I used to hate it when the bass player of my band would be packed up and on the road in less than 5 minutes and it would take me about 45 minutes before I was ready to leave. I call this “the drummer’s plight.”
It’s a lot of fun playing drums. You get to beat the heck out something that doesn’t hit back, make beautiful music (hopefully!), and be adored (again, hopefully!). The playing is mostly pure bliss.
The down side: you have a lot of stuff to have to lug around and set up and tear down. But I loved playing so much, I rationalized that it was worth it.
Then in 1987 I learned the power of continuous improvement. I call it the Principle of ICAN: Improving Constantly and Never-endingly.
As a result of learning this principle, I began thinking of ways to be more productive in tearing down my drums, packing them into the drum cases, and loading them into my car.
At first I thought about the entire 45 minutes block of time immediately following a gig it typically took to be in my truck and wheels moving. What am I doing that could be eliminated or altered to shave off minutes or seconds from the process of tearing down my drums and loading them into my car?
I remembered that I would socialize a bit. Maybe if I waited until after my drums were loaded to socialize I could be more efficient.
My cymbal stands had large wing nuts that had to be screwed and unscrewed to put on and take of my cymbals. I discovered a solution to this problem at the music store that didn’t include wing nuts so I could put them on and take them off without having to screw or unscrew anything and the cymbals had more freedom of movement so they might last longer (less likely to crack). This may seem insignificant, but all of these little seconds add up to minutes and over time, hours, days, weeks, months, and possibly years.
I had a rug I would carry with me to put my drum set on so the bass drum wouldn’t move around when I played them. I discovered that putting little squares of duct tape on the rug to mark where key items were to be placed helped eliminate wasted time in occasionally having to rearrange my drums once they were set up.
I continually kept looking for anything I could do to shave off a few seconds here, a few seconds there. I could go on and on about all of the details. But ultimately, all of these little time savers added up.
I got the process of tearing down my drums and wheels moving (on my way home) down from 45 minutes to 20 minutes.
What processes are you doing that could be done more efficiently? Incorporate the Principle of ICAN and see how successful you can be at maximizing your productivity.