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Episode Summary
Get a behind-the-scenes look at all that goes on in the background with Wendy Stevens and ComposeCreate.com. Listen in as Amy and Wendy chat about everything from what it means to do deep work to tools they use for daily workflow and more.
Guest
Wendy Stevens, M.M., NCTM is a full-time composer, advocate for understanding children, and owner of ComposeCreate.com. Her passion is to create Music Kids Love® because she believes kids are beautiful beings worthy of our respect and that they deserve piano music that is both interesting to them and beautiful no matter what level. Her music has also been published by Hal Leonard and Willis Piano Music.
Items Mentioned
Article: How to Get Creative and Stay Creative Even with Constant Distractions (Wendy Stevens)
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
Transcript
Welcome to episode 95 of The Piano Pantry Podcast and our final teacher talk episode for 2023! Can you believe it?! Time flies when you’re having fun! I’m Amy Chaplin, a piano teacher who enjoys supporting colleagues each week in this space with practical content and sharing piano teacher life in-between on Social Media. Follow Piano Pantry on Facebook or on Instagram at PianoPantryAmy.
You’re in for a real treat today, my friends, as you’re about to get a behind-the-scenes look at all that goes on in the world of Wendy Stevens, full-time composer and think tank behind the wonderful ComposeCreate.com. We chat about everything from what it means to do deep work to tools we use as part of our daily workflow and more.
Wendy and I have only met in person once. During the 2017 Music Teachers National Conference in Baltimore, we had breakfast with Christina Whitlock of the Beyond Measure podcast. I’ll have to dig up the picture this week and post it to social media for a fun little flash from the past.
Wendy is one of the most genuinely kind, gracious, and down-to-earth teachers I’ve met in this part of my life journey. I hope you enjoy our chat.
Wendy Stevens is a full-time composer, advocate for understanding children, and owner of ComposeCreate.com. Her passion is to create Music Kids Love because she believes kids are beautiful beings worthy of our respect and that they deserve piano music that is both interesting to them and beautiful no matter what level. Her music has also been published by Hal Leonard and Willis Piano Music.
Amy: Well, welcome to the podcast, Wendy. With someone like you, it would be really easy for me to just assume that everyone knows who you are and your backstory. However, this past weekend, I was hanging with a new teacher friend at the Ohio MTA conference, who is fairly new to the profession, and it really reminded me how easy it is to assume things like, that when you’ve been in a community for so long, you know, not everybody knows what you know. So, I know we’ll dive into more details later, but can you start by just giving us an abbreviated introduction?
Wendy: Well, thank you so much, Amy, for having me on your podcast. I’m really excited about this, and it’s been fun to see you start Piano Pantry years ago and then to see it now blossoming into this wonderful resource for teachers.
So I’m really excited to be here. So, thanks for having me. I’m a full-time music composer now and have taught piano for a number of years. I don’t even know how many, maybe 25 or 30, but we’ve had a website for 24 years now. ComposeCreate.com, and we publish music kids love and articles that help teachers to flourish.
So everything that I do these days and do for ComposeCreate is based on the belief that people, especially kids, are beautiful beings, worthy of our respect and that they deserve music that’s both interesting to them and beautiful no matter what the level. So this comes from a passion of mine that I’ve had most all of my life except for when I was a kid.
But to understand how kids think and to help us recapture that imagination and the wonder that we experience as children, to understand what motivates them, and then to know how we can just enter into their world with more respect and with more understanding. So, every piece of music or everything that I do on Compose Create goes through the litmus test of “is it music kids love?” including my music.
So I don’t actually publish all of my music. I have lots of things that I don’t publish because it just doesn’t quite measure up to that. But we’ve expanded now into music, teens love music, adults love, and I love to help teachers flourish also with articles on business, as you and teaching ideas.
And I try to write articles that are more big-picture because there are so many great ideas out there. And it’s hard sometimes to know which ideas would work for you in your studio. So I like to write big picture articles to help people have perspective on whatever it is that they’re doing.
So I’m really enjoying this, this space I am in life, and I’m just excited about it.
Amy: I think it’s very inspiring to see you as a creator. What you were describing with the vision that you have for things that kids love?Iit’s so clear – like it comes across in everything you do. So that’s kudos to you.
Wendy: Thank you so much.
