Surviving The Musician's To-Do List

How to get it done when there's too much on the list

(On tour with my bandmate, Cy)

I’ve been in to-do list hell lately.

My band, Tattletale Saints, is releasing a new album and planning an 18-date tour of New Zealand. We had a single come out yesterday, another in two weeks, and the album release is 3/3, the day before the tour starts.

We’ve been organizing distribution, pressing, merch, playlist pitch copy, social media content, and all the tour details, while I’ve also been recording the first batch of podcast episodes with Cassie, learning songs for a short tour I’m filling in on, and working on my book.

It’s all fun stuff that I’m excited about, but you can be excited about something and still incredibly overwhelmed by it. To say I’ve struggled some days would be a massive understatement.

This is our fourth studio release and something like our eighth New Zealand tour, so I know what these endeavors take. Yet many days, I feel so crushed by my to-do list; I have to use breathing techniques to slow my heart and calm my bubbling anxiety.

The productivity hacks in today’s piece are all things I use every. single. day.

Lately, they’ve been less about streamlining or achieving more but rather a matter of survival.

These “hacks” make a big difference in how much I get done in my workday, and finding them started with getting honest with myself about a few things:

• I usually have more to do than I have time for

• I’m very easily distracted

• I need quiet to write and music to design visuals

• If I leave the Facebook tab open on my browser while working, I will check it, even if I 100% believe I won’t

• I can’t simply will myself to get my work done, I have to employ sneaky tactics to trick myself into staying on task

If you’re a procrastinator, easily distracted, or constantly overwhelmed by your to-do list, these are for you.

1. Time Blocking

What: Time blocking is looking at the things on my daily task list and blocking out specific chunks of time for each.

Why: Time blocking works because I’m incredibly deadline motivated, and even a self-imposed deadline seems to light a fire under my ass. It also means that when I get distracted and forget what I’m supposed to be doing, I can quickly toggle back to my calendar and see where I am in the day.

How: At the start of each day, I open the rolling to-do list on the notes app on my phone (you know, the one that only seems to get longer no matter how many items you check off) and make a shorter list of what I need to get done that day. This helps me prioritize what is most urgent and ensures that things don’t get added to the list at 4 am and then forgotten about forever.

The key is to be realistic about how long tasks will take and include a buffer for unexpected calls or emails.

For example, if today I had some admin for our New Zealand tour, a Substack to write, and some songs to practice, I would time block my day like this:

Tips: I make sure to put the creative writing in the morning because that’s when I think the best. I Include four email blocks that act as a buffer to accommodate unexpected calls and emails. I also prioritize the start time of each new block, so if my Tour Admin block at 1pm dribbled over into the Emails block at 3pm, I would still start Song Practice at 3:30pm, knowing that I can catch up on emails in the block at 4:30pm.

Color coding helps me separate work from life stuff, but it’s not essential.

2. Grammarly

What: Grammarly is a free online writing assistant.

Why: It’s the fastest way to fix spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, and the free subscription helps you quickly fix emails, documents, and social media posts to prevent sending or posting mistakes. The app integrates into the programs you already use, and the free version also has tone detection, helping you sound confident and either warm, neutral, or cold - depending on who you’re talking to!

I recently upgraded to Premium, and it’s one subscription I never regret. For $25 a month, it also aids me with clarity and engagement (i.e., “this sentence is hard to understand, what about this instead” or “the tone of this paragraph is neutral, this version would add warmth”).

The feature I love the most is the inbuilt synonym suggestion feature, which helps me not use the same words repeatedly and makes my writing more compelling. For example, I just wrote, “this helps me not use the same words over and over and makes my writing more interesting”, and Grammarly suggested the version you saw above: repeatedly and compelling. Genius.

How: Grammarly has extensions compatible with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge browsers. Download the extension from the website, and you will see suggestions on your documents and any text in the browser (for example, I can see suggestions in my Substack editor).

If you click on the extension, you can choose settings like language and suggestions you want to see.

Tips: If you don’t see any suggestions, it’s likely not that your writing is perfect (sorry) but more probable that the page needs to be refreshed or the extension turned on.

3. Google Chrome Profiles

What: Setting up Google chrome profiles for all the different email addresses you use for personal and business.

Why: People might do this if multiple people use the same computer but want separate online workspaces complete with bookmarks, saved settings, and tabs. However, I use the function to create entire workspaces for each of the businesses, bands, or “mindsets” I need to switch between throughout the day. I don’t mean email addresses, I mean entire profiles for each email address. For example, I have one for Tattletale Saints, one for my podcast with Cassie, one for coaching, one for my music work, and one for my work on Jake’s business. It sounds excessive, but it is a massive help in keeping me focused on one thing at a time. No more thinking, what email address did I send that from, or which Google drive is that file saved to? All the files are right there, saved to the bookmarks folder for the profile I’m working on.

How: Follow the pathway Chrome/ Profiles/ Add profile and log into each of your Gmail accounts as a new profile. Each profile is set up with all the bookmarks relating to that work, frequently used files saved and easy to find, and each time I open it, all the previously open tabs are there. If you’ve blocked time in the day for work on a few different businesses or bands, closing the previous profile and opening the new one clears your mental slate and allows you to change gears. This is the best way I’ve found to get into the headspace for each business or project quickly and stop myself from being distracted by notifications for things unrelated to what I’m working on.

Tips: If you choose to “sync the profile”, then if you open it on a borrowed computer, all your settings/bookmarks/saved files will show up there as well.

4. Newsfeed Eradicator

What: Using a Newsfeed Eradicator is excellent if you need to use social media for work (like most musicians) but get sucked into doom-scrolling the newsfeed.

Why: You’ll still be able to see your pages and groups and reply to your posts, but you won’t get stuck looking at vacation photos of someone from high school you barely remember. No matter my best intentions for not wasting time on the newsfeed, if I don’t have this extension activated, I do. Jumping in to post something and getting out without getting embroiled in some online drama that doesn’t concern you is almost impossible, so stop relying on willpower and use this tool instead.

How: Download the Chrome extension here and choose which sites to “eradicate”.

When you go to Facebook or one of the other sites next, you’ll see a nice quote in the place of the feed of garbage usually waiting to waste your afternoon.

Tips: Another option is posting to your pages using Facebook Business Suite or Creator Studio. You can still reply to messages and comments, but it keeps you away from the actual website and all its distractions.

Bonus tip: On Instagram, another option for staying focused is using your “favorites” to curate a feed of posts by only the accounts you want to engage with. You could use this for other musicians you want to build relationships with, industry folks, or accounts you like to learn from. Go to your Instagram feed, tap “Instagram” in the top left corner, tap Favorites, and engage with only the accounts you want.

The key to all this is taking control of what you’re engaging with daily to ensure you’re controlling it, not the other way around.

Removing temptations and distractions makes reaching your daily goals and big dreams less of a fantasy and more of an inevitability.

A note to readers:

I love putting hours into these weekly newsletters, and your feedback about how it helps you feel empowered and excited to step out into the music world and stake your claim on it.

I also believe paying the people you value for what they create is essential to a thriving creative community, so soon, I’m going to make three pieces per month just for paid subscribers while keeping subs low at $1.50 per week.

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Putting my money where my mouth is, here are the newsletters I value enough to pay for: Ted Gioia’s The Honest Broker (music industry commentary), The Hyphen by Emma Gannon (a lifestyle literary newsletter), Unschool For Writers (writing tips and community), and Something To Say (insight into the literary world of agents and publishers).

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