Stay Productive in the Studio with Simple Solutions

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If you’re anything like me, a lot of your ability to balance family, full-time work, and your passion project comes down to productivity and time management. 

In other words, maximizing the amount of time you have available to get the most output you can for what you need to accomplish in that timeframe. 

And no, this is not simply another article saying you should use AI to be more productive. However, AI it can help you be more productive for certain tasks.

I digress, I’m talking about physical workflow in your workspace. What I mean is, how the tools and equipment and set up of your office, studio, or desk are laid out to minimize wasted time having to set things up, or declutter your work area just to get started working.

By having things set up in an efficient way, when you sit at your desk, for example, to do work, so you can just get into it.

Now, your mileage may vary, and everyone’s situation is a little different in terms of the amount of space you have or what equipment you need related to the nature of what you’re trying to accomplish. 

That said, I just wanted to share some of my workflow in my Office/studio.

Specifically, I use an old drafting table laid flat as my creative studio work station desk. So this is where I’m working on music recording or editing audio & video (see the photo above).

The challenge I was running into was that my desktop computer keyboard sat on top of the desk, and I have a laptop I use for other things, which was also on the surface of the desk as well as my audio interface, which allows me to record into my computer. 

Then, when I needed to use other external audio equipment, like my midi controller keyboard, I didn’t have additional desk space to accommodate that equipment. That meant that I had to stop my workflow, rearrange things on my desk - often simply setting my laptop on the floor to get it off the desk. 

I know this doesn’t sound like a big problem, but when my available time to work on a recording project is limited, stopping to create a usable space is wasted time and energy.

I decided I needed to make space to better organize the things I use regularly at my desk while at the same time making the main desk surface clear to swap in and out recording equipment that I use here and there only when recording. Doing so would help me save time when recording so I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to make desk space available for what I need.

After some research and thinking through what would likely work well for me, I decided I needed a place to store my laptop near my desk, but not on the surface of my desk, and I needed to get my desktop computer keyboard off the desk to free up that surface space.

I ended up finding a clamp-on shelf/organizer for my laptop, which had some hooks to hang my headphones (bonus). I also found a clamp-on under-desk computer keyboard tray.

The result is that these little solutions have saved me a 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there while recording as I use the clear surface space for a mixing board or a midi controller as needed without having to disrupt my recording session flow.

The point is small productivity solutions can help you maximize your available time.