Communication and Organisation Schedule

Being self employed or freelance very often means to be a one man show in every regard, Only very few composers can or want to afford having one or more permanent assistant(s) and even if you can, certain "non-composing tasks" will always land on your table.

It is essential to realize that you need to plan in "communication and organisation" into your daily schedule. At a certain point of professionalism or level of workload, you simply can't ignore the amount of time these things take out of your daily work schedule.

From my own experience, I remember that when I started out and only had a few projects to take care of it wasn't much of a deal to spend a few minutes a day replying to emails or making a few phone calls. I kept seeing it like that for many years in spite of my workload and responsibility growing. When I started out, I was often just part of an orchestration team which of course is a rather easy job regarding the need to organize and communicate.

At the point when I reached a state where I had moved on to taking more responsibility with projects often being at the position where several strains of communication would run together, I remember days when I got up in the morning and took until noon to work through the communication and organisation of the day before I could start writing a single note.

At latest then I realized that this "I can do it in between on the side" attitude wouldn't work and just because I sat for 8 hours in front of the computer, it didn't mean that I would be writing music for 8 hours.

Many people in creative jobs tend to be available for communication most of their waking hours which in general often is essential as sometimes you simply need to react on something as quickly as possible. Especially when you are in the middle of a big project, being available for the client beyond usual "office hours" can save a bit of hassle as it can contribute to provide some general feeling of "I got this, don't worry" for them, which in return will make your life on the project easier.

Yet, simply acknowledging that you need to put a certain amount of time aside each day for these things and seeing them as part of your workday can help to relax your work. If you plan in for 6 hours of work and 2 hours of communication/organisation each day rather than 8 hours of work and ignoring the time you spend on communication/organisation, you're can prevent putting you under more stress than necessary.

If things on the organisational side run out of hand, it might be wise to hire an assistant, at least for a limited amount of time to take these things off your mind. With communication (epecially with clients) you usually can't outsource that as a direct communciation is vital most of the time.

And one general thing that I learned over years: a quick phone call can transport way more information in a shorter amount of time than writing an email for 30 minutes. So in spite of a phone call usually taking you more out of your work flow than an email, it might still be a better way to deal with things.

There are some tales of composers who unplug their communication lines during their creative work. I haven't met anybody yet who does that but people insist they know someone who knows someone who does that. In general, while it seems like a really attractive idea to unplug everything and just work creatively for several hours without interruption, I think this strategy really is incredibly problematic. Especially in times of the internet, things can change so quickly that going off grid for several hours on a major project might cause complete disaster. I remember several instanced in my professional career where the brief for a cue I started working on in the morning was being heavily altered, moved, replaced etc. while I was working on it and when I finished it in the evening, the cue didn't have anything in common anymore with what it started out to be in the beginning. In such situations, it is vital to remain available.

And of course, everybody can tell stories about clients that would call several times a day without really communicating anything important. It often is really tricky to deal with someone like this in a polite yet direct way and metaphorically holding your client's hand during a project is part of the job. However, with professional experience, you will learn how to handle such situations and communicate that you really should be getting back to work rather than chatting all day long.

The bottom line here should be that it is part of the job and part of your work day to deal with communication and organisation and you should see it as such and not as something that you "squeeze in on the side" as in the long run this will overstretch your stamina.