On creating time for Timasomo

h3x
2023-09-28T10:25:02Z

Apologies if posting before October is truly upon us is frowned upon, it's been a while and I don't recall the etiquette! This post is going to be a bit of a brain-dump about how I've gone about allocating my time towards Timasomo 2023. It might come across as a bit self-indulgent, which is not intentional. I think talking about processes is valuable, and hopefully others who are figuring out what they want to do for this year and how to find the time for it may find some inspiration as well.

In my comment on the announcement thread, I mentioned that I don't have a huge amount of time in October that I'll be able to dedicate to the project I'm planning to work on. I decided that I do actually want to get it done, and it'll be a good exercise in working to a deadline and not being too much of a perfectionist.

So I needed to figure out how to allocate my limited time towards the creative process in such a way that I should (hopefully) be done by 31st October. During my masters degree, we were gently guided towards breaking down each of the component tasks of writing the dissertation and creating a gant chart for the project, allocating the time we thought we'd need towards the project. I decided to do something similar for this project as well. It's a useful skill to be able to take a large project and break it down into individual tasks, and being able to estimate how long each chunk will take is helpful as well.

My project is to arrange, record, and film video of me playing a metal version of Reel Around the Sun, the opening tune from Riverdance. It's been an idea rattling around my brain for ages, and I think it should be doable in the time. I'm intimately familiar with the tune already, which helps massively. So that means that there are 4 overall stages of the project:

Arranging

Recording

Filming

Release

Arguably the Release stage is implied, but I felt it was good to have some time set aside for the actual process of putting the tune out into the world, and posting here for the showcase once it's done. I broke down each of those main stages into smaller portions, typically per instrument:

Arranging

Guitars

Drums

Bass

Keys/other

And so on for each of the first 3 stages, with a few extra bits thrown in for better coverage (mixing and mastering under Recording, for example).

The next stage was to put the month of October onto a gant chart and to start putting things onto it. I split each day into two parts to better capture days where I can put time in during the afternoon but not the evening, and vice versa, and started blocking out the slots that I absolutely cannot fit anything into. Due to my work being fully remote I have left most daytime slots for workdays unblocked, since I can sometimes fit non-work related stuff into the day or my lunch break. I anticipate this being considerably easier for certain stages over others.

Here's the more or less finished chart. Grey is dead time, and the palest colours are to indicate where I will need to make time during work or other activities to get the task done. You'll note that there are some where I haven't got a more solid colour, meaning that I am going to have to steal time from work to get those bits done. Where those exist, I have tried to be more generous with myself, giving at least two opportunities for completion. Where I have the less pale colour is time that I can definitely put into the project, so I have gone to my calendar and actually blocked out the time so I don't book anything else in.

Braindump complete! I now have a rough schedule in my calendar and in my mind that I can run with for my Timasomo project. Of course none of it is rigid, it's a guide, not a requirement. Many aspects will naturally take more or less time than I have estimated, but having the structure there has helped me to realise that I can actually make this work. Bring on October!

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