Have you ever had the feeling you could have done more? After a few hours of work, you look at the music and think, my God, is that it? Is that all I wrote?

I get that feeling, and I know I can do more. A lot more.

Sure, there are lots of creativity helping devices, all helpful to varying degrees. but something that is just as important to composition is the art of managing the rest of your life.

Because if your daily affairs are bothering you then your mind is not clear, and since musical ideas come from a silence within, then having your mind buzzing is really no help at all.

So what do we composers need to have a clear, music-ready state of mind?

• A clean studio or working environment
• A well organized to-do list that we can rely on so that we do not have to think about what needs to be done as we do the most important thing: composing
• A clear plan of the project we are working on
• Reliable help in handling business matters

These are all important, especially when working on your own project. But one productivity device is even more powerful than these.

An important deadline from an outside source.

Because nothing makes you more productive than when you have this great big deadline looming and that your work is going to be heard by tons of people.

The irony is that we work at our highest degree of stress-free productivity when faced with a crisis, and for artists a deadline is pretty much a crisis, isn’t it?

But what if it is your own project? Is it possible to impose your own deadline and live by it?