Timing Yourself: A Helpful ‘Push’ to Practice When Life Gets Hectic

19 Oct Timing Yourself: A Helpful ‘Push’ to Practice When Life Gets Hectic

by Marisa Torrieri Bloom 

Music is all about timing. Quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, and so on. But so is pretty much everything else. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about timing lately, as I always feel like I’m running out of time, between working, mothering, sleeping, breathing, and slipping in workouts and volunteer commitments. It’s impossible to do everything I’d like to do perfectly — or at least as well as I did pre-kids — because I have so many things competing for my time. 

However, I’ve found that lately, timing myself, as in literally setting a timer when I need to get something done, can be extraordinarily motivating. 

[RELATED: Finding Time to Practice in the Midst of a Busy Life]

Say I need to clean the kitchen. That’s boring. But when I set the timer on my microwave for 7 minutes, suddenly I’m moving faster than a Jimi Hendrix solo. If I didn’t time myself, I’d just drag condiments from the floor where my kids spilled them my kitchen counter to the refrigerator. 

Jimi Hendrix, master of timing (and guitar solos)

Timing yourself comes in handy in the musical sense, too. Two days this week, I had only 15 minutes to spare before I had to pick up my kids from school. My first thought was “nah, I’ll just fold laundry.” But my second thought was, “wait, that’s 15 minutes to play guitar with no distractions.” And I set my timer and plugged my Gibson SG into my  50-watt amp and BAM! It was time for a mini set. I jammed away happily, feeling like I had all the time in the world. I didn’t worry, knowing that the little timer would go “beep beep beep” when it was time to put the guitar down. And sure enough, it did. But not before I got through three songs. 

Of course, music should be spontaneous and fun. Relaxed. There should be no time-induced pressure to write a song, jam on a Friday night with friends and a bottle of wine, or practice a drum solo. But when you just need to practice when life gets busy, a timer could be your secret weapon, a gamechanger in your hectic day.

Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.