been written about this subject. This page is a necessarily brief summary - but time management is crucial for musicians in setting up effective practice schedules.
There are two basic components of time management:-
1) Making a schedule of existing time usage
2) Making a schedule of proposed time usage INCLUDING finding blocks of time that can be set aside for practicing.
Scheduling existing time usage
You can use a spread sheet for this (if you want to do it on your computer) or use ruled sheets of paper. You probably need to look at about 7 days to give you a good idea of how you spend your time.
Head up your first day and divide it into 48 half hour slots - and label all the hours (1 am, 2 am, 3 am etc etc.) Then simply make notes on your computer or your sheets of paper about what you do in each half hour block.
Do this for 7 days. Then you're ready for:
Making a schedule of proposed time usage for the upcoming week
Take a new series of daily sheets. Blank out anything that you absolutely have to do to survive - eg eat, go to work, sleep, go to college, etc etc. If you're like most people you'll find you have maybe a block or two of time BEFORE you go to work, college etc and some blocks in the late afternoon/early evening after your main activity but before sleep.
Now go through your schedule of activities and cross out any time blocks for activities that you have to do (eg band rehearsal! Gigs!)
Any time units
not crossed out are the blocks of time you potentially have to practice.
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