Bree Noble:
I really do believe that you need to implement a strategy at first and know exactly what you're doing when and why and have that kind of planned out for you and then you can more naturally later on down the line do this in practice without having to be so tied to your calendar.

Michael Walker:
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All right. I'm super excited to be here today with Bree Noble. I'm bringing her back on the podcast. Bree is an award-winning musician, music business mentor, the host of The Female Entrepreneur Musician Podcast, and today, one thing that we wanted to dive into was ... We've talked before with her, really she's like the expert around releasing her music, which is in and of itself one of the most important things to master as a musician is what's the art of releasing your songs and specifically one component of that process, and I think something that Bree is really a master in, is the ability to plan appropriately and to be productive and I think it's a topic that all of us struggle with in some form or another is like really figuring out how do we best utilize the limited amount of time that we have and find the things that are really the highest priority things for us to focus on, without feeling overwhelmed, because there's always a limitless number of things to do.

So I'm definitely excited to have her back on here and to be able to geek out a little bit about productivity and time management. So Bree, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast.

Bree Noble:
Thank you. I'm excited to be here and I love talking productivity, especially to help musicians.

Michael Walker:
Heck yeah. Awesome. So how about ... I know you've been on here before, but for anyone who maybe missed that episode, or it's their first time meeting you, could you give a quick introduction to yourself?

Bree Noble:
Sure. I am a musician. I am a wife and a parent. I live in California. I'm actually in Maine right now visiting my family cabin which I try to do at least once or twice a year so I'm excited to be broadcasting from here and I am as I said a musician. I have been performing as an indie musician for many years. I was a music and business major in college and performed throughout my college years all over the western states and then had a stint at the opera where I was a director of finance, so that's kind of my business hat coming out there.

I never did actually perform at the opera although I did perform in operas in college and after I left the opera, I set out on a career as an independent musician and that was after 10 years of being really frustrated trying to figure out how the music business worked and how I was supposed to fit into it and when I finally embraced the fact that as a musician I am a small business, I am an entrepreneur, and started building my career as someone would that was just starting any small business, grassroots and all that, that is what made the big difference for me and so after building my music career and touring all over California and some of the other western states and running this career while having small children, I decided to stop touring and help other musicians do the same because I started getting a lot of questions about how are you doing this, how are you marketing, how are you building your career, and in the meantime, I learned a ton about online marketing by promoting my Women of Substance music platform and also my two different podcasts and just my programs that help musicians.

So I love to bridge marketing and business with the music and creative side and one thing that really helps that is having a clear idea of how you can be the most productive. Because none of us as musicians inherently really like doing the marketing stuff, but we know we have to, and so how can you fit that into your day in a way that feels like it's not crushing your creative side and you still have time to do the stuff that you want to do but yet you're still fulfilling all the obligations that you need to have to your marketing and business because you don't have a record label and a manager to do it for you. You're wearing that hat as the indie artist.

Michael Walker:
That's awesome. That's so good. Yeah, it does seem like that's one of the biggest challenges starting out is whether you're starting like a new business or starting a new music project or starting a career in anything. At the beginning, being at that point where you're kind of spinning multiple plates at the same time, you're wearing multiple hats and you're trying to figure out, "Man," you don't really have a team around you to help you out necessarily at the beginning. So if someone's listening to this right now and they're just getting started and they're trying to figure out how do I be more productive and how do I be less stressed out as I am moving towards my goals. What would be a good initial exercise for them to do to move towards that?

Bree Noble:
Well, really it does involve some planning and I get a lot of pushback on this because musicians are like, "I'm creative. I want to go with the flow." But keep in mind, if you implement this kind of planning mentality, then you won't have to so rigidly plan later. And I teach a lot about habits and calendar and stuff like that, and I get a lot of pushback at first. But the thing is, you end up internalizing that. You don't have to plan every second of your day once you internalize the ideas behind it and how you can kind of naturally do that without feeling like you're going to have to plan every second and put every single thing on your calendar. So I really do believe that you need to implement a strategy at first and know exactly what you're doing when and why and have that kind of planned out for you and then you can more naturally later on down the line do this in practice without having to be so tied to your calendar. I don't know if that's worked that way for you. I know you're pretty big on your calendar, Michael.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. No, I think you're spot on that nothing worthwhile usually happens unless you're intentional about your goals and what you're looking to do, and so I think the most successful people, they have a very clear vision of where they're going and what they want to accomplish and so they structure their days around those goals, and usually do a really good job of prioritizing like out of everything you could do, what are the top things. So 100%, I think that ... If you don't plan, if you don't set goals, if you don't structure things, then you're going to end up at the whim of someone else. Like you're going to be doing someone else's plan.

So let's say that someone wants to get started with the process of planning and they're just kind of wondering, "Like where do I even start?" Let's just imagine that this is someone who doesn't even really have like a structured rhythm or planning, like a weekly planning session or a monthly ... They're just sort of living their life day by day without really organized plans. Where would you recommend that they would start to create some of those plans?

Bree Noble:
Okay, so let's start with something that anyone can implement that I think is easy and feels less stressful and also makes you feel like you're getting wins every day, and that is the do three things a day method, which for me, I love it because you feel very accomplished when you've done those three things that you put on the list and then if you're feeling great and you've got that momentum, you can do more. But if you're like, "Okay, I have other things I need to do. I have other people in my life I need to take care. I want to go be creative and do that." You know that you've accomplished those three things and you can feel really good about what you've done that day.

Now the key is what are those three things, right? You can't be like record an entire album. Like that is not a thing that you can do in one day. You have to be very ... Even when it comes down to like write a song, right? That is a lot. Like I have sat there and worked on a song for an entire weekend before, before I felt like I had it right. You may be like, "Finish the bridge to this song." Like that could be a thing that you could put down as one of your three things. Or you can also create time blocks around this, so it could be like make booking calls for an hour. That could be one of your three things. Or make five booking calls. But the important thing is it needs to be very specific and measurable and achievable within the amount of time that you have to do it.

So you can start by looking at, "Okay, how much time do I have today to work on music stuff?" And that is when you've got all the other things on your calendar, maybe you have a job, maybe you have a part-time job, maybe you have kids or elderly parents or other responsibilities, you block out time for those things and what's left? And that is what you've got to work with, so then you look and what can I realistically do in this amount of time and pick three things that you could realistically do today that are going to make you feel like you're making progress towards your goals, and they also need to be relevant, right? So before you can do this, you've got to have an idea of what your goals are and there's a whole process that I teach around figuring out your goals for the next 90 days, which I can't really go into here but if you've got your goals dialed in and you know what they are, then you can figure out all the action steps you would need to take toward those goals and then you would just be picking from those, "Okay, which one of those am I going to do today? What am I going to add to my three things a day list?" And that's a system that you could use to get started.

Obviously like I said there's a bigger structure around that in making sure that you know what your goals are for the next 90 days and whether you've chosen the right goals based upon your vision for where you're going and all of that. But this is just ... Like if you're not even there yet, you're just like, "I think I have some loose idea of my goals but I really want to get moving," you can use the three things a day and just the important test is are these things that you're choosing relevant to your bigger goals, are they achievable in the amount of time that you're giving yourself, and are they measurable? It can't just be I'm going to practice piano. Like you can say that but say I'm going to practice for an hour, right? If it's something like practicing which I call like a habit-based item, then you've got to put a time on it. But if you're actually trying to achieve what I like to call like a project-based item, then you can actually say I'm going to finish this piece of something.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, I love that, breaking it up into habit and processes that are going to be recurring versus like a goal or something tangible that you're moving towards, project-based. And I think absolutely the three ... Choosing three things per day, that reminds me of a book I just read, or I re-read, called Organize Tomorrow Today and that was one of my biggest takeaways from that book was that the process of the night beforehand, just listing out your top three things that you're looking to accomplish the next day, and then putting a star or like circling the number one most important thing and then the next day, you've already kind of put the thought process around doing the things, so it's less likely you're going to procrastinate on it. Overnight you usually kind of sleep on it, your brain starts turning on those three things, and if you structure it so that you do one of those ... Really like the number one of the top three things, you get it done as early as possible the next day, then everything else can kind of fall into place around it.

Bree Noble:
Yeah, I agree. And that kind of brings up something that I think is really important is that those evening habits. I teach morning routine and evening routine and that is part of the evening routine that I talk about and one major reason that doing that at night like you said, that you're getting it in your head, like this is what I'm going to do tomorrow, you're setting your intention, all that. But also, I encourage people to do kind of a brain dump of anything that's in their head at night that they're thinking, it's rattling around in their head, "Oh, I need to do this, or I really need to do that." And getting those all down and then picking your top three, but then you've gotten them out of your head. Some of the reason that we can't get good sleep at night is because our brain is hanging on to all of these things and we don't want to forget them and if we don't put them somewhere, then our brain is just going to be whirring and whirring all night around those things.

