Changing my schedule this week to make a step change to greater momentum. At my day job I've been working 10 hour days, four days a week from 7am to 5pm, and having Monday as my music project day. Saving all of my creative time for one day of the work week turned out to not be such a great strategy because it puts a lot of pressure on that one day and it doesn't help to build regularity in daily habits.

Starting tomorrow I am switching back to 8 hour days, 5 days a week, 7am to 3pm so I can have a better daily habit schedule. Today I'm working out a new schedule.

Goals for the new schedule are:

• Daily - Creative sessions for starting and finishing new tracks - Vocal practice - Regular content publishing to show progress
• Weekly - Setup development sessions - Website development sessions

To get all of these things done every day I'll use a "minimum viable commitmment" (MVC) approach where I focus more on sticking to the schedule rather than how much is achieved in each activity. This means that when time is up I just have to publish what I've got and move on.

For content publishing, I am going to manage my project workflow out in the open on my website. I will upload a WIP export of each session to Soundcloud and update the workflow notes on my website. I will do this as part of each session, rather than make it it's own session, this will force me to do it as quickly and simply as possible, while providing a constant stream of updates to my website.

My new week day schedule will look like this:

• 6:45 Get up
• 7:00 Work
• 12:00 Breakfast
• 12:30 Work
• 15:00 Vocal warmup
• 15:30 Splurge session
• 16:00 Finishing session 1
• 16:30 Finishing session 2
• 17:00 Finishing session 3
• 17:30 Dinner/Break
• 19:00 Vocal practice
• 20:00 Keyboard practice
• 21:00 End

The most important part of the schedule is 15:30 - 17:30. This is the part that I am absolutely committing to doing, Monday to Friday, no matter what.

I commit to NOT making changes to my project template during creative sessions because this is the worst time-eating, rabbit hole in my creative process, so when I am tempted to do this I will just make a note of what needs work, and then I will take action on those notes on the weekend.

Time after dinner and on the weekends is a bit more flexible because this time is more likely to be interrupted by family, social events and general life maintenance. Also I know that if I try to create a schedule that doesn't allow for flexbility then it will just make it much more likely that I will fall off the wagon. So for now my MVC is for 4 creative sessions over 2 hours a day, 5 days a week.

During my evenings after the dinner break I will work on my Vocal and Keyboard performance practice. Currently I have vocal coaching at 17:00 every Wednesday so that fits nicely there. I have a good friend who frequently visits on Monday nights so that will be flex time when he comes over. Also every other Friday I have to drive 2 hours to pick up my kids so that's flex time as well.

On Saturday and Sunday my MVS is to do just a single Splurge session. This will maintain my committment to a daily creative habit. After that I will do vocal practice and development work on my project setup and the website as time permits.