One thing that’s sporadically time consuming as a freelancer/teacher, is admin work. This week has had a lot as I’m in the process of signing students up for the Music Club Federation Festival, as well as working out some rescheduling for February, updating invoices due to snow days/festival registration, and more. It varies from week to week: some weeks there is hardly any and other weeks it can be a few hours (Gah!).

I try to keep organized by keeping a running “to do list” on my phone, as well as having a calendar of monthly tasks for the home studio. I have two to do lists in the reminders app on my phone, labeled “work” and “personal”, which works well enough. If something comes up in a lesson or pops into my head at a time I can’t deal with it right away, I add it to that to-do list. And then when I have more time I try to do the task. Some weeks I get everything done, other weeks I get nothing done. I can also add deadlines through the reminders app, and that is good when a task is particularly time sensitive.

This week I’ve been clearing out a bunch of lingering tasks. The rest of the month is going to be BUSY so I don’t want to have too many things hanging over my head. There are usually a limited number of times that I want to do admin: a few mornings a week I like to spend 30 to 60 minutes, or less, and that counts personal admin as well as business admin. This doesn’t count short emails and texts, that I will respond to as soon as I can, or doing basic things like attendance.

This probably seems very boring to read about, but in case you are another teacher, maybe it’s not. I probably spend an average of 1-2 hours a week doing admin tasks, so it’s not very much but also not nothing. Using an automated lesson system (My Music Staff) helps tremendously, and using an automated system for keeping track of taxes and tax deductions does as well. Email is so much easier than phone calls used to be, and texting too. I think back to when I was younger and email wasn’t as popular for contacting parents, and when I needed to reschedule lessons I literally had to call them, one by one. So thankfully it’s a bit easier now…but still annoying.

I am excited to continue writing about my Morocco Trip, but I just haven’t had enough time to sit down and do the next post. I have selected the photos, so I’m making progress–don’t worry: it’s coming!

We have a weekend getaway this weekend (part of the busy-ness, not the main part) which I am looking forward to. We are going to visit Phoenix and my family there, and I can’t wait to see them and perhaps equally, have some nicer, warmer weather. They don’t even have snow on the ground! (We are so tired of the snow here).

I can’t believe it’s February already, but I was also thinking how less than a month ago I was still in Morocco, and that seems like a dream. How times flies as we get older!