Finding The Motivation To Keep Making Music (this really works)

did you know that Walt Disney actually got fired it's true he was fired from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because he lacked imagination and had no good ideas we all know how big Disney became after that Madonna was rejected by media sound in the 80s because she wasn't ready yet she went on to sell more records than any female artist ever with over 300 million copies and you too got rejected by RSO records in 1979 before going on to win the most Grammys out of any band ever and go on the highest grossing tour

of all time look the point I'm trying to make is just because you're experiencing rejection or discouragement or just a general lack of inspiration and motivation it doesn't mean that you won't go on to do great things see if you look at the timeline of any of these people there's the moment of rejection or as I like to call it the low point and then there's the high point way over here and what I'm most interested in is this whole space in between how do you go from this low point to this High Point to

be fair it's not totally linear there's like a lot of ups and downs on the way to the Mountaintop but in the midst of all those ups and downs how do you find the motivation to keep going I think I can offer you some genuinely helpful tactics to bail you out of the slump and get you out of one of these low points obviously my channel is geared towards people who make music but these methods will work for anyone who just needs to shock the motivation systems of your brain back to life I can't give

you a one-size-fits-all formula because everyone's a little different it's part of what makes life wonderful but I can tell you what's helped me along the way and it may help you too especially if you're at a low point I'll give you three methods or steps that I regularly take that make a world of difference for me I've been writing music for over 15 years and producing for over 10 and in that time I've experienced so much resistance when it comes to creating let me tell you low point after low Point another detail worth mentioning is

I was diagnosed with ADHD in fourth grade and it's caused me to find methods that work around some of the challenges that ADHD presents so if you have trouble focusing getting things done and finding the motivation to keep going in general I think these are going to be super helpful for you and all three of these methods were work great separately but they become even stronger when you use them together so give yourself a chance to hear each one so you don't miss out on something that could cause a big change in your life for

the better I'm starting to sweat okay step number one is to take a break this last year I set out to release a song every single week for an entire year in three days I began releasing a song a week for an entire year that's 52 songs in 52 weeks and spoiler alert I failed pretty hard but I managed to make it to 20 weeks and in that time of working my butt off Full Throttle week after week I learned that exhausted artists don't make very good art let's compare the human brain to an Apple

Watch The more you use your Apple watch the more it drains the battery and the more you use your brain creatively it drains your creativity battery if you don't take time to recharge the battery then eventually you get to low power mode when your watch goes into low power mode all you can really do is just check the time and you're not able to use all these other incredible features that the watch was built for in the same way you were made with all these different creative Tools in your brain that help you make beautiful

and meaningful art but if you're running on low battery you're not going to be able to access those tools it's almost like painting with just one or two colors every now and then you can get like and paint something kind of cool especially if you put a lot of hours into becoming a great artist but imagine what you could do with seven or eight colors instead when I was grinding week after week trying to get all this music out I worked myself into low power mode and it wasn't just that I was tired and unmotivated

but even when I did sit down and manage to try and create some music I only had access to a couple paint colors mentally so I was creating way below my potential and I was forced to either keep trying to work at this low point or take a break it took me a few weeks to finally charge my battery again but the next time I sat down to make music I rediscovered all these tools that I forgot I had and creating was actually fun again Not only was I riding and producing faster than ever but

the quality of the music was way better too the songwriting was catchier and more creative and the production was more tasteful and interesting and I even started to surprise myself again sometimes when you make music you listen back and think wow I can't believe I made this and I only get that feeling when I'm working from a full battery so take a step back right now and make an honest assessment of where you're at what percentage is your battery at are you at 50 and you could keep going for a bit maybe you're at 75

and you're feeling good or maybe you're bordering on low power mode and it's time to take a break heck maybe your battery is completely dead and you need to take a longer break to power back on and even think about being creative again wherever you're at make a plan to recharge and stick to it if you're burned out take a week off and recharge if you're just a little tired take a day or two off and see what that does this is not an exact science but the biggest thing is that you're honest with where

you're at and you take steps to get to where you need to be there's no shame in needing to rest and recharge But continuing to live below your creative potential because you aren't willing to take a break is just plain stupid seriously take it from someone who learned this the hard way or maybe this doesn't apply to you at all maybe you're not on low battery you have some Creative Energy but you never get anything done because you've created this impossible expectation in your head this brings me to Method number two which is lower the

stakes lower the stakes this could be hard to do for music people because the internet is forever when I put a song out I'm thinking how can I make this so good that I'll listen to it in five years and not resent myself for putting it out and that's an impossible standard I have songs with millions of streams that have multiple mistakes in them everything from Little pops and clicks from me not editing the vocals properly to just straight up bad vocal takes because I wasn't very good at singing tons of mixing mistakes distorted Masters

