On Juggling: 10 Ways to Get Through Insane Times

photo credit: garryknight

I haven’t been writing here much lately. Here’s why.

In the last month, I’ve overseen thirty fantastic public sound art projects by my fifteen students, and put together a large exhibit and reception for them. I’ve taken part in a fascinating and demanding weekly academic seminar with colleagues who have opened my mind to all kinds of interesting ideas.  I’ve created an eight-channel surround sound installation of my Beach Boys deconstruction, Ton Yam I, for the Open Ears Festival in Canada – my first real foray into surround sound. I’ve restaged my multimedia musical performance, Parallel Lives, with the inimitable Margaret Lancaster and Hillary Spector, and created brand-new high definition video for it – my first real foray into HD. I’ve created a laptop improvisation,  Remember/Wake Up, based on field recordings I made while traveling through Laos in January. And while all this was happening, I invited two good friends and artists, riot grrl author Sara Marcus and digital wunderkind Samson Young, to visit my university, present their work, and stay in my house. I ended the month with a whirlwind trip to an out-of-state family wedding, stopping halfway to meet with a mentor on the way back. And finally, today, I am home.

I’m not bragging. I’m exhausted. My class’s Sonic Psychogeographies exhibit on Friday night punctuated the last teaching day of my two-year contract with my university. I have learned a ton and worked with some fabulous people here: colleagues, staff and students. It’s been really fun.

And now I could use a nap.

I’m looking forward to having the time to return to Greenhouser. I’m excited about where it might lead. And though I will be employed till June 30th, after that I’m on my own. No longer affiliated with an institution. Ready to teach all kinds of people. Ready to make all kinds of crazy ideas happen.

Since I seem to have survived being underwater for so long, I thought I’d write a bit about the experience of juggling seventeen projects at once – something which no one should be good at, something which you should avoid at all times, but something for which it’s handy to have a plan.

1. Prioritize the projects you care about the most. When a deadline arrives (the concert is in two days, the wedding is tomorrow, you only have six months to live), you suddenly make room for what’s important. That time you thought you didn’t have magically appears. Don’t wait for this to happen. What can you absolutely not drop (ie, the kids, your job, your big deadline)? What can you afford to drop temporarily (your email response time, administrative details, being up on the news)? Most importantly, who can you ask for help (see #6)? Also: I like to use the five year rule. Which of your actions will matter in five years? What will you be happiest you did? Will returning your colleague’s email on time or formatting the Powerpoint perfectly really matter as much as finally publishing your book?

2. Calm down. It’s so easy to be frantic when life is flying by and you feel like you are playing a game of Space Invaders by catching everything just in time. Write down all of the projects that absolutely have to happen. Write down their moving parts. Then just work on the project that’s due earliest, doing one thing at a time, to the best of your ability. Work in half-hour or hour-long chunks, and take real, off-the-computer breaks in between. These breaks are crucial. Don’t think too much. Just do what you need to do. And remember to breathe.

3. Take care of yourself. Like I said, take breaks every hour or so. Get enough sleep. Get outside for a few minutes. Move your body, if only to walk around the block. Laugh with a friend. Eat protein, fruits and vegetables. It’s easy to feel that your life is far too frenetic to do these things, when in fact they will pay you back many times over in clarity and focus and overall well-being. Plus, you know, the end goal is to be happy. It’s hard to do that when you’re exhausted, starving, and slumped over. And yes, I ate out at a lot last month: so what? A few dollars spent on salads instead of pizza can really pay off.

4. Do a good job, but don’t kill yourself. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I’m going to repeat this: the perfect is the enemy of the good. This is particularly important when you are, say, sending something to an editor, or collaborating with other folks. There’s a good chance that your hard-fought words, or photographs, or notes, will be changed anyway. Do the best job you can. And don’t kill yourself doing it. There will be other projects.

5. That said, be willing to strategically burn the midnight (or pre-dawn) oil. This is hard to write, and I will probably get in trouble for it. I so wish it weren’t true. And we all know that we operate much better when we have sufficient sleep. But. Sometimes, that’s not possible. And when it’s not, it’s important that you be strategic about it. Don’t pull an all-nighter the night before your performance, for example. Pull it three days earlier, when you’ll have time to catch up on your sleep. NOTE: Some people are early birds, some people are night owls. You probably have a sense of which one you are by now – but if you don’t, I suggest you conduct some experiments so that when the shit hits the fan, you have a sense of where you can squeeze a little extra juice from your life.

6. Ask for help. It’s easy to want to control every little last thing when you’re trying to make seven big projects happen at once. But you’re not going to be able to do it. Why not realize this early, and ask trusted folks to help you out, rather than wait until the last minute when you’ll have to ask the guy at Kinko’s for a humongous favor? If you can afford it, it’s usually well worth hiring someone to do some small part of your project that doesn’t require your creative energy. Asking for help also includes warning the people around you that you are in The Zone, and that you might not be (a) answering email, (b) doing the dishes, or (c) headlining Thursday night karaoke, as you normally do. Bonus: letting people help you gets them excited about your project and telling people how cool it is. Which leads us to #7.

7. Be sure to set aside time to get the word out! Sometimes when deadlines draw close and you’re not as far along as you’d hoped, it’s easy to forget to do publicity. Don’t make this mistake (and remember, the perfect is the enemy of the good). Perhaps there’s no longer time to make those gorgeous letterpress posters you’d imagined, but that doesn’t mean you can’t send an email blast out to friends and family, talk up your project on Twitter or start a Facebook event. Do whatever you can. It’s not much use creating this amazing thing if no one ever hears about it.

8. Remember, you’re only human. Juggling too many projects is rough. If you have to do it, go easy on yourself. Don’t beat yourself up if you drop some balls. Really. Everything will be okay. Give yourself props for doing as much as you have, and don’t be too bummed if your big project doesn’t match the grand vision you had for it in your mind. Like children, ideas grow and evolve as they make their way through the real world. This is a good thing. Treat your ideas like your kids.

9. Reward yourself when it’s over. And reward your people. Get a massage. Give yourself a day or two to goof off. Do something extra-nice for the people who have helped you – and make sure you’re available to help them when they run into their own zone of insanity. And once you’ve decompressed, gotten the car fixed, cleaned the house, and taken your loved ones out to an extra fancy lunch, you are ready for #10.

10. Please, please avoid this situation in the future if you possibly can. How? By focusing on only one project at a time. By scheduling projects on your calendar, and saying no to or postponing projects if their deadlines butt up against others. By gracefully bowing out of projects you don’t love, to make room for the ones you do. And by making your creative projects important from the get-go, rather than waiting until deadlines make them emergencies.

Good luck! Let me know how it goes.