To begin with, there are 3 levels of competence: unconscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence
As a starter you are unconsciously incompetent. You begin to make music and you suck at it. Surprise-surprise! You thought you have some great ideas that will revolutionize the current music scene and fans would start jumping on your dick as soon as you release your first song.. But guess what? You suck just like anyone who starts to do anything new ever. No matter how hard you try you suck in the beginning.
Then you start getting better, and once you put a lot of effort and you reach consciously competent level. You can make your music not suck ass if you are completely focus all of your attention and resources and all your money into it and take massive action..
Next comes unconscious competence. This is the nirvana, the final destination every producer wants. This is where Dr. Dre, Xkore and Hans Zimmer are at. Yes, this state is reachable and it is not a myth. The best producers can just sit down with a guitar and scribble effortlessly for a few minutes and develop the melody into the most amazing songs ever. They have simplified and efortless methods of doing stuff but in a way that it blows your mind. This level of competence does exist and you should aim for it.
Based on the book "Outliers", once you have 10,000 hours of experience at doing something, you reach a genius level. However, there is one flaw within this mentality. Please bear with me and read the following story which explains everything.
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I used to frequent online gamers anonymous website where people share experience, strengths and hope to assist in recovery from the problems caused by excessive game playing. There is this asian doctor guy who is a Starcraft addict. The Doctor says the book "Outliers" is a lie. He spent over 20,000 hours playing Starcraft and he didn't achieve anything worthwhile within playing it. No major tournaments won, no nothing. 20 thousand hours were spent on TV-watching chips and cola eating tier casual gaming timesink. And he says he is kind of mediocore at it.
Now think Mozart, who was fucking forced to do a piano training whether he wants it or not, Michael Jackson who was beaten by his father if he didn't sing well enough. They got super good in no time. There was this thread about writers block. David Orr jumped in and said something along the lines of "I always try to finish the song no matter how shitty it is".
Based on my observations, puting in dumbed-down hours into something does work, especially when you need to get something done fast. But when you don't need anything done you shouldn't look at producing "I'll do it whenever I'm in a special mood". It comes down to doing it when you don't feel like it. And then comes time to reap the rewards.
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Now who the fuck am I to tell you about all this stuff? Yeah, I am not the best musician out there. However I am a self-help junkie. I follow a lot of successful people, and I have consumed quite a bit of success, dating, time management and mind hack material. I learned a lot of mindsets and tips-and-tricks. In the last couple years I was super obsessed about improving my dating life.. now I am also looking at other areas of my life :)
It does come down to making effective habits that you do everyday. Continue with this post