5 Steps To Creating Exceptional Music Habits

Today, I'm going to show you how to create exceptional music habits by taking you through a 5 step formula that has worked for me.

By following this process, you're more likely to stay consistent and be able to sustain your habits.

Unfortunately, most people don't have a system for building habits that support their music creation. Because of that, they talk about not having enough energy and not feeling they have control of their habits.

They try to set huge audacious goals for creating new habits. You want the opposite.

Learn to simplify complexity into single units.

If you were asked to take a gulp of the entire ocean you simply couldn’t. It is too large to gulp down all at once. However, if you grab a cup, you can break it down into single digestible units.

The best Producers and Musicians are able to take complex daunting tasks and break it down into a step by step habits that make everything seem easier.

The best creators on the internet take their content and push it through a number of different lenses to make everything seem "new".

I recently finished my 14th sample pack, posted my 770th post on Instagram, and grew my audience to past 14k followers. I did it all through creating exceptional habits by taking these 5 steps to build them.

Let's dive in.

Step 1) Identify The Why Behind Your Habit

Have you ever been in the middle of an action, when you ask yourself “why am I even doing this?”

When you are deep into a habit, you don’t want to be asking yourself this question. Habits are much easier if you have a why to help drive you from the beginning.

By identifying the reason why you want to do the habit in the first place will help you fight through the tough times.

When I was posting my music to social media at first I thought it was silly. This is because I only looked at it as creating content and nothing more. I had no real reason for what I was doing.

Once I realized I was lacking a “why” I was able to reframe this process from “creating content” to “growing my fanbase”.

This small shift in mindset lead to a huge difference in results because now instead of getting frustrated by social media, I get excited by it because I look at it as my way to build real relationships and connections with my fans.

Something as simple as having a reason why you’re performing your habit can be the difference between success and failure.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Step 2) Find The Proper Distance

There was a study done to see how the distance between the gym and our homes effected the amount of times we went to workout.

One group of people who lived 5.1 miles from the gym went only once a month, but those who lived within 3.7 miles went five times a month or more.

That is a 5x increase just by slightly changing one variable in the habit equation: Distance.

If there is a lot of friction involved in performing the habit, we won’t do it, so we need to remove any complications to make it easier.

When I started to learn how to play guitar, I left it in its case in my closet and would only pull it out when I “felt like it”. This lead to me never actually learning anything.

It’s like trying to build muscles going to the gym once a week. It’s not going to happen.

Once I figured this out, what I started to do was leave my guitar out in a visible spot so I would be able to easily pick it up and play it. Some days before I left for work, I would put the guitar on my desk chair so that when I got home and wanted to sit down I needed to pick up the guitar.

After I got it in my hands I would always say, “why not just play it a bit”.

This simple step lead to huge improvements in my guitar playing skill, and got me over the hump of making it into a habit.

Step 3) Take Small Simple Steps

How do you eat an elephant? One bit at a time…

Similar to the ocean example from above, we need to chunk down the habit into small, atomic sized steps.

“You need to scale back the dragon till you find something that is conquerable, and will move you forward” - Jordan Peterson

Break it down the habit until it is a size that is digestible for you. Define each step of the process you are aware of, and the sub-steps too if you need.

Find the first step of the habit you are creating should be something that you know you could do and would do.

Step 4) Give Appropriate Variable Reward

No matter who you are, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again forever, it will get boring.

This same idea applies to building habits as well. If you keep giving yourself the same reward after you perform you habit, the reward will start to lose its appeal and so will the habit.

Without a reward there is nothing to reinforce the habit, so to avoid the reward losing its appeal you can variable rewards to stay motivated to perform the habit. This is an idea that was brought about through classical and operant conditioning.

Step 5) Repeat Habit & Iterate Until Successful

The last step in the process is probably the simplest. Keep repeating the habit until successful.

Habits are a combination of repetitions over time and iterations to optimize.

If you only perform the action once then it isn’t a habit. It’s the repeated exposure and iteration of the habit that imprints the neural pathways of your brain.

When I first started to learn my DAW and gear, I was so confused and slow. It would take me weeks to finish a track mostly because I had to constantly look up tutorials to figure out how things worked.

Eventually, with enough repetitions, I was able to find my music flow and get the momentum I needed to create. Now I open my DAW and can produce a track in 30 minutes or less.

This is the power of habits. They are like a fine wine. They only get better (and more efficient) with time.

These 5 steps allowed me to build exceptional habits that only get better with time. Try them out yourself and see what they can do for you.