The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method for getting work done. It´s quite simple. You set a timer and work for 25 minutes, and then follow it up with a break for 5 minutes. You can repeat this half hour process as many times as you want to. What I like about it is that it takes the pressure off of a seemingly daunting task by allowing you to tell yourself "ok, just start it. Just get involved for the first 25 minutes and see where it goes," at least this is how I frame it in my head. Usually then, I end up tackling the task slowly, calmy, and then getting absorbed into it. Before I know it I´ve been working efficiently, and can cross the task off my list. Here is a YouTube video which helps you keep track of it with alarms and bells and and on screen timer.
Kyle Chayka has some interesting thoughts on minimalism. Coming from an art history background, he writes about minimalism from the viewpoint of someone intrigued to see it applied to so many different areas of our life. The minimalist design fashionable for apartments today can be oppressive to some people. This idea perked my ears for sure. He tells Vanity Fair, " It’s a very particular kind of environment and atmosphere that often comes from like Western European modernism and it doesn’t necessarily allow for a diversity of feelings and style.
I think the arrogance of minimalism is that it kind of presumes that everything should look the same, that everything should have this very blank, empty aesthetic, and that’s the kind of minimalism that I wanted to challenge with the book and present a wider idea of it."
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/author/kchayka/
A new project of mine involves adapting techniques and performance processes of Irish music. A trove of melodies make up the shared knowledge of the practitioners of Irish music, but the written notes show only the basic bones of the body of an actual musical performance. If you compare Mary Bergin´s playing of the tune, "The Maid on the Green," with the sheet music (both linked below) you can see just how important and intense the ornaments are to the makeup of the music. I find this to be some of the most interesting music.
music notation: http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=thesession.org/tunes/1831.no-ext/0007
video of performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdJYbOkbetQ