Everything you do in life takes time. And usually, everything takes longer than you expect. Whether it is a project for school, practice, and even making plans with friends, we have a tendency to feel like there is never enough time to accomplish things. Time always seems to run out.

This is especially true when it comes to planning and time management. Even when you sit down and make an effort to plan out something, when you’re actually doing the thing you run over the time you gave yourself to accomplish it. This can be really frustrating and if you’re a very busy person this can really start to hold you back from accomplishing your goals.

“SO HOW DO I FIX THIS?”

Something we do to help us make realistic schedules is to give yourself more time than you think to finish a task. Whatever amount of time you think something is going to take, add an hour or two to the schedule. It is much better to finish early than to give yourself unrealistic timelines.

Another side of this is not in your schedule, but in the way you think about progress.

Some of us think we should be great at things, even when we just learn them. Understand that things take time, especially with the demands of your instrument. You might have even caught on quickly to the fundamentals, but can't play the more advanced stuff and it gets frustrating. This is common and you have to be ok with the process taking longer than expected. The worse thing you can do is get upset, or quit. Keep going, know that everything takes longer than you expect, and eventually you will succeed.