So that's another way to set yourself up is getting some really good sleep because you've done that brain dump, you know exactly your intention in the morning, and also, I don't know if you're like me, but like it takes me a bit in the morning to get going. I got to have my coffee or my tea or whatever, and percolate a little bit, like to get my brain revved up, and if I have to think through like which are the things I'm going to do today in the morning, that's much harder. And I'm wasting too many brain calories doing that when I could be using them to actually do the things instead.

Michael Walker:
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Michael Walker:
I love that. I love this conversation. I think that this is so crucial. One thing that ties in really nicely with what we're talking about right now is the 80/20 rule and prioritization. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about the 80/20 rule and when it comes to choosing those three things, how do you prioritize?

Bree Noble:
Yeah. I love the 80/20 rule too, and I teach a prioritization system that's based around figuring out, "Okay, which things are going to make the most impact toward me reaching this goal that I have," and then the things that are like, "I feel confident in being able to do and it would be easy for me to do this versus hard." So I have like a whole kind of scoring system that people do and what's great about doing this, when you actually create your goals and then going through the scoring system with all of the actions around them, is that then you just have a playbook. You have a playbook of like, "Okay, I'm going to take all the actions that scored the highest and I'm going to do those first." And so then you don't even have to use any brainpower around which things are going to go on my list. You've already got a list of all of these things, and you're just going to pick from them based upon the prioritization that you've already made.

That is kind of utilizing the 80/20 rule because some of the things you may have to do that are going to be harder for you and they're going to take a lot more time and effort because they are really important to reaching those goals, but if you utilize this prioritization, then you've kind of capitalized on the things that you can do now that's going to make the most impact towards your goal, and the other things might take a little bit more time and we're going to decide whether they're important enough to do or not.

So that's why this prioritization system is so important because it really makes us think, like how important is this actually toward me reaching my goal? Is it really going to help me reach results with it or is it just something that I think I should be doing because I see other people doing it, but I don't really know for sure if I'm going to get results out of it or I haven't really analyzed ... If I've posted three times a day on Instagram for the last three months, because I think that's what I'm supposed to be doing, have I actually looked at my numbers to see is this generating DM conversation? Is this bringing people over to my other assets? Is this creating customers for me for my concerts or people actually following and listening on Spotify or whatever your goals are with your music. You have to be able to look at your numbers and know if things are actually making the needle move to know if that's one of the things in the 20%.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's great. And I think that one of the biggest benefits for me of using the 80/20 rule and getting really intentional about prioritization is that there's sort of this nature of limitless to dos. It's almost like the newsfeed on Facebook, how you can keep scrolling and like it's going to keep populating content. You could go essentially virtually forever, just scrolling, and I think the same thing applies to our goals and our projects. There's like a limitless amount of things that we can do and like you just talked about, really 80% of the things that we can do aren't really the things that are moving the needle, and if we stop doing those things and we just focus on those 20%, then we can accomplish more than if we were actually trying to do everything all at once. Which is really liberating, that we don't have to do everything, that we can actually just do a few things really well.

That prioritization scoring system sounds really interesting. Could you share a little bit more about just some of the parameters of the ... Like how you score how important an activity is?

Bree Noble:
Sure. So the first score is the most obvious score which is really about the 80/20 rule, which is how likely is this action going to be getting you toward your goal? So there could be a lot of little tiny actions that might help you get toward this goal, but there are some that are just going to move the needle a lot faster. So that will get a very high score if there's something like that, and then you look at, "Okay, how confident am I that I know how to do this thing?" Because if it's going to take some learning, if it's going to take me ... If it's a tech thing especially, if it's going to take me finding someone to help me understand how to do it, even bringing on maybe a contractor or assistant or something to do it, then that's going to be a lower score. Because I'm feeling very unconfident that I can do it. And in that case, if the thing is like really, really high on the it's going to make a huge impact toward my goal but it's really, really low on my confidence scale, then I might need to look at, "Okay, well I need to bring someone in then." Because it's going to either take me a lot of education to do it or I'm just going to need to pay someone to help me but I know this thing is really important toward my goal.

Then the third thing is like is it an easy or a hard thing and that is it going to take me a lot of time or a little bit of time? Sometimes there is something that is going to make a big impact that I'm not confident how to do it, but I think ... It's not going to take me very long, and one example of this that I use with my students all the time, and because I've seen them, like they procrastinate this and it is actually the easiest thing once they do it, is setting up their PayPal.Me button. They'd be like, "I don't know how to do it, so I feel like it's a million miles away for me and I can't possibly do it." But yet it seems like a thing that wouldn't take very long if I just knew how to do it, and it also would really, really be helpful because then I could get some tips when I'm doing a livestream.