Amy: Creating in the way that that comes across to teachers is very much the way that you want it to be.
Wendy: Well, thank you for saying that.
Amy: Yeah. And, like you said, creating things like it, it takes a lot of creating to pick out the best things, right? So everything you do doesn’t come out in the end for teachers. There’s a lot of stuff that just gets, you know, shoved aside. So that’s a great point. Having you on the podcast actually feels like coming full circle because when I started teaching back in the mid-2000s, you were one of the very first content creators that I went to for support along with Natalie Weber, who has Music Matters Blog.
Susan Paradis, who has a whole bunch of games on her website. Jennifer Fink had a site called Pianimation, which is now closed down, sadlyA, ad Melody Payne, her first site was actually called The Plucky Pianista. I don’t know if you remember that at all.
Wendy: Yes, I do.
Amy: So it’s, it’s really cool having you on here. But I’m curious. With your days of teaching prior to Compose Create, they were almost pre internet days, maybe, or at least early internet days, what made you decide to start a blog, and what were your intentions for it initially?
Wendy: Well, I have to laugh. We weren’t pre-internet, Amy. But we were early days. I used the internet when I was in high school, so there you go. Yeah. But yes, we were pre-blog days. So, we had a website several years before blogs were even a thing. And I have to give a hat tip to Natalie Weber because she actually was, I think, the first person that I know of, at least, that actually started a blog for piano teachers.
And so we saw what she started and loved that you had this medium where you could write articles and things like that. And so we started one, and the goal was to help teachers just think outside the box and especially to help them think about teaching in ways that they were not taught because, as you know, you know, we tend to teach more naturally the way we were taught.
So, to help teachers sort of think outside the box and teach differently is it was our first sort of First, our first goal in doing a blog, one of the first resources we actually started selling besides, you know, stinky socks game was actually a listen to me curriculum. We called it, and it was to help students prepare for musicianship exams in our state.
So that was sort of our first foray into music curriculum and things like that. And then we eventually got into publishing music there. So yeah.
Amy: Interesting. Did you have anybody in particular that YOU used to go to? Like I said, I went to you guys on the early days for inspiration. This is, this is kind of an off-the-cuff question, but.
Wendy: This is a great question. Okay, so because it was It wasn’t pre-internet, now you’ve got that word in my mind, but because it was so early, there weren’t a lot of piano teaching sites out there. It wasn’t easy actually to put any kind of site up anyway. For example, doing e-commerce back in those days was really complicated and not nearly as intuitive as it is now.
But where I got my inspiration was on a list serve, which was kind of it was kind of like a thing where you put You could get an email with summaries of other people’s emails, and so you would put out a question on this forum, and then you would get these answers, and then you would get this email summary of that kind of thing, and so there was a listserv for PanoPedagogy back then, and so a lot of the ideas that I got, or just, just getting to know what teachers needs were and things like that were because of that great listserv.
Actually, I was told the other day that it’s not it’s not completely a thing of the past. Like, some of those are coming back because they’re a little more maybe friendly than social media things. But, anyway, it’s interesting.
Amy: It’s been really fun watching your website grow and evolve. I know that you’ve moved into full-time composing now, instead of half teaching and half composing. How did you work through such a big decision? Do you have any regrets?
Wendy: Yeah, so that was probably the most difficult decision of my career. And I probably took at least two, maybe up to three years, to make the decision where I had it. I had it in my mind that I probably should do this thing, or maybe I should do this thing.
It was just wrestling with it for a long time. But one book that influenced me early on was Good to Great by Jim Collins. And some of that, you know, there are probably more relevant books than that these days, but he talks about the hedgehog concept and focuses on one area.
And he had three overlapping, like a Venn diagram kind of thing. But one of the things that he mentioned was doing an area and focusing on an area where you could be the best at like it was actually possible to be the best at something. And so I finally realized that I couldn’t be the best at piano teaching and music composing.
Like I really had to focus. And so I got to the place where I had to admit I couldn’t do it all. And I realized that in order to really be Great at composing music. Kids love. I had to focus on that and it meant that I didn’t have to completely leave piano teaching. Of course, I have to stay connected to it.
I had to do a little bit of it on my own, but I really had to put all my eggs in one basket at that point. So the tipping point for me, I think in those two to three years that I was talking or thinking about it, was that I just noticed that my heart was really into composing music.
