Do you hate the fact you have a day job ?

Does it impact your creativity ?

Wouldn't you rather be doing music all day ?

Well, having a day job is actually a good thing.....seriously !

I used to hate my day job.. Well truth be told I'm still not that keen on it. A couple of years ago, I went through a mind shift and it's made a huge difference. Instead of waking up and my first thought being I" hate my job, I can't wait for it to be over", I started thinking about how I can make my day job work for me musically and there's a number of ways it can help.

PAY

Having a day job provides you with a regular income. Creatives would love this as it means you know how much you're getting each month and their pay can be erratic. You know you can cover your bills. You can use your money to pay for things like music lessons, buying music, subscriptions, gig tickets, demos, buying new instruments and plug ins, hiring musicians/singers etc.

As your music starts generating an income, you can reduce your day job hours while still maintaining your level of income. Then, once your music earnings overtake that of your day job, you can tell your boss what to do with their job :)

DEADLINES

My day job is dealing with NHS payroll and there are a lot of deadlines that have to be met. Music has deadlines such as pitching songs by a certain date, turning up for writing/recording sessions. By making sure I always meet my day job deadlines, it means I know psychologically that I am capable of achieving deadlines. Therefore, I know that I will achieve my musical deadlines.

LISTENING

When you're working, depending on your job, you normally encounter other people. People have conversations and say things. As a songwriter, I can listen to these conversations and pick things up such as song titles or a phrase. The way people say things will add an authenticity to your lyrics as they'll be conversational. You can also listen to the rhythm of people talking and incorporate that into a lyric melody.

DIARISE

My day job is very busy so I like to diarise the various tasks I have so that I know what I have to do and when by. I can do the same musically. I will diarise that every Friday at 4pm to listen to the new charts so that I can keep up to date with what's happening with popular music. I can set aside 30 minutes every day at the same time to practise guitar or piano. I can put that for an hour on a Sunday I can do my accounts so that they're all ready in plenty of time for the end of the financial year (deadline !).

if I just try and remember something that I need to do, I'll invariably forget. The act of writing it down somewhere seems to help me remember it without necessarily having to look at my diary. I can also cross the item off once it's completed so I can see I've achieved something.

SIDE EFFECT

The weird thing is that since I adopted this new mindset of focusing on my day job being done to help my music, I have found that I actually started enjoying the work and have become more productive. Not what I set out to achieve I can assure you !!!!

If you're not sure how your day job can help you, why not add a comment below.