The Piano Pantry Podcast is available on these podcast streaming networks: 071
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Episode Summary
How many shelves, tubs, or binders do you have full of old class notes and professional magazine subscriptions? In this episode, we consider why we hold onto so much old information we rarely, if ever, use and how we can sort through and save it in a more useful way for the future.
Items Mentioned
Group IlluminatED (Use code AMY50 at checkout for $50 off registration.)
Blog post: Purging Old College Notebooks and Professional Magazines
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Transcript:
Quick question. I want you to take a moment and picture where in your house or studio you keep all of your old school books – notebooks (or binders) – and professional magazines. How many binders of class syllabi and notes have you held onto? How many magazine holders are stuffed to the T with publications from 20 years ago? I’ll give you a minute to consider while I introduce myself.
I’m Amy Chaplin, host of this podcast and a piano teacher with a natural inclination toward tidiness and organization. I wouldn’t call myself totally OCD, though. I like things in order – but I also live realistically – which is why I feel totally qualified to weigh in on the topic frequently.
Speaking of weighing in – weight is a word that comes to mind when I think of all the stuff we hang onto for years and years, “just in case.” Growing up, I can’t tell you how many times I heard my mom say, “If I haven’t used it in a year or two – it’s gone.” She was all about purging on a regular basis. It’s no wonder Marie Kondo and minimalists like Joshua Becker have risen to fame. We Americans are good at having a lot of stuff. Even if it’s stuff we rarely – if ever – use.
OK, now back to those notebooks and magazines. I want you to now consider how often you reference them. How many times have you gone back to find that excellent article from Marvin Blickenstaff in AMT from 2005 or looked through your notes on Baroque period music from Music History Class. Hmmm? How many?
I’m not trying to make you feel guilty here, I just want you to consider how much these things are adding to your life RIGHT NOW and if the weight of them being there is greater than their contribution.
Wow I really like that – let me say that one more time. Consider how much these things are adding to your life RIGHT NOW and if the weight of them being there is greater than their contribution.
I think there’s something we can do about it, and I DON’T just mean dumping it all.
See… I’m practical!
Thanks for listening in to episode 71 of The Piano Pantry Podcast.
Have you planned any professional development for the summer months? Are you interested in group teaching? Group IlluminatED might be just what you need. While most conferences offer sessions on group teaching, never before have I seen an entire conference dedicated to the topic. You’ll hear from some real superstars in this realm. Visit www.GroupIlluminatED.com to register for this flexible online conference that gives you access to all the content for two entire months so you can consume as your summer allows. Use the code AMY50 to get $50 off your registration.
Let’s dive into the last of our three-part purge series. If you’re new around here or if you were too crazy busy this past month to listen in, jump back to episode 68, where we talk about purging teaching resources like games and free downloads, and episode 69 where we talk about purging sheet music.
THIS episode was inspired by a blog post I wrote a couple of years ago when a friend of mine – Christina Whitlock of the Beyond Measure Podcast – contacted me asking for advice. I’m sure she doesn’t mind me calling her out. She said…
“I have these enormous binders from college many years ago. I know I need to toss a lot of it, but there are definitely resources in there I don’t want to get rid of (and would love to make more easily accessible to review). Any advice?”
So, I gave her a reply and then shared that reply as a blog post. Funnily enough, at that time I had just went through the process of purging piles of professional magazines I had been holding onto for 10 years; both MTNA’s American Music Teacher AMT magazine and the Piano Magazine, which has had a variety of names over the years. I think back in the day when I first started subscribing, it was called Clavier Companion but I can’t remember for sure.
Anyway, when I thought about this purge series, I had to include this topic. Even more so than our resources and sheet music, all of our college notebooks and professional magazines are not something that we likely reference as part of our daily workflow. They’re probably on a shelf in a dark corner of your office or holed up in a plastic tub somewhere.
There are two reasons I think we hold onto these things.
One, we paid a heck of a lot of money for it and want to get it for all it’s worth
Two, we think we may want to reference it someday or go back and reread an article that struck us.
If you are someone who is using all of these things – I absolutely applaud you.
The question is – if we’re not using them, then are they really serving us, or are they just weighing us down? Maybe it’s NOT weighing you down, and it doesn’t bother you that these items take up 2 feet of your shelf space. Alright, then fast forward to the tiny tip at the end. Good for you!
BUT there’s something to be said about releasing ourselves from these things that may have served us in the past but are not part of our present and likely will not be needed in the future.
Are you ready?
Here’s a process you can use.
First, set a time frame for yourself that feels achievable and not overwhelming.
Maybe you need only to allow yourself a total of two hours for the entire project, and when the time’s up, it’s up. Maybe you prefer to set a goal of 30 minutes a day for the next week – whatever works for you.