The most joy I got was when I composed music, or I helped teachers to connect with kids. And I think that’s where I finally realized, oh, I not only have to put all my eggs in one basket in terms of getting this skill really good, but I also, that’s where my joy is. And so I transferred my students then to good, good teachers and then jumped into this world, and it’s been exciting, and I don’t have any regrets.
Amy: That’s awesome. So, how many years then have you been doing this full time?
Wendy: Well, that’s a question I’m not quite sure about. Like I, how many years, well, you know, we’ve had the website for about 24 years, and we’ve been selling things for 24 years. How many years have I been selling music on the site? I’m not sure.
Amy: Okay.
Wendy: We’ve been selling things on the site for a long time, but I can’t remember exactly when we started selling.
Amy: It’s been a while, though. I mean, it has.
Wendy: Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
Amy: Well, this might be a strange question, but I remember early on being just always so impressed with the quality of your products and the designs of all your PDF files and not just the product itself, which of course they were great products, but the actual file literally from the way that you seem to have all the right verbiage to, and like you included ads.
And like for, you know, other downloads and other products that you had, I thought, wow, how did she know how to do all this? When I started selling things, I felt like I was totally clueless. And the best thing that I could really do is just kind of go to other products that I had bought, you know, online in the past and see like, what kinds of things are people including in these products?
So How did you know what to do, like what to include and how to make it look so pretty? I mean, did you hire someone or were you doing all that on your own?
Wendy: So there are several answers to this question. First, I have been in that spot, too, Amy. So you’re not alone. And there are many times that I have not known how to do something, but I will give a lot of credit to my husband because he is really good at sourcing things.
He also, because he’s not a musician he’s in the business world. And so he really knows he really just knows what a lot of people are doing, and you know, one of the best places to get ideas is actually not in the piano teaching world, I realized years ago, because we’re actually behind the times.
And so, I mean, we’ve done a lot to catch up, I think, but it’s just not the place to go to get new business ideas. So I’m all the time sourcing business ideas from all kinds of places, whether it’s places where I order camping gear or whether it’s Amazon or it’s books. I’m always looking to other sources for business ideas and marketing ideas and things like that. And I think that my husband’s just been really helpful in helping me with those things. Cause he’s really good at the big picture, but he’s also good at drilling down into all the details and helping find just the right. You know, the right service or the right app or the right program that can help you do or help me do what I needed to do.
We constantly have to, not constantly, but we frequently have to change things, which I hate. I love to set it and forget it and just assume that the technology is going to keep working all of our lives. And it, you know, just, that’s. Not the tech nature of technology. And so we have to be on our toes. We have to do maintenance.
We have to make sure things are serving the teacher and serving what we need it to do. So yeah, but it’s it’s been an interesting sort of journey of learning so many things like just being willing to sort of say, “I don’t know,” like you said, and then just saying, “where do I go to, to find this information?” And then just knowing people like my husband or knowing, you know, who’s writing about it or who’s doing the best at it in business and seeing what they’re doing and seeing what the recommendations are. I think that’s probably some of the principles that I used.
Amy: So, were you actually creating your own product?
Wendy: Yes.
Amy: So you were doing the legwork.
Wendy: Yeah, we did it all. I initially had a little bit of help with graphic art from some other family members. And then they taught me a lot about how to do things. And so we’re doing a lot of that on our own as well now too. So yeah, it’s pretty much, it was either me or my husband that did it.
Amy: So this kind of actually brings us into my next question. A little bit about, you know, who you have working with you and a little bit of the behind the scenes. I’m part of a mastermind group of four teachers who do a content creation alongside teaching. While it may seem glamorous and a great way to make passive income, the truth is, there’s really no such thing as completely passive income, I mean, unless you’re just super lucky.
I mean, you can’t just create something and then do nothing with it. It takes a lot of time and energy to like, make it known to the world and to promote it. So, can you give us a behind the scenes look at your business and just all that it entails?
Wendy: Yes, well, you’re absolutely right about passive income like nothing comes from nothing right and it just sounds so easy and like everybody should try to do it when you hear about it.
But you know, I guess the truth about passive income that is correct is that passive income is income where you’re not trading your time for money. And in that sense, if you can create something that you can sell when you’re not just sitting there in front of a customer, that technically would be passive income, but nobody talks about the difficulty of that, right?
