I just keep chipping away at stuff and hoping for the best, and eventually the pile gets smaller. Although I have been there, and more than once. Back in the Bronze Age, when I was a student at VCC, I got so overwhelmed I lost it, and my best buddy, the recently deceased bassist Jasper Clarke, advised me to go home and take a nap. “But I’ve got too much shit to do!” I screamed, and he kind of looked at me sideways and said “well you ain’t gettin it done in this condition, are you”? And he was right, I was much more productive after a nap.

But mostly these days I don’t agonize much over shit left undone and the end of the day, because there is ALWAYS shit left undone at the end of the day. ALWAYS. And getting pissed about it doesn’t get it done.

The practising thing, I feel ya. When I agreed to be co-ordinator of jazz performance studies at Tulane in addition to my regular teaching duties (at no extra salary of course) I had no idea the extent to which my days would be drowned in administrivia. I find a combination of Kenny Werner’s ‘compartmentalization strategy’ (wherein you contruct a stress-and-distraction-free “secret compartment’ in your day to practise) and just being a selfish, irresponsible bastard (“those e-mails can damn well wait to be answered, because I’m going to practise now”) works for me. And if at all possible, practise first thing in the morning, because if you push it back the crap-blizzard will push it all the way into the next day. I try to get to my office at Tulane a couple of hours early every day just to practise. Sometimes that shorts me on sleep if I had a gig the night before but hey, which would YOU rather do? Practise, or sleep?

Et voilà, problem solved. : D