So every student that I've had that has not set up their PayPal.Me button, and then they finally did it, they're like, "It was not that hard. I just had to look up the instructions and do it. It took me 10 minutes and now I have this thing. But for the past two months, I've been saying I really need to do that, and it's been falling to the bottom because I had very little knowledge on how to do it and I just would have to look it up." So things like that, that would actually end up going to the top because even though they feel super uncomfortable because they don't know how, they realize, "Well if I did know how, it probably wouldn't take me very long," and it would be very, very useful. And so that would actually, those two scores, would pull it up, even though the confidence score is lower.

Michael Walker:
That's super interesting. Yeah, I like that a lot. It kind of reminds me of the ... I think one of the most valuable things that our clients get when we're working with them one on one is exactly what you just described of like ... The kind of thing where if you know what you're doing, it's really not ... Like it takes very little time. Like with the one on one sessions, like for example, launching a Facebook or an Instagram ad campaign. Like we put the session with the coach at that point because that's where 99.9% of people who had never done it before started to feel overwhelmed or get stuck or would think, "Oh, do I need to do it this way or this way," or if they are following a tutorial and something would be different from the tutorial, but if you're learning from someone who does it like 10 times a day, then for them it takes like two seconds.

So I love the idea of breaking up tasks into those things and if you know that they're high impact, then either finding education so that you can do it yourself or hiring a contractor or working with someone who could help do it for you. That seems like a really valuable gem.

Bree Noble:
Yeah. I mean I love what you guys do in your coaching program because that's exactly it. Like what you guys help people set up is a complicated process, but if you break it down into the pieces and you give them the confidence they need that they understand how to do each piece, it's not all that hard, and you can build it. It's just that when you look at it from a big picture, you're like, "Oh. I can't build that. That's too complicated." But if you break it down and do each thing on its own, it's really not that hard.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. So let's talk about reviews and like adapting and iterating. Because I feel like when it comes to planning, I know there's ... One of my favorite quotes, and I forgot who says this, but it's something like the process of planning is invaluable, but plans themselves are useless, or something along those lines. I don't necessarily think that ... I think that plans can be very useful even when you're like done planning but I do think there's a lot of wisdom in that really like the process of planning really activates your brain in a certain way and ultimately a lot of times plans, if you're too stringent with them, then they end up being ... They don't age well, they don't adapt well, because things change.

So in your experience, like what's the best way to stay adaptable when you create those plans so that you can make sure that your GPS system, if you take a wrong turn, is going to navigate you back to the correct path?

Bree Noble:
Yeah. I always encourage people to have a meeting with themselves once a week. Usually on Sunday night I like to do, and be really truthful with yourself. Did I actually follow this plan that I created? And a lot of times what I would see with people is they would set everything up the way that I encouraged them to and I'm a big user of Google Calendar, I know you are too, because it just ... I feel so flexible and like I have full control over it. But what I've learned over the years is it's only as good as if ... How much you'll actually use it, and some people, they've just always used physical calendars, they're not going to feel good about a Google calendar, and they can try to fit into that mold and it's just maybe not going to work for them, and so they need to adapt it to the thing that will work for them because the system that's the best is the one that you will use.

So really being honest with yourself at the end of the week, like, "Did I use this the way that I intended?" Or, "Did looking at my calendar make me feel so overwhelmed that I just didn't want to look at it, and I looked at it on Monday but then I never looked at it the rest of the days because it stressed me out." If that's the case and I have had some students tell me that the way that it was set up, then just you have to change it. Because if you're just going to avoid it, then there's no point in doing it at all. You've got to set up a system where you're excited to use it.

So I encourage people to do blocks because I think that that's the way you can be the most ... The most productive because there's something called context switching whereas every time you switch from task to task, you're losing time. And I talk about this in relation to shut all your tabs and shut your email program when you're working on something else so that you're not like constantly distracted by pinging and binging and things that are taking your focus away, and that's why I suggest like blocks of doing the same thing for one, two, three hours each day.

But at the end of that week, if you found that those block times just didn't work for me, if you're the kind of person that gets antsy if you're doing the same thing for two hours, be honest with yourself. Say, "Okay, I can only do 30 minute blocks. Let's try that next week and see if that will work." And don't try to make yourself fit into some mold of what you think the perfect productive person should be like, because every personality is different.

So I like to talk about, "I get my best work done in the morning," but I understand that there are many people that aren't like that. They get their best work done at night and I am like a zombie at night. So it depends on your body, your personality, the way that you work best, your demands on your life and when you actually have the time to work on this stuff. So be gentle with yourself but also be super honest. Because that's the only way that your system is going to work for you and have a meeting with yourself once a week and go through this stuff and see how can I make this even better for next time? Which things fell through the cracks, why do I think they fell through the cracks, and how can I change this system so that doesn't happen the next week?