It’s just so much work. So I was actually thinking, I’m sorry, I’m getting off, but I was thinking, how much time does it take you to prepare something like a podcast? I mean, that’s not even passive income probably, but how much time does that take you?
Amy: It might be shocking to people, but it takes me a good four hours to produce my eight to twelve-minute podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the time it takes to outline it. I do script it for the most part because I give transcripts just and then record it and publish it and create the show notes pages and all of that. I mean, everyone’s a little bit different. Sometimes, it’s a little bit faster, but I think a good solid average is about four hours.
Wendy: Yeah. I’m not surprised at that because when you’re doing something so concise, which is what I love about your podcast, Amy. But when you’re doing something that concise, it takes even more work. So you’re delivering something that seems small, but the amount of effort that it took to get there is even more than sometimes an hour-long podcast where somebody doesn’t edit, or they don’t.
Amy: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I’m doing it all myself. It’s not just recording and then sending it off to somebody to edit it. It’s. It’s, it’s written out. It’s very thought, you know, I’ve spent time thinking through it very specifically.
Wendy: Well, just to answer your question about, like, a behind-the-scenes look, every day is really different for me, and, like, it’s not, it’s not like I’m doing just one thing, but about 20 percent of my time is really the amount of time that I spent creating and composing.
Then, the other 80 percent is spent on production and corresponding with teachers, strategy, maintaining technology, and other things like that. And I used to get really discouraged as a composer because I would read these essays in these books by composers that said, Oh, you need to be composing one to two hours a day in order to be the.
Best composer. And I’m just like, whatever. And then I finally realized that these people who were writing were male. Number one, they didn’t have kids or they weren’t the primary breadwinner or not breadwinner, the primary caregiver of their children and their family. I was at this space where I had toddlers running around, and there was just no way that I could do that.
I wasn’t managing a household. And, and these men in particular, I was reading, I don’t think they were managing a household. So anyway, I realized then that it wasn’t the daily schedule that I needed to think about, but it was more thinking about what I do in terms of seasons. So now what I do is think about the fact that I do seasons.
So there’s one season called the composing and creating season. And that’s the seed and season in which. If you email me, I’ll probably be really delayed in responding to you because I have to ignore emails and I have to carve out large chunks for composing chunks of time. But then there’s the season of preparation.
And so that’s the season in which I take all the things that I composed or other composers composed and prepare it. We make graphics for it. We edit it. We just do all kinds of things with it. And that’s the season that takes so much more work than anybody ever knows. It’s just – it’s a long season. I enjoy it, honestly, but it’s a long season.
And then there’s the launching season is how I think about it. And that’s when we release it to the public. We do all kinds of social things for it and we do big webinars for it. And then lastly is the season that I’ve minimized in the past, but I’ve realized it is much more important, and that’s the resting season.
So I take. Specifically, take time in the summer not to do anything except for maintenance, emails, and things like that. I then try to take a little bit of time after every webinar. For some webinars, it’s not possible because there’s one back to back, but I like to take several days even just not not doing anything, not expecting anything of myself, I should say.
So it’s more helpful to me to think about a season instead of a typical day because no day is typical, but at the same time, we’re just doing so many things, just, you know, one or two or three people are doing so many things that it’s just never completely predictable. So I don’t know, seasons – seasons is better.
Amy: So do your seasons go throughout the year? I assume that you have that progression of what is it? Was it four seasons? That happens – like maybe in each quarter of the year or something like that?
Wendy: Yeah, like, like the composing season and the launching season and the preparation season, those always go hand in hand with each other, and those are like August, September, October, those are heavy, hot and heavy there, and then between November and December, that’s the composing, creating season, so that’s the season I’m getting ready to enter right now, and then we’ve got well, I shouldn’t even say it’s that long, it’s composing, creating is more like November, and then we’ve got December, to, again, do preparation and launch, and then January, February is the launching season, and then after that we do a lot, or I do a lot, of composing in those late spring months, and that way I’m ready for the fall, and it’s not quite as crazy as it would be.
So I’m still perfecting it, Amy. Cause I think really like I got Halloween music out really early this year. We got it out in August, but then Christmas and holiday music thatt was just in the nick of time. So,
Amy: you know, one thing is we were first starting portion of the conversation that came to mind is that when, you know, you’re creating things and products for people, one thing I learned in the very early days is it’s one thing to create products and resources for my students.
