How to Stay Human as a Classical Musician

As a professional musician, I absolutely love what I do, and I’m so thankful that classical music is my career. But it’s all too easy to think of music as our entire personality, and forget to live our everyday lives. Here’s what I do to keep a healthy work/life balance and stay human as a classical musician.

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Being a Musician is a Job

Like I said, I genuinely love what I do. My career consists of teaching private viola, violin, and piano lessons, freelance writing for music blogs, my Youtube channel and blog, and performing wedding gigs and concerts here and there.

I’ve been working hard the last couple years to find a healthy balance between work and life. When we train to become classical musicians, we’re often told to prioritize our music and to make it our entire life. We’re practicing 24/7, learning about music theory and history, listening to music for inspiration, and working as hard as we can to become as good as we can.

It’s so easy to lose ourselves in the process.

But “musician” is just one of the many hats we wear. I’m also a daughter, a wife, a cat mom, a crafter, a reader, a friend… and those elements of my life are just as important to me.

Because music is so deeply engrained in the human experience, we feel it deeply. Many of us become musicians because we simply can’t imagine a life without it. But music is our career. It’s not our entire life.

That doesn’t mean music has to be any less important; just that your career shouldn’t take up all of your brain space 24/7.

As musicians, we’re often hustling: looking for the next gig, the next student, the next connection that might offer our next career move. And while we do need to earn money and pay the bills, we can’t let our jobs rule our lives.

We’re human, and we have lives to live. Plus, the more life you live, the better you’ll understand music. I love this quote by Arthur Rubinstein:

“Never practice more than three or four hours a day. No one can concentrate longer than that, and you must spend the rest of your time learning about life and love and art and all the other wonderful things in the world. If a young person sits in the practice room all day, what can he possibly have to express in his music?”

When we love what we do, work doesn’t feel like works. But that also means that work can really creep into our personal time, because it’s so easy to think about.

So here’s what I do to keep my job my job, and my life my life.

Strict Work Times

The first thing that’s helped me so much is giving myself work hours, and not straying outside those hours.

I do not teach on weekends. Those days are 100% for me, except for when I have a gig. If I have a gig on the weekend, I try to “make up” for that lost personal time by doing a little less work that week.

My teaching hours have been 11am-8pm in the past with a dinner break from 6-7. This year, I’m experimenting with 11am-7pm, and when I’m done for the evening, I’m done. Having that hour dinner break allowed me to rest, but then I had to go back to working for one more hour, and it was a little jarring. I’m hoping that being completely done at 7pm will optimize my evenings.

But anyway, I don’t really do any work before 11am, and after about 15 minutes after my final student of the evening, I don’t allow myself to do anymore work. Whatever I didn’t get to can wait until the next morning.

I’m definitely not perfect at working only during these hours or even starting my work days at 11 when I don’t have any morning students, but just having work hours as a rule of thumb has helped me relax and feel a mental divide between work and my personal life.

Not Everything is Urgent

A little thing that’s helped a lot is having a personal focus mode on my phone that automatically comes on at 8:30 each evening.

It silences notifications and doesn’t show pop ups from apps I don’t need to check outside of work, like my email, so that I’m not feeling the need to read anything I receive.

If I pull down the notifications, I can see anything that’s come in, so if I see I’ve gotten an email from a student, I can quickly decide if it’s an emergency or if it can wait for tomorrow.

Without seeing the notification pop up in real time, everything feels a lot less urgent.

Focus modes are super easy to make on iPhones (and Androids too, probably!), and I have a tutorial on making a performance mode on an iPad to help you avoid distractions while playing. You can use those directions to help you create a personal mode that blocks notifications from apps and people of your choosing!

Get Some Hobbies That Aren’t Music

Although music can absolutely be a fun hobby, if your career is music, then it’s life changing to find hobbies that are unrelated to your job.

As a kid, I always loved reading, crafting, and baking. As I went through high school and college and really focused on my music, I start to lose those hobbies.

Now, I read every day and craft multiple times a week. I love junk journaling and scrapbooking, and it’s easy for me to do a little bit in the evenings!

I have so much fun reading a crafting, that I feel motivated to wrap up my work and get to have hobby time. Having that excitement helps me create a better work/life balance so that I actually get that hobby time in my day.

It’s also important to have hobbies that you don’t monetize or feel like you need to perfect or share with the world. I love being able to do things that are just for me!

You Don’t Need to Be Productive 24/7

Not all of your time needs to be productive!

Take time to rest, to be yourself, to connect with friends and family.

While it feels like we’re always thinking about the next gig, the next student, the next opportunity, take time to slow down with no expectations for yourself.

Your body and mind need time to decompress and relax!

You can watch tv, you can read something that has nothing do with music, you can go somewhere without filming it for content!

Take Care of Yourself

Self care doesn’t need to be a spa day, although those are absolutely great!

Self care can mean:

• Getting enough sleep
• Eating regular, healthy meals
• Drinking enough water
• Taking breaks from playing
• Going outside
• Exercising
• Taking care of your hands and body – your body is not just a tool for music making
• Talking with friends and family
• Taking days off

As musicians, we tend to think of our bodies as tools. But we need to take care of our bodies simply because your body is the only one you’ll get.

Sometimes Music isn’t My Main Focus

We all go through different seasons of life. One year might be really focused on building you career, while another year is spent focusing more on personal life.

Last year I got married, and planning my wedding felt like a part time job. As a result, I made less money because I wasn’t focused on growing my business and really going the extra mile.

This year, I’ve been focusing on my career, and I’ve gained so many new students! I’m on track to make more this year than I’ve ever had.

But even so, I’m making time for my hobbies and rest. The balance I’m striking now feels really good to me!

Your Self Worth isn’t Tied to Your Musical Accomplishments

As exciting and important as your musical and career accomplishments are, your self worth is not tied to them.

Winning an orchestra job doesn’t automatically make you a better person than the one who didn’t get the job.

Just because you only have five students but would like 25 doesn’t make you a bad person.

Having meaningful relationships with loved ones is a great accomplishment. Doing good things makes you a good person. Just because you may or may not be achieving your career goals does not change how worthy you are as a person.

What I Do to Stay Human as a Classical Musician

Here’s what I regularly do to still feel like Elizabeth the person, not just Elizabeth the violist:

• Work has a start and end time
• I don’t have to respond to everything immediately
• I have hobbies that aren’t related to music that are just for me
• Not all of my time needs to be productive
• I take care of my body because it’s the only one I have
• I make time for my loved ones
• I have seasons of rest, personal life, and career furthering
• I don’t monetize every single thing I do
• I don’t measure my self worth by my career or productivity
• I let myself be a person: a musician is just part of who I am

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There’s definitely a temptation as a classical music to feel like you have to earn the right to relax. Like you have to practice x amount before relaxing for the evening, or trapping yourself in a practice room with no ties to the outside world.

But living a life is so important for so many reasons. One of them is because it will make you a more well-rounded person, and you’ll understand music and the human experience so much better. If you can’t be convinced by any other reason, at least try living a life to make your music better!

If you’re a musician who’s also struggled keeping a good work/life balance, let me know down below what’s helped you! If you’re still struggling and would like to share what the hardest change is for you, I’d love to hear it.

I hope you do something today that makes you happy!