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Yeah, I think that that weekly check-in, that weekly review and planning is so important. So when it comes to that, that weekly check-in, in addition to you're kind of looking at how you handle the original plan that you set out, do you have sort of like an agenda or an overview of what you'd recommend that anyone reviews on a weekly basis or how they do that weekly check-in?

Bree Noble:
Yeah. I think just some generalized questions like which things went really well this week, which things did I have in the plan that didn't get done, did they get bumped for a certain reason and was that purposeful or not purposeful? Like was I avoiding them or is it because something happened in my personal life and I just couldn't specifically avoid a certain thing because it's not our favorite, like we put booking on our schedule and then somehow, that always gets crowded out by something else because we don't enjoy doing that.

So then we need to be honest with ourselves, "Okay, are we going to kick our butt and do the booking even though we don't love it? Or are we going to find another solution to this?" And so just going through questions like that, also, "Did I feel like the blocks that I set aside for me were enough time? Or like I said earlier, "Did I feel like after the first hour of my work on this thing, I started to get super distracted and fractured and unfocused and I should only do one hour blocks but maybe do them twice a week instead of once a week." Try to figure out what is going to work the best for you and why the things that didn't work didn't work and how you can adjust them and it's just a constant adjustment every week until you really start to feel good with the way your plan is, and like I said, when I did this, I really did have all those things on my calendar and I kept those blocks for probably a couple of years, and now I just naturally do them, without having to calendar out every single thing.

I naturally do my three things a day without having to put a little reminder in Asana that says, "Figure out your three things a day." I just naturally do it but at first you have to build those habits and by having little reminders using programs like Asana or Trello or whatever you like to or something on your phone that's a reminder. Just to get you into that habit of thinking that way every day.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, that's a really important point I feel like you've brought up a couple times is how habits at the beginning sometimes feel a little bit like an uphill battle but you have to have awareness that it's not always going to be that way. One analogy that I've heard around habits, like developing positive habits, is that it's sort of like launching a rocket ship in a sense that when you launch a rocket ship, it takes a ton of fuel, it takes a ton of energy to get it off the ground and to get it in outer space, and that's really where the majority of energy is spent is getting it to break that gravity. But then once it's in outer space, it's much easier to keep going. It's broken the initial gravity and so I've heard this described in terms of habit gravity, right? If you are doing a certain habit, every single day for 20, 30, 40 years, then you have a certain momentum that's going towards that habit and it's like pulling you back down to Earth and so there is kind of that ...

What do you say is like the timeframe that for like a new habit ... I've heard quite a few different things, like 24 days, 30 days, 60 days. In your experience, what do you recommend for developing new habits and how long do you think it normally takes of doing something in order for it to turn into something that's more natural?

Bree Noble:
Yeah. I mean I was thinking about that. I would say at least two weeks. It depends on if it's a thing that you naturally like that you just put into your schedule because you want it there or if it's a thing that you're trying to implement that doesn't feel natural to you. But if it's something that you feel like it's counterintuitive or it's just not anything like what you ever did before but you really want to do it, it might take a little bit longer. It might take like a month, and it might take a little massaging to figure out how you can fit that into your day or there's also the thing where you can like attach a habit to something else you already do. If you already drink coffee every morning and you want to post every day on Instagram, then maybe you attach the, "I'm going to post my one story on Instagram every day while I'm drinking my coffee," to remember to do it. Instead of just getting busy with your day and forgetting about it and like, "Shoot, I didn't post it on Instagram." You just attach it to something you already do.

Michael Walker:
That's good. Yeah, I think that's really smart. Like especially, if you have a habit that you really enjoy, like drinking a cup of coffee, attaching that as like a reward for doing another habit so you don't drink the cup of coffee until you do something new that's ... Maybe it's a little bit more uncomfortable but only because it's your first time doing it and you have to kind of get into the rhythm of it.

Bree Noble:
Yeah, and here's one I used to do, because I loved ... And I still do, but when I first started working a lot with musicians and marketing and business, I love listening to business podcasts, and so ... But I would like listen to a lot of them, like to a fault. And so finally I told myself like, "You can only listen to these when you're exercising." So I would feel excited to go on my walk every day and want to be gone for like an hour because I really wanted to listen to these podcasts and keep up with them.

Michael Walker:
That's a really good one. Yeah, I love going for walks and now I love going for runs, which I never would have thought that I would enjoy running, but that was also a big part of it for me too was throwing on podcasts, audio books, and actually enjoying it because of that.