It’s another to create something that you share with, whether it’s even a freebie or that you sell. Yeah, others. It’s two totally different things. I mean, for example, I have a music lab series, and you know, for years, I did it with just my studio with my students. And then I was like, I’m going to, you know, start selling this on my website.
And I can’t…like the work that it took to get it to a place where I could actually present it as a product was shocking.
Wendy: When you have to think through all the problems that someone else might have with it that you may not have because you don’t have the same background. And that I mean, that’s a part of making a good product is actually thinking through all the things that could go wrong with it, or the uses of it that people could, could be using it in ways that doesn’t make sense. And then they have all these questions.
Amy: In writing instructions and how to use this resource and things like that. You have to be very specific.
Do you have a social media person? Do you have a, like you said, a graphic designer? How many people do you have working for you and your support crew?
Wendy: Yeah, that’s a great question. So four years ago, I hired Amanda, who, if you write into Compose Create and have a. Pretty general question, or even a specific question about things. She’s the one that responds and she’s just been fabulous. I originally thought I needed a social media person. And then I realized later it was more of a customer service person that I needed.
So she actually takes care of both of those things for me. So, I do have somebody creating that content. We review it and plan for it together, but she’s doing all the hard work doing those things. So yeah, she’s integral in the success of Compose Create. My husband is integral, but he’s more behind the scenes.
He sort of helps me tackle the, the big issues, the technology when things go wrong, he’s the person that I panic to. And then, actually, I do almost all of the graphics these days. I hired someone recently to do the covers for the Inspiring Portraits series that we’re doing, and that’s been fun.
And then, oh, we do have some musicians that we hire to do accompaniment tracks sometimes. So all our accompaniment tracks for Rhythm Menagerie and Manipulations, and Rhythm Cup Explorations are done by some other people. So yeah, I mean, so it’s a team of people, but some of those people are more regular than others. And Amanda’s definitely a regular part of the team.
Amy: Okay. Wow. So I’m impressed that you do a lot of your own graphics.
Wendy: Thanks. Well, like I said, I actually had an artist help me, and they weren’t just a graphic artist, which was kind of helpful to me to understand sort of the concepts of art and how they can and can’t work together.
He taught me a lot of things, and then I was able to bring him into graphic art and other things. And so it’s been a lot of fun. It’s actually one of those things that I enjoy that I shouldn’t necessarily enjoy because it has nothing to do with composing music, but I really enjoy it a lot. One of my favorite things to do is create a cover.
Amy: Fun. So with your assistant Amanda, I actually have one of my own piano students, a former piano student, who’s now in college studying digital marketing that’s now helping me with my social media stuff.
Wendy: That’s fabulous.
Amy: Which is so nice to just pass it off and it’s a great little relationship. I’m curious, how do you guys communicate, and you said you talk about scheduling things, like, do you have a certain tool that you use just for that portion of your work together?
Wendy: Yeah, that’s a good question, too. I’m always, and I know I can tell you’re this way, too, Amy. I’m always looking for the best productivity tool, right?
Amy: Yes.
Wendy: So, I should have known you’d ask this question, but I’ve actually been using something called Trello for a long time. Have you heard of that?
Amy: Yeah, I have. Yep.
Wendy: Yeah, so I love it. And it’s an asynchronous thing. And so she can put her comments in there and then it’ll send me an email once an hour if there’s something new, but it will put everything together.
So if she has a comment on this card that says something about social media and she has a comment. Comment on this card that says something something about customer service and maybe on another card says something about YouTube, then I’ll get all of those in one email. I can see them at a glance, but my email inbox isn’t constantly just being bombarded with issues or questions or things like that.
So we rarely text each other because that’s, you know, an interruption in people’s day in private life. And we don’t want to do that for each other because we have different schedules. And so we use that to sort of communicate about, you know, plans and strategies and things like that. And then I just, we just use a shared G Google calendar for scheduling. So what do you use?
Amy: I have actually started using Notion, and I created a calendar using Notion. They have a database feature and on the calendar, I then just put what it is that I want scheduled for that day for social media. And then I’ll put if I want it to be like a social image or like a real, like what type of thing.
