The first chunk sounded somewhat angry on playback, so I added ZOMG CENSORSHIP for the lulz
hVicdaqSH9Y
wow, ur tryin to do shit without coffee??? that’s ur answer right there! :>>
no, but srsly. i feel you and i’ve been thinking the same lotsa times.
my only tips here is to either try to find someone to work with on coding and music who actually complements you in this regard or (as you mentioned in passing) try to fit in small creative sessions in your everyday life.
myself, i have no tv and no inet at home just so i get to be a bit more BORED when i get home lol. i don’t know if it actually makes me more creative but i do enjoy my free time a lot more and i get out more to see friends and such. i play bass, guitar and fiddle with renoise more and although i don’t finish things, these are things i enjoy to do no matter what gets done.
good luck!
…then there’s sword fighting techniques.
The Book of Five Rings VIDEO (Part III)
hey where’s part two ?
That was mighty interesting .thx 
Fact: Your standards are too high. Anything that’s good takes time. Have patience. Remember the learning along the way is the whole point - it’s all about your development, not so much the product. Insert Zen statement here.
Nice hat! Yeah coffee helps for sure! One a day, with some black tea if I want a top up later on.
Holidays are bad times for working on creative projects. Here’s why: you’ve got very little energy rhythm and inertia to work on stuff effectively. I am MOST productive when I’ve got regular work with regular hours. Ah, but what about being tired after work? Well, I realized that I am at my most sharpest in the mornings. So, I developed a routine where I’d get enough sleep to get up early in the morning and go work on Renoise for about 1hr before I went to work. If I sustained that pattern I’d get a very large amount of work done. The routine of it all meant I built up inertia, and I was more willing to take on bigger challenges.
Give yourself permission to be lazy: it’s important time for the mind and body to recover and grow. If you’re whipping your arse too much you’re only going to develop guilt which will disable you further. I say be a STRATEGIC SLOB. There are times to be lazy every day, just like eating or exercising. Relish those moments of relaxation! Good meditation time. Then find a window of time in your day where you do have the energy and push yourself then. Whatever works for you. For some guys the magic doesn’t happen unless it’s after midnight.
1hr a day, every working day, is better than having 2 weeks off, doing nothing (because your body/mind is relaxing), and feeling guilty about it.
Best thing I ever did was become a hypocrite.
Another good thing I do is to avoid conversations with other producers & musicians about the aesthetics of music making, cuz that really forms barriers around your possible concepts and ideas, I think it really takes away freedom. Nothing worse than speaking to someone that only thinks it can be done their way.
Nice points choice. I think I agree!
This shit stems far past just music making though… like I said, it’s something that affects my whole life.
Leave Thunder Bay. Take a few months sabbatical and try living somewhere else.
I’ve been thinking this perhaps… but I’ve got anxieties around leaving a decent paying full time position with benefits simply because I’m unhappy about my personal development.
Well I left the ‘small town’ to go to the ‘city’ but it just made my problems worse. Should have stayed in that stable environment and made the effort to directly sort out my person problems there. And you know what? The city sucks, well, it sucks for me. I’m moving back to the small town!
Byte you’re definitely smart enough to tackle this problem for yourself. Read up on Cognitive Behavior Therapy and look for the material on perfectionism. It’s all about intrenched thinking patterns, and the older you get the more those patterns get ‘set in stone’. Once you know how these patterns work you can recognise your own patterns and decided whether or not you’d like to keep them. You can figuratively re-wire your brain with some active thinking on the matter.
I’ve had some epic personal issues in the last 4 months (not with perfectionism, but with other issues) and just TWO sessions with a therapist, plus a heap of my own research, has completely put me back on track. Maybe you can do the same, I’m not sure. But, I can now recognise a ‘trigger’, then following that I can recognise an emotion/thought stage that dictates an undesirable action (in your case, procrastinating and feeling bad about it). I can now stop the pattern by holding myself up as soon as I see the ‘trigger’, re-think a positive point of view and solution at that thinking stage and reduce the negative emotions. It’s a long hard process of breaking deep habits, but I feel I’m making progress. I’m re-training my brain to think in a better way.
For you it could go something like this:
Trigger:
Working on some creative material. Don’t like it, it has problems. Can’t release this stuff when it is this crap. What to do?
STOP.
Get calm, relax for a second. No more emotion. Focus on something simple and quieten your mind. c a l m
Now, let’s get some evidence:
What evidence is there that this creative work is crap?
What evidence is there that you’ll have a worse life if your release something that’s imperfect?
