Productivity vs. Creativity · Synthesizer School

Oct '22 (edited) in Other

Productivity vs. Creativity

When I heard that thought from Naval, it deeply resonated with me:

People underestimate how much misery schedules bring to your life.

Something clicked in my head, because I felt this way my entire life. Almost every business coach I see online or meet in real life have over-scheduled calendar. With a few exceptions.

Maybe you too have seen a lot of content around how helpful it is to have a schedule.

Naval also said: Creativity starts with an empty calendar and ends with a full one.

Being a creative person and doing creative work for living, for me this conflict of productive schedule and creative freedom is what always caused and still causes a lot of stress.

Over the years of working as a music producer I discovered that forcing myself to produce or mix a song when I don’t feel like it sometimes makes me waste an entire day and not finding a single beautiful note or chord. So if I have this opportunity in such days, I would rather have a long walk alone or with my family, do some journaling, watch some content or read something. If a deadline allows me to do it, of course. And a lot of times after this, closer to the evening my creative forces come back.

As I launched my first online course and it’s still work in progress (half of the content is released, one more month of 6-day hard working workweeks left), I became deeply miserable because of the amount of work that I discovered is needed to be done. And there’s no escape without letting people down who paid me money and possibly ruining my reputation.

I decided to learn a lesson or a few from this experience and in the future never do course launch the same way (even if that means that my family is gonna be broke for a few next months).

You may ask, why did I launch the course in the first place? Why wouldn’t I continue to work as a music producer?

The reasons are simple. In Russian speaking world top music producers earn $3000-5000 per month. I earned $2000-3000 before September, when I launched the course and earned more than $10000.

So the first reason was to earn more money. The second reason is that I’m tired of freelance working with clients. Five years ago I felt the drive inside. I really was happy developing in the niche that I loved the most. But after these years working with other artists doesn’t bring me joy. The work became like stupid conveyor. I don’t experiment much now and use the same methods and tools. And I feel like there’s nothing new and interesting for me in music now. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the music that made me walk into this space, but I don’t feel like progressive metal is profitable genre nowadays. There’s a large gap between music that I love and miss from my teenage years and the pop music that I do for a living (because I’m working with clients’ desires and taste).

Wow, seems like I got very personal and went off-topic.

After launching the course I paid almost all the debt I had. It left me now with very little money again. At the same time all I want now is rest. The dream would be to have a sabbatical for a month. More real opportunity is 3-4 days. I burned out during the launch, got ill, but then found the strength and discipline to continue. As the course continues I realize that I never put as much pressure on myself before. Never was as consistent and productive. Of course I’m grateful for this opportunity to learn a lot from the launch and pay my debts.

But something is not working for me. Being almost 27 years old I already feel that I wanna retire and rest. And do nothing more until the desire and energy will come back. It’s a strange emotional rollercoaster that is happening.

Yesterday I liked the idea of becoming a business coach in the future. Because people don’t value music production coaching as much. It takes years to become great at it and it still doesn’t guarantee success. Yes, there are rich music producers, but they are extremely rare. Or I don’t understand something.

Of course I’m speaking about Russian speaking market.

Maybe it’s time to either shift to English speaking market or change direction further. Even though people in my niche value me very much now both as a producer and a teacher.

To sum up, I’d like to return to Productivity vs Creativity. I value creativity very much. And seems like I hate busy schedules. Naval and Graham Cochrane are the only people I know online at the moment who value and preach working less and earning more. I would like to become like them. To have financial freedom and creative freedom will follow. So I’ll be able to create music I love without any money expectations from it. And at the same time continuing to provide for my family.

But the more work I try to do to get closer to financial freedom, the more miserable I become. Especially after comparing my $10000 launch with

@Andrew Kirby

’s $1000000 launch. I know that comparing yourself to other people is wrong. But I feel this way also because I put 15 years of my life studying and working in music. So I don’t want to hide the emotions that are truly inside. I don’t mean to offend Andrew or anyone else, I just want to find better ways to earn money and not waste all my energy doing it.

I would love to learn a lesson or a few from you, amazing Synthesizers! Thank you in advance. Sorry for pessimistic vibe of this post. Hope it’s not a problem to write this way here.

P.S.: the video of Naval talking about schedules - https://youtu.be/7yEJiBWj4GI

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