And then if it’s just, you know, advertising essentially, like here’s the podcast, you know, or if it’s something of value to kind of see that there’s a balance of. You know, advertising and creating value for teachers in the social media stuff. So it’s worked really well, but it’s nice to just have a place where I can just fill it out, and then she can just go to that and see what needs to be done.
Wendy: Yeah.
Amy: And then there’s also commenting features. So if I need to send her a little message, I can just comment directly right on the calendar.
Wendy: Yeah.
Amy: You know, specifics there. So.
Wendy: It sounds like that can scale pretty easily, too, as you, if you want to turn more over to her or have her do more. Yeah.
Amy: Yeah. So, let’s continue in this little happy place in my conversation.
Wendy: Okay.
Amy: So, can you give us a little bit more of a look into what your workflow looks like? Any other productivity tools or apps?
Wendy: Sure. So I can share some of my secrets, of course, but I first want to say that I got really frustrated with productivity when I was younger and had kids at home and was just juggling all of these things.
And so I just want to say to those teachers who might be in that space that your day will look different than mine or Amy’s. And, so these productivity things are helpful, yes, but they’re only helpful to a certain degree. And so I just want to put that out there because I don’t want anybody to feel a pressure to be as productive as so and so because it’s just too hard to do that.
And everybody’s got their own life and their own issues and their own fires that they have to put out. Right?
Amy: Yeah, and everybody works differently, too. So a tool that I might like may not, you know, work well for someone else. I mean, I frequently try new tools, and I, I, you know, log in, I create an account, and I start looking at it, and I’m like, this just does not work for my brain.
Wendy: Right.
Amy: You know, so yeah, everyone’s different.
Wendy: Yeah, I will say there is a blog post that I wrote a long time ago when I had little kids that’s called How to Get and Stay Creative with Constant Distractions. Little did I know how constantly distracted everybody would be with social media these days. But this one was when I was so discouraged when I had little kids, and I just couldn’t find the time to compose because you have to have large chunks of time to do that.
And so anyway, that article is up there for those of you who might be discouraged by that. But anyway, so, productivity is one of my happy spots, but yeah, I’m an inbox-zero person.
Amy: Are you? You know, I like the idea of it, but I never get completely there. I’m usually more of an inbox 20.
Wendy: Got it. Got it. Well, that’s probably more realistic. When I say I’m an inbox zero person, that doesn’t mean I’m an inbox zero every day. I’m actually doing some new things, even this week, that I think could help me with, but it’s – I get my inbox to zero at least once, hopefully, twice a week, is the idea. So I just, it bothers me to have anything in there.
But I also have a notebook that I call my brain that has everything in it. I feel like I even say to my kids, where’s my brain? And they know exactly what I mean. And so it’s got all of the three most important things in my work day, you know. It’s got that in there. It’s got the schedule.
Even though I keep a Gmail calendar, I go ahead and I copy my schedule to a hard made a hard copy of that at the beginning of every week, because it’s sort of cements what’s happening during that week so I don’t forget things. So that’s kind of important to me.
Amy: Teachers are probably loving that they’re hearing you say you have a hard copy notebook.
Wendy: Oh, yeah. I try to be all digital because my husband’s all digital. And I thought that was just the way you should be if you’re with it or whatever. I don’t know. But yeah, it’s not like for me, I just I really needed to put it all in one space. And it was just. It was much better to write it all down and, and one of the things that I do is I plan my week on Sunday and so I never coming into Monday morning saying, what should I do this morning, you know, which tasks should I tackle because I already know which one is the most important one based on how I planned.
Amy: Are you using Michael Hyatt’s full focus planner?
Wendy: No, no, I’m not. Are you,
Amy: I use it at one point, but it ended up not being right for me. I’m more of a digital person. But the way you’re describing it, I know that that includes a lot of things like making you focus on your three goals for the day.
Wendy: Yeah.
Amy: You know, what are the goals for the week? Things like that.
Wendy: Yeah, there are a lot of people who do the whole three top things. I think Donna Miller talks about that too. So it’s something I’ve sort of decided has to be, but ironically, Amy, I knew we were going to have this podcast, but literally on Sunday of this week, I started a new system.
So even the system that I started this week isn’t even the one that I’m talking about because I’m, I’m starting, I’m trying a little bit of Cal Newport’s deep work. Idea. And so time blocking is his idea where you really start with what’s scarce in your day. The tasks aren’t scarce. It’s actually the time that’s scarce in your day.