Awesome. So one thing that you talked about a little bit earlier that I think is really important is this idea of kind of getting things out of your head and getting them stored somewhere, that you just have peace of mind and you know that anything that's really important, like you don't need to remember all of it in your head. Like it's somewhere in a system that you can let go completely and just be present because you know, "I'm not going to drop the ball on anything that I need to do." That kind of reminds me of the book Getting Things Done. I think that was one of his big points, but I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about that process for you of like how do you captures like on the fly that are kind of coming up in your mind, and let's say that you are ... You talked about like the brain dump idea at night before you go to bed. Let's say that just throughout the day, you're just having your day to day interactions and then you have like a really cool idea. What does the process look like for you of taking that idea and storing it and making sure that it doesn't slip through the cracks but it's something that you can actually act on?

Bree Noble:
Yeah. So I call this for musicians their inspiration vault, and where this starts is as I mentioned, like when you figure out your five goals for your next 90 days, you're doing a big brain dump to figure out what are all the things I want to do over the next year, right? And you're throwing them all down, as many as you can come up with, at least 25. And you're just putting them all out there and then you're kind of whittling them down, figuring out your goals, and then all of the things that are left, that are not in the goals that you're going to choose for 90 days, those are the beginnings of your inspiration vault.

They're also the things that are most likely to distract you from the goals that you did choose, because you wanted to do them enough that you wrote them down, so that means they're going to be kind of your biggest enemies for the next 90 days because you are going to want to do those things, even though you know you did not prioritize them. So that's why I say this is going to be your inspiration vault and that's beginning, and the way the inspiration vault works is things can go in, but they cannot come back out for the 90 days.

So you have a place where you can kind of ... It's like one of those big blue mailboxes when you put your mail in, you can't get it back, right? So it's kind of like that, where you put these things that are not on your goals list for the 90 days, and then you also are able to add things all the time, so you don't forget them, so you don't lose that inspiration of it, and you're able to re-evaluate at the end of those 90 days, "Okay, I remember I thought about doing this thing. This was exciting to me but I put it aside because it wasn't in my goals." Now do I think it's the right time to do that? So as you go throughout your day, you may listen to a podcast, you may see another musician doing something fun, like maybe a contest or a way of doing their livestream or whatever it is that looks kind of cool and I'd like to try that. Have a place that you can access where you're keeping these ideas that you call your inspiration vault and whether it is your phone.

I personally use the notes on my phone. If any of you are songwriters, you probably keep like audio files in your phone of ideas for songs, and you could do it that way too. You could keep audios of your ideas if you wanted. I personally just like to speak into my phone as a text and leave it in my notes and I'm doing this all the time because I'm getting ideas for things I want to do for like social media posts, Instagram reels, that kind of stuff, just from things that I hear on podcasts or that just happen in life and so that's how I utilize it but for you guys, whenever you see these ideas, have this place, it needs to be accessible all the time. Because like Michael said, you could be on a walk, you could be just scrolling on social media and see something. You could be out at a show and see an artist do something, and so it needs to be in a place, if you like to write it down, then have like a little pad that's in your purse or in your pocket or whatever that you keep with you all the time for your inspiration vault.

And then when your 90 days are up, you get to go into that, and it's like opening a treasure or a present. Like a treasure box of like, "Oh yeah. I remember that. That's a cool idea. I wonder if I could incorporate that over the next 90 days?" Now that you've got a point where you can re-evaluate and decide which things would be the best for you in the future, and not be having them tug at you and distract you in the present.

Michael Walker:
I love that, the inspiration vault. Yeah, it does seem like a great way to combat the shiny object syndrome. I know that I fall into that trap sometimes, there's so many opportunities, like ideas you can do, but really being able to have a place that you can store those, that you know, "Okay, in due time, I'm going to be able to recycle and come back to this." Cool. So there is a couple times that you mentioned going for walk breaks and that triggered something. I looked at your thoughts around intentionally structuring your days to take breaks and what you do during breaks. Is that something that you find like sometimes is a challenge or mistake is like not really spending enough time being intentional about creating space or taking breaks?

Bree Noble:
Yeah, it's definitely easy to get into that trap of just work work work and not realizing that you need a break. So I do try to schedule it in, if I don't put it on the calendar in the morning, I say to myself, "Okay, I have ..." I look at the things that I absolutely have to do. I have to do this podcast with Michael at 2:00 and I have to talk to my daughter on the phone at 11. Like where can I fit these breaks in a time that is going to make sense in my schedule and also going to be giving me the break from doing the work?

