Why more time does not equal more productivity in music production
When COVID first hit, many music producers found themselves being more productive than ever. They felt like they had time to focus on their music production since nothing else was happening. This enthusiasm quickly waned as procrastination started to kick in and every day suddenly felt a lot like groundhog day.
A client of mine hadn’t opened up her DAW in at least 3 months. With so much time to kill - being unemployed at home, she didn’t understand why. She found herself on the couch watching Netflix more hours a day than she cared to admit. Procrastination festered under the guise of there’s always tomorrow. But what’s really going on here?
Procrastination in music production is a symptom of a deeper issue
Oftentimes procrastination in music production occurs when you hit a wall in the creative process.
It could happen that you lack inspiration and feel frustrated when starting up your DAW, your brain goes empty when trying to make a drop, you don’t make it past the first 8 bars and you often run out of ideas and can’t finish a track.
You’re experiencing a creative block, a beat block, a mental block.
Whatever you want to call it – it’s an issue that plagues many music producers all too often.
You tried all the usual tricks - attempting to power through didn't work, walking away and waiting for a flash of inspiration worked even less.
You tried switching up your workflow, using instruments and plugins differently, using single instruments, using as many instruments as possible, using samples, not using samples. Maybe you even tried producing drunk, producing high, producing sober. And producing with goals, and producing without goals.
It seems like you just can’t break through the wall and you don’t know what to do to actually be able to work on and finish your tracks.
While every music producer has a different process and will offer different perspectives on how to break through this wall - and all these strategies are great, they won’t work longer-term because you’re missing a key element: 80% of your success in dance music comes from mindset.
“Procrastination won’t go away just by implementing yet another strategy over time or learning a new skill. All that does is bypass the problem until later, until it pops up again and it’s almost like you’re back to square one. ”
What you want is to understand how to beat procrastination and become more productive so that you can finish your tracks and actually finish them faster, more easily and with less frustration.
You can do that by understanding the root issue of your procrastination, which can always be traced back to your mindset - how you think and feel about your creative process determines what you will achieve and how you will use your time to do so, which is part of the work I do with my clients.
It’s not that you need more time, you just need to identify how you use your time and decide what to do with the time you have.
Why more time does not equal more productivity in music production
Time is often your biggest excuse when it comes to being productive in music production. Either you’re convinced that you don’t have enough of it, or there’s just too much time to kill.
Problem #1: You think you need more time
Look at how you’re currently spending your time. I guarantee you that it’s possible to find at least 30 minutes a week - even a day, to spend on music production.
How much time do you spend scrolling social media a day?
There’s data available on how much time we spend on social media: Over 2 hours daily.
What if you’d spend that time in a different way?
Saying you just need more time, and you don’t have enough of it, is just an excuse. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. It’s how you spend those 24 hours, that matters.
If people with kids at home and a fulltime job, and having to take care of everyone and their mother can still manage to finish 1 track a week, then why wouldn’t you be able to do it? If they can do it, you can do it too, because it’s not about not having time, the real problem is what’s going on in your mindset.
But deep down, you’re avoiding a deeper issue: discomfort. There’s a fear and a pain you just don’t want to face because it’s too uncomfortable. As most human beings on this planet, you’re looking for the path of least resistance. And even though this is meant to protect you from harm - which is a good thing, it can turn out to get in your way more often than not. For this reason, getting support makes such a big difference because you get to a point where you’re just done feeling this way and you’re ready to solve this. You want things to be different and so you know it’s time to make a change.
“You don’t need more time. You need to decide.”
Problem #2: You think you still have time
The single most common and sneaky excuse is thinking you still have time. Thinking this instantly lets you off the hook from doing what you want but is causing you discomfort. In other words, you choose short-term gain over long-term success by prioritising other things that you deem more important but that you could actually do at another time - if you’re being really honest with yourself.
You tell yourself you still have time to finish that track and when the end of the week rolls around, you feel bad about yourself for not having had a productive week. You beat yourself up over not having finished that track, again, and you promise yourself you’ll get it done next week.
And as you can probably guess, you plan to do it for the next week, but the same thing happens all over again.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying there aren’t other things that are important to you. I’m saying you’re using time as an excuse. You’re just inventing things to avoid the important.
If you do in fact still have time, then why not prioritise finishing your tracks over anything else? Isn’t working on your music one of the things you love to do the most once you really get into it? You’ve got time anyway, right? And it’s something that keeps you mentally sane - especially in challenging times.
How to amp up your productivity in music production when you hit a creative block?
Since humans have a tendency to take the path of least resistance, you just want to find the smallest intervention that can have the biggest effect. It can be as easy and simple as raising your awareness of what is causing your creative block and how staying stuck not knowing is a waste of your time.
If you’re done with struggling to finish your tracks and ready to get rid of your creative blocks now so that you can achieve your goals for getting noticed as a DJ/producer, I can help you. I know the exact path to overcoming your creative blocks and breaking that wall so that it becomes way easier for you to finish tracks and get better at it too. That will be time better spent!
What you want is to stop feeling frustrated about this whole process and instead, to feel satisfied, achieve, get noticed and move the needle in dance music.
I love helping driven DJ/producers to use their time effectively by teaching them the power of setting goals they can actually achieve so that they can gain exposure and get noticed.
I’ve found that it doesn’t have to be complicated. All it takes to set creative goals that will stick is learning my 5 Easy Steps To Master Consistent Creative Flow so that you can feel confident about your next steps for achieving your goals of getting noticed as a DJ/producer in 2021 and moving the needle in dance music!
That’s exactly what you’ll learn in my Creative Goal Setting Mini Course For DJ/Producers.
Learn to set creative goals in a way that won’t kill your creativity by focusing on the outcomes, but rather help you to develop efficient habits so that you can build consistency in your creative practice in order to become more productive, motivated and perseverant.
Make 2021 the year it all comes together for you!