So if you start with the time and you say, okay, I have two hours here, which task am I going to plug into those two hours? And then I’m going to block. All of those two hours to do that one task. And that way, I’m not looking at my planner and saying, okay, I’ve got three things to do today. And so I’ll do this one for a little while. And then I’ll do this one for a little while. And then, and then nothing ever gets really deeply focused on because we’re constantly distracted. So anyway, I’m just starting to try that. We’ll see.
Amy: My mastermind ladies are going to love hearing that because they were just talking about that book in one of our meetings in the last couple of months. And it’s on my to-read list. So
Wendy: Yeah, I’m a big fan of his. I’m going to say something about him probably in a little bit cause I’m always talking about him, but not always talking about him, but I have several things of his that are, are really great to, to talk about, but I also am a big fan in terms of productivity of Mark Twain’s eat the frog advice.
So if you haven’t heard of it, he said, if it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first. So there’s always something on my agenda that I don’t want to do, right? I procrastinate about it, and so if I actually make the time, the space to do that thing and do it either in the morning, the first thing in the morning, or if it comes up during the day, I try to do it at the end of the day.
So it’s not my first thing in the morning. That’s kind of, I just, I just try to be cognizant of what I’m dreading doing so that I, I just do it. And then just get that out of my mind. Cause I get really bogged down. If I… that’s something I’ve learned, too, is I have to do, like, it’ll just keep getting put off and put off if I just don’t make that the first thing that I do, you know? We’re such expert procrastinators as humans, right?
Amy: So it was funny, you were saying that you just started a new – I don’t know – way of, of working or whatever you call it. Yes. I actually just started a new system in the last few weeks. Okay. So, And it’s one of those things I’ve always kind of searching for a little bit better way of, you know, doing things not changing constantly, but just kind of always cognizant of, yep, is this working for me?
Like, is this, you know, does this feel good? Yes. I’ve been using Google Reminders a lot, which is a very small portion of my workflow, but Google Reminders went away, and they changed everything over to Google Tasks. And I just didn’t like the way that Google Tasks integrated and I didn’t like having my calendar and my tasks together.
So anyway, I was researching some tools, and I really wanted something that I could have on my device and on my computer, like an actual, You know, on my desktop computer. So, I’ve been using the Todoist app. Have you ever heard of that?
Wendy: I have. I think I used it a while back, but I didn’t really go full in.
Amy: Again, it’s only been a few weeks, so I hate to talk about it too much, but I’ve been really liking it because it uses a little bit of Stephen Covey’s, like, quadrant system, you know, what’s important. And so it, like, where you can prioritize things and then schedule them. Then, it has an inbox as well, where the inbox is just for processing.
Okay. And you then process each of your tasks into different projects or different priorities and things like that. So it’s very interesting. So I’m kind of, you know, curious to see where that goes. Between that and then, I use Notion a lot as well to organize things in life.
Wendy: It’s hard to have different systems. I wish that one system would do it all kind of thing, but I just, they’re just, I don’t know. Everything’s. It’s hard. Different and everything’s everything’s expert at something, but nothing is expert at all. Right?
Amy: Exactly. Yeah. It’s like you, you wish you had that one perfect tool, but really you need to have tools that do the best at what they do.
Wendy: Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. The only other thing I was going to share about productivity is sort of, it seems not productive, but I’ve started taking walks during, or at least between my biggest tasks. And it’s really hard for me to take a break and feel fine about it – like feel good about that. Like I very much grew up with this you always have to be moving. You always have to be productive. You always have to be efficient, right? And so to take some time to actually just walk outside feels like I – I could be using it in a better way.
And so that’s been a real help to me because my happy places outside are where I get my energy. That’s where I get just. Inspiration. And so it just, it seems like a, it seems obvious that I should be doing that, but it’s just hard sometimes when you’re thinking, oh, I’m not being productive as I’m walking around the block or whatever, you know,
Amy: that’s where you get that. You get that brain space; you get that breathing room that then allows you to be more productive. You need that, that time. So I don’t think that’s awful at all. I think that’s wonderful.
Wendy: Well, I see it, and now it makes perfect sense to me as to why I should do it, but actually taking the time to do it has been challenging, but it’s now I consider it a part of my productivity, I think. And it’s just like any, even just like good practice tips, like with interleaving or taking breaks or the Pomodoro technique, you know work management where you do, you know, a chunk of time and then you take a break, you like to get away from it, and then you come back.