Now part of it is based upon your personality really. Some people, they like to do the Pomodoro method which is you work for 25 minutes and then you get up and you walk around for five minutes because otherwise they just ... They naturally, their focus goes downhill if they don't get up and move. But this is where you've got to get to know yourself, because for me, I am like more of a momentum person. I get rolling and I don't want to stop, and I'm actually already 30 minutes in, I'm doing way better at what I'm doing than I was when I started.

So it's knowing yourself and what are the best ways that you work, and so for me, I usually take a break like every ... I'd say two hours, I schedule in things like I'm going to do my walk or I'm going to eat my lunch and maybe while I eat my lunch, I'm going to read my emails or something, so I'm not distracted by my emails while I'm trying to write emails or create a webpage or something, because that's where that context switching can really get you and you're like you can be done with an hour of work and be like, "How come I feel like I got nothing done? Well because my eye kept wandering over to my inbox and noticed that I had an email there and then I read it and I realized I had to respond to it." And there's 10, 15 minutes gone by, and you thought you were working on the one thing but actually you were being distracted half the time.

So that's how I do it. Like I said, it has to do with your personality. In the beginning, I literally put them in my calendar. I'm like, "I will walk from 9 to 10," to make sure that I did it because in the beginning, when I was a little bit more obsessive about my work I'd say, I didn't build in enough breaks for myself and I realized that and so I would actually put them on the calendar.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really smart is actually structuring out the breaks and planning on them at the beginning and just in general, yeah, like you mentioned, whether it's the Pomodoro method, the 25 minutes or like an hour long or two hour long, I think just having the focus block and having the intention for that focus block and knowing what that is going into it. I mean it's so powerful to be able to notice when something goes up and there's a distraction or there's the inbox or something and being able to kind of point back and be like, "Oh wait, no. This focus block is meant for this one thing," and that's actually a distraction, and I can put that on the backlog. So like I'll get to that, but not right now. That's not what this time is for is really powerful.

Bree Noble:
Yeah, and around that, you really do need to schedule time in for that admin work because there will be things in your inbox that you have to respond to. But you need to compartmentalize those, so they're not distracting you all day long and you maybe have like a 30 minute stint in the morning and a 30 minute stint later in the day where you deal with those things as they come, but keeping them in their own box kind of.

Michael Walker:
Yeah, and one thing I want to double down on too that you mentioned was the idea of going out for walks as like a good thing to do during breaks. That's been like a habit that's totally changed my life is going out for regular walks.

Bree Noble:
Me too.

Michael Walker:
It seems like a lot of ideas come out during those walks. Weirdly, because that's like the time where you're not working, you're out. But it's like you let yourself go, you go for a walk and boom.

Bree Noble:
Silence is powerful for the mind. It really is. The best ideas I've ever had have come either on a walk, in the shower, or at the gym.

Michael Walker:
I love that. That's giving me goosebumps. Silence is powerful for the mind. That's so true. And there is something about ... I think the act of walking, and running. The reason I started running was I read a book called The Spark, and it was basically studying the impact of walking and running on not just your body. Like of course it's a healthy habit, but also for your mind. Like there's these ... I think it's called BDNF or something, and they studied after people went for a walk, their brain capacity, their ability to learn was like 34% greater than if they ... Than the people who hadn't gone out for a walk, and definitely like a big takeaway was like, "Wow, just like the act of moving, the act of walking in and of itself really kind of opens things up and allows you to think."

Bree Noble:
Is that like because of circulation or endorphins or do you know why?

Michael Walker:
Yeah. I would have to reread the book to give you the full science behind it, it's called The Spark, but as far as I remember it, there are certain chemicals that happen in the brain that get released when you're walking and I think that historically, like humans really spent a ton of time moving and walking and just being like active and being in our bodies and that one of the things that's changed is with the rise of computers and the internet and TV and working in one place is that we don't really move around as much as we are genetically engineered to do.

And I know that there's a ton of autobiographies and biographies of really amazing people, like Albert Einstein for example, were lifelong walkers. Like that was just a big part of ... It was just a habit that they had is they would go for walks and sometimes like long walks. Some of their biggest breakthroughs, biggest ideas came through during these walks. So I think that ... Yeah, I think that walking is definitely like a really powerful habit to work into.

Bree Noble:
I think it's definitely a mood booster too.

Michael Walker:
Yeah.

Bree Noble:
For me, I just don't feel nearly as good in general if I haven't walked and I would say I walk seven days a week, almost always. Every once in a while there's a reason I can't walk, a weather issue, but in general, seven days a week and I just feel like something super off if I don't.

