The Truth:

Creative power is nebulous, making it hard to measure, but it is trained in the same way as physical strength.

Your skill level as a producer is moving right now. The question is: which direction?

Your skills are either growing or decaying---change is constant. Your development is a dynamic consequence of your decisions.

Up close, progress may seem invisible. That’s an illusion of perspective. Growth is happening even when you can’t point to it in a given moment. The key is to trust that consistent, intentional work produces results---whether you feel them today or not.

Creative Strength Training

Strength---physical or creative---is your capacity to do it when you don’t feel like it. It means doing what you said you were going to do. In the gym, that means showing up and doing your workout. In the studio, it means showing up consistently, working through doubt, and carrying ideas to completion.

The version of you that goes to the gym will be stronger than the version that doesn’t. How much stronger depends on: the consistency of your workouts (refer to Frequency) and the quality of design in alignment with your goals (see The Piñata Method). The same holds true in the studio---consistency and intentional practice generate creative power.

The Session Doesn’t Count. The Streak Does.

What we can lift today versus a year from now has less to do with what we accomplish in one session and everything to do with how many sessions we are able to link together.

This is easy to forget if we don’t feel ourselves getting stronger moment to moment. From one day or week to the next you may find that you are lifting the same weight, maybe even a little less. There’s a recency bias inherent in this natural desire for fast results. We can’t remember what it felt like a year ago, but we recognize that compared to yesterday, I’m not lifting any more than I did. The key here is to zoom out. And the longer the recorded history, the more we are able to see. The more we show up on a daily basis, the more recorded history we have in the future. Temperature doesn’t increase every single day, but overall the planet is warmer. As you execute your strength training program according to a schedule aligned with your goals you will notice that it grows in a similar way.

Trust the Practice

We cannot control the rate of growth, but growth is inevitable when we are committed to the plan. If someone were to tell you that they are going to the gym five days a week and are expecting to be stronger a year from now, you wouldn’t question that assumption. How is creative strength any different?

Embracing this is powerful because when we understand that growth is happening, we can commit ourselves to the underlying practice.

“But What About...?”

Talent. I love this idea from Jerry Seinfeld: talent is like being gifted a thoroughbred horse. It’s fast and powerful, but you have to learn to ride it. Unapplied and untrained talent will atrophy over time. Talent is a gift. Training is a choice. Regardless of how much talent you perceive yourself to have or lack, developing skill is your decision.

Decay. If we can grow, we can shrink. In the never-ending quest for growth and improvement, it is easy to take what we have for granted. But, what we have gained is not retained if not maintained. If you miss a day or two at the gym, you probably won’t notice much of a change. But extend this to a week, a month, or even a year and it becomes obvious. The perspective of decline and deterioration is equally powerful in its reminder that our ability is not a static trait.

Plateaus. The paradox of skill development: the more skilled you become, the harder it is to improve. That said, plateaus aren’t dead ends, they are firm ground for forward motion. They are platforms to internalize what you learn until it becomes automatic, generating momentum to carry you to the next level. With accumulated experience, you can refine your goals and adjust how you train. The plateau isn’t where growth stops---it’s where your next climb begins.

Making bad music. No matter how much your skill level grows, you’re not immune to making bad music. The music we share is always our “best of.” The most direct path to making good music is to make music often. Most of what you make will be bad---that’s not a problem, that’s the process that leads to your best work.

As you head to the studio, start tracking one simple metric: How many sessions can you link together? Experimenting, sketching, finishing---they all count. The decisions are within your control. The outcomes will reveal themselves over time. Nothing is static---especially when it feels like it is. Show up. You are getting stronger even when you can’t feel it.

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