The Unpredictability of Work Load

One thing that I have learned over the past 15+ years that I am working in this field is that it is usually impossible to predict or schedule anything work related more than a few weeks in advance.

I have to admit that for many years this problem was causing me a lot of stress and it took many years for me to be more relaxed about it. I was always stressed out about things like "Ok, I will finish this project in two weeks, but after this I have nothing new to do. I need a new project to keep me busy after this one!" This general uncertainty was really problematic for me as I tend to be rather structured and like to plan ahead but this field of work that I chose would not comply with this notion.

It took several years for me to realize that there always is a new project. Sometimes it might not be coming exactly when you finish the last one and you might have nothing to do for a week, sometimes 3 or 4 new projects come in at the same day, and sometimes projects that were planned in the long term change or get canceled. There never is any certain predictability. Of course this is far from ideal and especially at the beginning of your career when well paid projects are rare and you might be sitting without work for weeks or even months, things can become really scary and stressful. But unfortunately, this is how this business works.

One thing however that I want to explicitely mention here is that there hardly is a composer working in this field that I know of who has a constant security beyond a few weeks in the future about what they will be doing then. The ideal that many up and coming composers  think that successful composers have a constant stream of projects layed out nicely several months in advance is just not a reality. Of course, A-list composers will have a few projects lined up in the more distant future but they also need to react when they need to jump in on a project on short notice because another composer was fired or for whatever reasons. And just constantly seeing how even high profile composers are able to take over a project on short notice proves that they are not "working all the time", too.

Just to give you an example, right now as of writing this post on March 18th, I am working on two projects that will both finish mid April. After that, I have nothing lined up. There are a few projects that might or might not come "later this year" but there is nothing that I currently have coming up immediately after these. A few years ago, I would have been massively stressed out about this but over the last years, this state has been more or less constant for me and yet, I have been working almost all the time with just a few  periods where I had absolutely nothing to do. So just because right now there is nothing on my plate after mid April doesn't mean that in the next weeks there will not be something new coming in for the time after. (And just to prove my point, just one day later when I'm posting this article, I have a new project in May.)

As I said at the beginning, it took me quite some time to realize this and to become more relaxed about this constant uncertainty. By now, I have learned to cherish the moments when there is nothing on my plate to use for personal musical pet projects or to just relax or do something non musical.

There is however one field that is strongly impacted by this mode of work: While my work life just is in this state of constant unpredictability, there are certain things in my private life that I need to plan ahead (at least when there's no Covid). Things like important friend & family events or travel plans won't work with unpredictability.

There is one thing that I also needed to learn which is that in spite of your workload being hard to predict, you need to schedule your private life and stick to it if possible in any way. If you start to plan your private life around your work life, you will end up in a terrible state. At the beginning of my career I was very often waiting for a gap to spontaneously go on vacation. As a consequence I didn't have any vacation for several years in a row as this feeling of "No, I can't go, there might be project X coming in" just wouldn't allow me to leave work.

Again, it took me some years to figure out that you simply need to plan in your vacation and openly communicate that to your clients. Since I have been doing this, I have not had a single instance of a missed opportunity. There always is a way to make things work and all clients I have been working with never questioned me going on vacation. If they want to work with you, they will find a way to plan around your time of absence. Of course there always might be coming in that one project that is due the next day which you can't do in such cases but there hardly ever is that one big project that can't wait a few more days before starting on it. Of course, I also made a habit of having a small work rig with me during vacations so I can quickly react on very pressing matters but I hardly ever needed to make use of this in the last years.

So the bottom line here is: get used to unpredictability of this job and don't expect this to change with any degree of success. Also, don't sacrifice your private life for this unpredictability.