Always “Stuff” to Do: There are always things to do when you own a business. Recordings, marketing, editing, accounting, classes, emails, etc. This, I suppose, is obvious. If you’re like me there are some things that I “push off” more than others. Take for example, accounting. It’s necessary, but reconciling bank statements and keeping tabs on invoices and expenses isn’t the most “fun” thing to do. Oh I get it done, but it’s not the first task I work on. Be that as it may, it still needs to be done.
Schedules/Circumstances Change: My days as a voice actor always consist of recording and submitting auditions and hopefully several gigs (commercials, corporate narrations, website/explainer videos, and message-on-hold projects for phone systems); if you’re curious you can take a listen at https://www.judyfossumvoiceovers.com/. Recording clients’ projects is definitely the cool, fun part. However, it needs to be quiet when I’m recording. I’ve got a beautiful, quiet recording studio in our home for which I’m grateful.
Our home was in a hail storm (June 2020), and sustained considerable damage due to the golf ball-size hail and wind which gave the hail extra momentum to break windows and damage our hardwood floor. So…repairs were in order, including redoing the floor. An aside, an inconvenience yes, but not one was hurt and our dog and cat were fine too. We’re thankful for sure.
Back to the floor repairs. There’s no other way to say it other than these repairs are crazy noisy. In order to redo the wood floors, they needed to be sanded…three times! Needless to say recording in the studio wasn’t an option when they were sanding the floor. Now what?
Use the Time You Have Wisely: Well…to reiterate…there’s always stuff to do. True story. Instead of “throwing in the towel” and not doing anything because of the noise of the floor sanders, it was a matter of doing what I could when I could. In other words, using my time wisely. I’m lucky in that the sanders weren’t being run eight hours straight. It was more like three to four hours per day for a couple of days and two hours on a third day. Okay…I can work with that. When the noise was “on” I used that time to do everything besides recording in the studio. And boy there’s a list indeed. Emails, follow-up emails, writing thank you cards, writing marketing postcards, doing research, reading, sending out invoices, updating social media, and the every popular accounting. When the sanders were done, it was back to the studio to record.
“Stuff” Crossed Off the List: Rather than sitting around wasting time, scrolling through endless cute kitty videos, use the time you have in the circumstance/place/schedule you’re in to get all of that other “stuff” done. You’re working on your business, you’re being productive, you’re crossing things off your “to do” list, and you’re that much further ahead to getting back to what you really love to do when the time presents itself (and the noise goes away). By the way, the contractor did a super job and the redone wood floors look fabulous.