I recently got a question (again) how it is possible to be this productive in composing music?
I have since restarted my career as a composer composing more than nine hours of music. It's more than seventy different compositions, some of them are divided into movements so that's even more.
It's no wonder people ask me, but I guess it's one of my character characteristics, productivity. But that's not the full picture here.
The fuller picture is, that I have so much music stocked up inside of me I have to take breaks from writing it down. I mean, it's an exhausting task to write down almost fifteen years, when I didn't compose a thing. (Well that's not completely true either, it was going on in my head all that time!)
But, some of the music is new. Inspired events that moved me as person to the depth of my soul. And other close relationships, like the Piano Sonata I composed for my wife Miriam, as a birthday gift last year.
Or when I caught whooping cough last year, when I couldn't almost sleep through the nights sitting upright in my chair in the living room, I decided to do a thirty-day challenge for myself, composing one piece of chamber music every day.
I was successful, and about twenty of them are available to listen to (Blue SporringMusic tagging on streaming services).
Another factor is that I have my daily routine; I get up and have breakfast and coffee. Then I start a two-hour focused work pass composing, but no longer. I use also the Pomodoro technique to not get too rigid from sitting still.
After that, I have a break until the afternoon, when I attend CreativeWorkHour and work for yet another hour. And that's basically it. On rare occasions, and when my body allows it, I sit one hour after my afternoon nap too.
I would also say that I have a work ethic that makes me want to complete things, not to leave them, I can honestly say that was what made me such a good writer and publisher on Medium of almost four hundred articles in three years, plus five hundred forty essays and poems published on Typeshare, a couple of hundred newsletters and more. I have still one accomplishment in writing I would like to finish, publish a book! But that time will come too, I know that!
So if you want to copy my way of being productive here are the steps:
- Have a good place to work in.
- Use 'sacred hours', for me that is early in the morning after breakfast. For others that can be the hours before going to bed.
- Remember to take short breaks and a longer one where you leave the computer and stretch and maybe get a nip of fresh air.
- If possible have two different times during the day when you can focus on your work.
- Remember to have fun while you do your thing!
- Join CreativeWorkHourCreativeWorkhour, cause that gives you a friendly space to work in.
If you are interested to read some of my articles elsewhere, here are some links:
https://anderssporring.medium.com/