Amy: So, what is next for Wendy Stevens? Do you foresee any changes in your near future, or are you happy with where things are and where you’ve landed right now?
Wendy: Well, we’ve got, of course, some big things planned which, of course, I can’t talk about, but they’re all focused on the things that I’ve talked about, like just this mission of helping teachers flourish and just giving them music kids love, music teens love, and music adults love.
So that’s pretty exciting for me. And I, I don’t; I mean, if somebody were looking at my life, they would. At least in terms of what I have planned, there’s probably no big changes to other people that people could see, but I’m super happy with where we are and we’re just excited about the things we’re developing and, and growth and just the ways we’re helping teachers and so yeah.
Amy: Do you have any final words of wisdom or tidbits of advice for anyone that might be pondering a big change like you did out of teaching and into composition or maybe even into full-time content creation?
Wendy: So I was thinking about this, and there’s lots of really good advice that could be given that everybody should think about if you’re thinking about those things things like, and it’s things you’ve, you’ve, everybody’s heard, like know your market inside and out, and is there really space in the market for what I have or what I’m creating?
Is the market saturated with what I’m offering? is what I’m doing unique enough? And why is it that I want to do this thing? So all of those things can reveal a lot about whether something can be successful or unsuccessful, but even though all of those questions are important, I think the most important thing for anyone to do that wants to, to be in a specific space is to get really good at that thing.
So this is part of Cal Newport’s book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. And this is a book that he wrote with advice to especially young people on not being obsessed with finding your passion and pursuing that. Instead, choose something and focus on it so much that you become so skilled that people come to you for what you have, and people know you for that person who has that thing.
And so what I would say to anybody considering a change or a transition or whatever is just. Get good at the thing and not just good, get great, get really skilled at the thing that you’re wanting to do. And then I think the path becomes a little clearer when you go down that process of trying to get skilled. You discover things about yourself, and then you discover what’s good for other people a lot of times as well.
So that would probably be my piece of advice. And then, for any young person, I would definitely encourage you to read that book. So.
Amy: Well, Wendy, it has been so wonderful just having time, even for myself today, to glean from you, and it’s just been fun getting to know you a little bit more. So thank you so much for being on today.
Wendy: Thank you so much, Amy, for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation and it’s been so fun to even get to know you better as well. And I hope this is helpful to your readers and I hope not readers, your podcast listeners. And I hope that there’s something here for everyone. So, thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Ugh, you guys, I hope you were as blessed by that conversation as I was. After editing the podcast last week, I was so excited about how it turned out I emailed Wendy right away with a digital high-five. LOL. Be sure and head over to ComposeCreate.com to check out all the wonderful music, articles, and support Wendy has built for us over the years.
Now, on to this week’s tiny tip!
As a Midwesterner, it is inevitable that at least one of my meals over the holidays will be accompanied by a tray of deviled eggs.
I like deviled eggs but am also picky about them, so here are my tips;
- The filling can’t be too dry, and it really needs enough mustard so you can actually taste it.
- Don’t just use mayo; add some sour cream as well. It adds a nice richness. I’ll give you my ratios in a second.
- The more filling, the better. I like to cook an extra egg, so you can have one extra yolk to richen the filling. Not only that, but it can be easy to tear the whites sometimes, so consider the extra egg white insurance. Otherwise, just chop the extra white into a salad.
- Make sure the yolk filling is not lumpy by pureeing the yolk and filling ingredients in a food processor rather than just smashing with a fork.
- Make them look pretty by either piping the filling using a plastic bag and cutting off the tip, or using a 1 T. cookie scoop.
Lastly, the ratio for MY perfect filling is four parts mayo to 2 parts sour cream and 2 parts mustard. So for 20 deviled eggs halves, I cook 11 eggs, then use 4 T mayo, 2 T sour cream, 2 T mustard (half Dijon, half yellow), then salt and a pinch of sugar. I’ve even pureed the extra egg white into the filling.
Oh, and in my perfect world, deviled eggs don’t include pickle relish. Just a nice sprinkling of flaky sea salt or maybe a few bits of well-cooked bacon.
So there you go. I hope you like my recommendation for perfect deviled eggs!