When I was sorting through my boxes of magazines, I did it in the wintertime, and I set one stack at a time next to the couch so either first thing in the morning during my brief quiet reading time or at the end of the day’s downtime – I would flip through one or two magazines.
I remember being actually surprised about how much I remembered what articles I enjoyed and found beneficial – even if it was a magazine I hadn’t read for years. Of course, it helped that I folded down the page on my favorite articles the first time.
Whether you’re going through notes from old college classes or stacks of magazines as I did, make a quick decision if said article or pages of notes are something you find useful even at this moment and if it’s something that you really would seek out in the future.
Next, don’t just put them back where they were but consider how you would be more apt to utilize said information now or in the future better than you have in the past 10 years. Find a way of incorporating the information into the way you work today. Maybe it’s keeping it more within reach with other resources you refer to on a regular basis. Maybe it’s taking it out of paper folders and putting it into 3-ring binders and into sleeve covers so you’re more apt to flip through. Or, Maybe like me, it’s converting it into digital format.
If you’re still a hardcopy person – which I understand – just make sure that you have things clearly labeled and easily searchable. That could be labeling binder spines and including dividers with descriptors.
So much of what we do now is entirely digital, maybe it’s time to make the switch, though. Besides removing items from your physical space, the beauty of moving old notes and such to digital format is that – if you set it up right, you can procure all you have on whatever topic you’re like with a simple keyword search.
There are two places really you could move things to digitally – either your documents storage or into an information management program like Evernote. While you can totally use document storage, you will have even stronger search powers and thus future recall if you use a program like Evernote. I have always used Evernote as my digital filing cabinet. Even though I now use Notion for organizing my life and daily workflow, I still prefer to use Evernote for capturing information.
Turning your hard-copy class notes and articles into digital format is really easy these days with your mobile device. No longer do we have to scan one page at a time to a USB drive onto our computer with our printers! This is way faster.
My favorite scanning app is Genius Scan but you can also use Scannable which is by Evernote or any other scanning app. It will then turn it into a PDF document and you can send it wherever you want – into your documents storage or an app like Evernote.
If you’ve never done this before, you will scan one page at a time but you want to scan ALL pages that you want in the same document one after the other before hitting finish and hitting the share button to send it into whatever program you want.
When saving digital files, it’s always important that you title them in a way that you might search for them. So, if you know it’s an article you will remember was written by a particular person, then be sure and include the author’s name in the file name. If you know you would search for the article based on the fact that it’s about technique, then be sure and include the word technique in the file name.
Remember that simply saving articles digitally will not do you any more good than the physical ones if you don’t make them easily accessible (and thus easily searchable).
Here’s my big pro-level tip as well. If you’re saving articles from magazines, be sure and scan the magazine cover so you know where it came from. This is especially important for any future referencing you might want to do in articles or presentations of your own.
I will give one final bit of advice for why using a program like Evernote can be more useful than just your document manager. If you have the paid version, you will get a feature that can search text inside images, docs, and PDFs. This includes your handwriting. So, it will be able to read your handwritten notes with keyword searches. It’s pretty amazing. Your documents manager search function does not search the text of documents, only the file name.
Lastly, don’t be afraid of the trash. Release and let go. It’s sweet relief.
As we wrap up this final episode in the purge series if you want to have a good reason to keep up with all your organization momentum, keep an ear out for the upcoming summer session of my digital organization coaching series where I walk you through step by step processes and mindset practices for getting your email inbox, media, document storage, and more under control. Find details in the show notes.
Now, jump into your calendar and book a time slot for yourself this week to start digging into all those old class notebooks and magazines that are gathering dust.
As usual, today I have a tiny tip for you. Do you teach 5-finger patterns and chords? Do you always start with C? My tip is to consider starting with F. Here’s why. First, it gets students used to black keys being included right away; second, it allows you to make connections to the circle of 5ths continually – so you can begin with F, then go to C – the dominant – then to G – it’s dominant. Once you’ve done the three snowman major chords, you can then go into the hamburger ones – D – A – E – from there, into 2 of the 3 oddball chords, B, and F#, then to the three ice cream sandwich chords – Db, Ab, Eb, and finally the last oddball, Bb. Now, you wouldn’t have to teach them all in this circle of 5ths order; you could do F, C, G, then D, A, E, then Db, Ab, Eb, all of which you can refer to tonic, and dominant within each other, then finally the odd Bb, B, and F#.
It’s just nice to take any chance we can to make connections to tonic and dominant and the circle of 5ths with students. At least then it’s not just randomly C, G, then F or C, F, then G, but you build on the dominant, one following the other.
Once again, just a little thought and a tiny tip. By the way, the reference to the snowman, hamburger, ice cream sandwich, and oddball major chords is courtesy of TCW (Three Cranky Women) Resources produced by Kjos. Check out their Flashy Fingers card game for more on that. And no, this wasn’t a paid ad – just a tip from me. Enjoy your start of summer!
