Magma Music

Don’t try to do everything in one night

December 2nd, 2008

Break up your tasks into 1-2 hour sub-tasks, or you’ll get overwhelmed and burnt out

I often will list out several tasks that need to get done.  For example:

• Contact college and non-commercial radio spinning the new record
• Followup with national blogs about new record
• Followup with NYC press about release party

Those looks like tasks that can be easily tackled.  The problem is that each one may have more layers than what you see on the surface.  If you take the first task to follow up with radio, for instance.  I grab my list of stations to followup with;  let’s say it’s 120 stations.  I don’t have any contact information for any of these radio stations.

So I start out on my task and I begin by searching for the stations online.  I find that some of them have web sites, some have contact forms, some have email addresses, some have MySpace pages, some have Facebook profiles, or any combination of those methods of contact.  Next, I need to determine what I’m going to keep track of.  Do I just email them?  Should I add them as a friend?  Should I send them a message now? If I start sending messages and friending them right away, it’ll take me an hour to get 10 of them done.

I need to break this task up. I determine that all I’m going to do in this first sub-task is to collect contact information.  If they have an email address or contact form, I’ll store that (in a wonderful sortable spreadsheet, which I’ll describe later).  If they also have MySpace and/or Facebook, I’ll store that as well.  As I get going, I realize that it’s still taking about an hour to get 20-25 sets of contact info.  So I set my sights on 50 contacts for the first sub-task.  When I get to 50, I feel accomplished and not overwhelmed.

If I hadn’t broken them up, it would’ve taken me 2 days straight to get all the info and to contact the stations.  This way, I can complete the contact info collection in 1 or 2 more sub-tasks and then move onto the actual followup (which should also be split up into 2 or 3 tasks).

Another benefit to this approach is sticking with the overall task.  If I tried to do it all at once, I’d be doing a LOT of boring work in a row and my mind would wander onto the next big task, and I’d also question if my approach to this task made sense.  If I stick with 1-2 hour sub-tasks, I have a goal that keeps me motivated and keeps me on task.  Between sub-tasks is a good time to lay out some more big tasks.

Ah, now I’ve finished my sub-task for “write blog on splitting tasks into sub-tasks” and I feel accomplished.  Another brick in the wall of the big task of “write blogs to help others manage and market musicians and bands”.

Entry Filed under: Techniques