Don’t artists release stuff all the time that is flawed? Aren’t those flaws seen in a favorable light by some people?
Why should you care what anyone else thinks of what you do?
Isn’t any ‘should’ statements counter-productive and putting too much pressure on yourself?
Do you know of any artists at all who work 24/7 flat out on their work? And if so is that a realistic comparison to yourself?
Wouldn’t it be better if you replaced any ‘should’ statements/thinking with something like “I might do this or that”?
What evidence can you provide that any artist out there had a first album that was ‘perfect’ and was done in the same circumstances you are in?
Don’t artists get better release by release? Aren’t these releases representative of phases in their lives rather than the embodiment of perfection?
And so on… Whatever is applicable to your thinking…
ACTION:
Think to yourself: Now that I’ve cleared the crap out of my head am I ready to work on this? Yes? No? If yes, have fun! For fuck’s sake have some FUN! If no, then ok that’s cool, go and do something else and enjoy that, no matter how active or passive that thing is. No guilts. No ‘should be doing this or that’. Forget it. Life is too short and fragile to be wasting time on guilt and shoulds. See my first post for organising time and energy.
Next time an artist puts out an album and says ‘sorry about this, this isn’t perfect’ blah blah blah I’m going to scream! Get that thing out there and be bloody proud of it and move on. Move on quick. Life, influences and inspirations move too quickly for you to be stuck in the past because you thought back in 2001 a 8bit death metal country album was the album to make, but now you’re more into optimistic drone. 
8 bit death metal country!!! Now that is the way forward!!
Oh man you made me laugh…great advice Foo? …I actually find myself in a similar boat to Byte…albeit in a different way…good stuff, gonna save this page actually, I needed to hear it! 
I’m really starting to think I just need to drink a little more coffee and play more video games. Engaging in hardcore logical problems may actually help lube the old neurons. I know that’s what made me a genius in the first place, so maybe getting back into it will be the spark that lights the fire.
I should also note foo, that my big issue is that I’m no longer performing up to my previous abilities… and I’m bummed because of it. When I was in school, I could crank shit out like it w’ain’t no thing. These days, it’s just the opposite.
I think I just need a change in careers.
On the perfection tip, I think it’s worth pointing out that one of the most respected artists in the glitch world is Tom Jenkinson, and fully half of the music he releases is complete garbage that he seems to have pulled out of his ass. The other half is absolutely brilliant. He seems to have decided to work on his stuff and put it out whether it’s good or not.
If you go back in time a bit, it used to be that way with all recording artists. They were bound to release a shitload of music and they released a TON of music, and even the best artists released some clinkers. Not a problem.
I mean the making of a catana sword 
nevermind
I think this is a good video for the tormented creative types amongst us, I recommend you watching it Byte :
I have the same problem with my college work. It becomes worse the more depressed or anxious I am, which is often brought on by teh imminence of a deadline etc etc. So generally, the less desirable the situation, the lesas desirable the response.
Perfectionism is a good thing, it hurts, but it can lead to beautiful things. Self criticism is important, almost as important as self reward. Self recrimination is different, its subjective and not what you need.
What I found helped me to detach my criticism from an emotional response is to write down what my criticisms were, without using subjective language ie. scientifically. This serves the dual purpose of creating a to do list aswell as discouraging or subduing the subjective response that makes you want to procrastinate. Critique your critique.Now that its down on paper read it and mark the problems that are easiest to tackle and plan how to tackle them quickly.
You approach perfection asymptotally, you won’t quite make it with everything you pursue, thats ok. There just isn’t enough time.
Figure out when the best time to let a project go will be. Get some outside input, set youself deadlines to get things ready for a critic but don’t pass the deadline if you don’t get what you wanted get done in time, just give it to them.
Also get some critics to look at your criticisms and tell you what they think of them in themselves. Reassure yourself.
I’m about to start getting occupational therapy to help with my issues and see if I can learn myself out of my particular situation. I would suggest you do the same or similar.
Small goals, realistic deadlines, self reward. Selective self indulgence is also good. If you have a competitive streak take advantage of it. Find some music or work online that is succesful but is worse than yours and have a quiet gloat to yourself about it.
Exercise, meditate, eat well, sleep well, relax and get on with it.
You probably knew all of this but actually maintaining it in practice is something people have difficulty doing.
While I don’t agree with the spiritual juju, I do agree that there’s merit in externalizing responsibility of the stuff I can’t control to chance and chaos. More on this in a bit.