cringy lyrics I mean you name it I've done it I also have songs with less than a thousand streams that I can listen through and I wouldn't change a single thing the point is even if you do get it perfect more often than not that doesn't determine how well something's going to perform the reality is everything you make is gonna have little imperfections that's just a fact it's a hard pill to swallow but let me tell you what I do to make it go down a little bit easier or rather how I think about it

so I don't completely lose my mind trying to finish things hopefully that's in focus when I do the best job I can do on a song and I release it it's almost like a time capsule of what I was capable of at any given time so if I go back and listen to music I made in 2016 I know that that was the best I could do in 2016 and even though I would do it slightly differently now and I can make it even better it's not the end of the world because I did the

best I could with what I knew during that season of life and if you listen back a few years and hear stuff that you would change it's actually a really good sign that means that you're growing let me tell you from personal experience you're almost always going to listen back and hear stuff you might have done differently and that's how it should be especially for the first few years that you're making music it's worth mentioning on very rare occasions you might actually have some songs that stand the test of time especially as you get better

and better but you have to learn to lower the stakes because not every song is going to be like that once again just to sum it up when you listen to an older song You've released it's a reminder of what you were capable of When You released it and how much you've grown since then so try not to overthink it you're gonna make mistakes you're going to learn from them and hopefully you're going to grow Pro but if you don't learn to lower the stakes enough to take action you're going to miss out on all

of it real quick if you're finding any of this helpful it's getting some of the wheels turning in that big brain of yours I would love it if you subscribed and gave me the chance to keep teaching you and entertaining you every single week if you just subbed thank you so much for real you the best all right last but not least my third method for finding the motivation to keep making music and that is collaborate if you're like me when you hear that you go oh brother this guy stinks but hear me out for

a minute if you make music with other people there are a couple magical things that happen and one of those things is that different people can have different roles and this can lead to an easier workload and a better song for example if I'm making a song alone I have 100 battery I can get 50 of that to songwriting and 50 to production however if I work with someone else I can dedicate a hundred percent of my energy to writing the best song I possibly can and my partner can focus 100 on the production or

the other way around the point is regardless of how you share the workload you have double the creative resources to work with you're also way less likely to hit writer's block when you have someone else who can chime in whenever you get stuck or you need some feedback you're also way more likely to finish projects when other people are involved all of a sudden it's not just this small personal thing you're doing for yourself and the project is no longer at the whim of your motivation because it's bigger than you and having the accountability of

others can really help get stuff across the Finish Line especially when you have people checking in regularly and you delegate role goals and share the workload collaboration is also a really great way to grow relationally with people especially with friends it's really special to be able to listen back and look at someone and say Hey you know we did that together so real quick let's pretend that I'm Blue that's all I am by myself I'm blue and everything I touch has a little blue on it blue is a nice color on its own but if

I get together with someone who's read all of a sudden we have blue and red two colors twice as many options but wait when we work together something else happens a third color emerges purple there's an expression from Aristotle the sum is greater than the parts and this is exactly what I'm referring to also the acronym TEAM together everyone achieves more when you get together with someone else to make music you end up creating something entirely new that neither of you were capable of alone the sum is greater than the parts purple the reason I

bring up the importance of collaboration is because I've spent years and years making sure I can write produce mix and master my own music so that I don't have to depend on anyone else to get a song across the Finish Line it's pretty wild I can literally overhear a conversation get an idea write a song based on that idea produce it out mix it Master it and upload it to Spotify all without the help of anyone else I've used this method to get millions of streams all by myself and there's a sense of pride in

that but the reality is we weren't meant to do life alone and listen there are some things that may be easier for you to do alone maybe like recording your own vocals so you don't have to worry about other people hearing your bad takes or you like writing and producing a loan because you can get more experimental and about being self-conscious but take it from someone who spent so much of their life alone in order to try and make their own dreams come true there is a balance and if the scales tip too much in

the direction of isolation you start to believe lies and get lonely and stuff can get real weird real quick actually one of the fastest ways to make someone go clinically insane is to completely isolate them from others no wonder making so much music Alone was sucking the life out of me the reality is we need to be able to present our ideas in a social context so that if we say something that's not true or a bit off people can let us know and that keeps us on the rails it's when we have thoughts that

aren't true without people around us to remind us of that that we start to go downhill so there's sort of a rule I came up with in regards to making music Alone the more time you spend making music Alone the more intentional you have to be about spending time with other people outside of that environment of course unless you want to become really lonely and go clinically insane so take a break lower the stakes and collaborate now you have three epic tools that you can use to catapult you into motivation land or at least give

you a little nudge in the right direction at the end of the day you only live once so make the most out of it seriously don't waste your life when you have the potential to create incredible art but also don't get so lost in the creation of the art that you miss out on the relationships that mean the most to you thanks so much for watching I really value your time so it means a lot to me that you would spend some of it on my channel remember to stop making excuses and start making music

cheers woo