Michael Walker:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, I think that was part of the studies too is that they were measuring the chemicals that get released and that was part of it too was that there's actually endorphins of some kind that ... Especially with running. I mean obviously there's like the runner's high, but I think just with the act of walking, running, moving, breathing, breathing deeper, there's a lot of really powerful benefits that come from that.

Bree Noble:
For sure.

Michael Walker:
Cool. So let's wrap this up by zooming way out and so I love the 90 day kind of a way to zoom out, look at the next 90 days. I think there's something really powerful about that timeframe because it's big enough they can really accomplish some major projects but also it's small enough that you can measure it and you can know if you're on track versus if it's like five years from now, it might be a little bit more hazy. That being said, I think that it is extremely powerful to zoom out even further and kind of look at guiding stars or guiding lights for the next five or ten years either. So I'm wondering what's your process, like what do you do to sort of like really zoom out and look at on the life level even and just kind of like zoom out and when you're planning those 90 day projects, is there like a level above that that's a few years in advance you're kind of looking at and how might someone ... What are some questions someone might ask themselves to organize their longterm plans?

Bree Noble:
Yeah. I mean I don't teach a ton around longterm vision and stuff. I think that life can throw so many wrenches into that. I do teach a lot around core values, and I think that, like you said, guiding star, like that is really ... That's really more what is going to guide you beyond the 90 days. So for example if your guiding star is family, then your career is going to look a lot different, you're going to have a lot different aspirations than if it's fame or if it is like something like legacy, then that might look like you releasing ... Making sure that all of the music that you've written has been released in some way and that might involve planning out releasing one album of music per year. I mean I've met some people that have hundreds of songs that have never been released, that they've just been writing for all these years and now they're like, "I want to create my legacy around this and make sure that this music gets out there." And so that would guide how they would be planning out the next few years.

So I really think it does start with core values and then you just ... You break it down, but the 90 days is I think a very powerful number because I think if we try to look too far beyond that, there's ... I mean certainly we saw this in 2020, right? There's too many things in the world or even your own life that could change that would completely throw a wrench into your plans, and I don't want you to get discouraged by that. That's why I feel like 90 days is a really doable amount of time. And yes, things can happen and things can change in 90 days, but not nearly as sweeping as can happen in a year.

Michael Walker:
That's true. Yeah, and certainly, I mean ... Yeah, I don't know for anyone else, but for me, if I looked at 10 years ago, where I am now versus where I was, there's no way that I could have imagined that I would be here with three kids on the way. Like it was before I had even met my wife and just things change so much that like you're saying, I think that with those bigger timeframes, it's super valuable to have those core values, have those guiding stars, but you know it's just a guiding star, it's not necessarily something you're ever going to get to specifically, but it's something that's going to guide you in the right direction.

Bree Noble:
Yeah, seriously. If I think about 10 years ago, I was recording and getting ready to release my holiday album, and I was planning a two week tour and I mean it's so different from what I'm doing now but yet the core values underneath it are the same as what I'm doing now. It's just the way I was expressing it was different. I was still trying ... The goal of my music was still to help and inspire people and that's the goal of what I'm doing now.

Michael Walker:
I love that. Awesome. Well hey Bree, it's always a pleasure talking with you and especially when we get to geek out on something like this. It's a lot of fun. So thank you for taking the time to come back on the podcast and to talk about productivity and time management and for anyone that is listening or watching this right now that would like to connect more with you or learn more about what you offer, where would be the best place for them to go to learn more?

Bree Noble:
Absolutely. I would love for you to listen to our podcast, The Profitable Musician Show, profitablemusician.com. If you're a female artist, it's Female Entrepreneur Musician is my other podcast and I'd love for you to connect with me there and would just love for you ... If you've got any questions around releasing music as we talked earlier about that and just the kind of the productivity involved in getting your music out there and marketed, that's one reason that I focus on this because productivity is important if you're wanting to like really make a big splash with your release. You can get more information about how to release you music at rockyournextrelease.com.

Michael Walker:
Awesome. Cool. So like always, we'll put all the links in the show notes. You have easy access and thanks again Bree, this has been a lot of fun.

Bree Noble:
Thank you. It's been awesome.

Michael Walker:
Hey, it's Michael here. I hope that you got a ton of value out of this episode. Make sure to check out the show notes to learn more about my guest today and if you want to support the podcast, then there's a few ways to help us grow. First, if you hit subscribe, then I'll make sure you don't miss a new episode. Secondly, if you share it with your friends or on your social media, tag us. That really helps us out. And third, best of all, you leave us an honest review. It's going to help us reach more musicians like you who want to take their music careers to the next level. The time to be a modern musician is now, and I look forward to seeing you on our next episode.