Become A Better Audio Engineer By Turning Off Your Phone

Become A Better Audio Engineer By Turning Off  Your Phone | By Joel Wanasek

Why I turn off my phone on the weekends:

It’s Saturday afternoon.

You’re supposed to be relaxing.

You’re sitting outside, doing something you enjoy with family, friends, or individually, and then something happens… Your phone vibrates.

You look at it, knowing you shouldn’t. It starts burning a hole in your mind. You NEED to know why someone called or texted you… Maybe it’s an emergency right?

You pick up the phone. Unlock it. There it is… a punishing text from a client with some sort of problem. In your mind you’re thinking, “it can wait until Monday (it really can).”

You go back to doing what you are doing. But, your mind keeps thinking about the situation. It’s distracting you. Others observe you as having “changed” or notice that you’re “zoning out” a lot.

You make excuses like “I’m just relaxing.” In reality you’re working on everything but relaxing. Thinking about solutions to the problem, outcomes, brainstorming, etc….

A few hours go by. You keep thinking about it. It’s eating you alive.

You text the person back eventually and exchange some thoughts.

You decide to sneak into work for an hour and fix the problem. This of course happens on Sunday. Monday rolls along and you still feel burnt out from last week, but you’re wondering why. I mean, you had the weekend off, right?

Ever have this problem?

It happens to me every weekend that I leave my phone on. Probably hundreds of times by now in my career. You’d think I would learn by now!

If you do not detach yourself physically via the phone’s power button and place it in an inconvenient location, that little piece of evil plastic doom will haunt you.

Mentally you NEED to relax at least 1 day a week if you want to stay super sharp and keep peak performance.

Being a workaholic myself who has put in more 80+ hour weeks that I’d ever want to admit to anyone, I will say that if you don’t pick at least 1 day a week to totally relax without distraction, you will burn out. Stress is cumulative and your can never restore your nervous system.

My recommendation is for you to choose 1 day a week and stay as far away as possible from the recording studio and music. Do something completely unrelated. When you return to work you will feel refreshed and excited about work instead of drained and punished by it.

Now let us extrapolate this on a yearly scale.

Not only am I a strong advocate of taking a day off each week, but I think you should take 1 month off a year and enjoy yourself. I’ve even spent as much as 2 ½ months off on vacation abroad in a year!

Why? Because the cumulative stress of work grinds down on you over time. It can kill your passion, your productivity, it can make you short tempered with your clients, and it can make you a miserable person.

A single day off a week should be viewed like maintenance. However, nothing relaxes you deeply and brings back your passion for work like a vacation of a minimum of 3 weeks. These 3 weeks need to be 100% totally interrupted with no email or phone. Trust me on this. I’ve made this mistake before! One phone call or email can set your mind back into stress. Having a few weeks with absolutely no distraction is amazing for the mind and body.

I suggest that If you really want to maximize this and if you have the money, then get on a plane and go to a different country with a unique culture.

The further you separate yourself from things that are familiar to you, the more you relax and enjoy yourself.

1. What bad habits do you have when it comes to interruptions of relaxation time?
2. What are you going to do to change those?
3. Pick a day of the week and mark it on your calendar as your own personal time. Guard this time aggressively and use it wisely.

For more awesome tips on becoming a better audio engineer, head on over to the URM Academy blog and subscribe to our podcast.

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