The Music Habit: How to Build a Music Career With a Busy Life

If you’re reading this, chances are music is an important part of your life, though its prevalence may have diminished as the “real world” parts of adulthood settled in.  

Things like working a day job, starting a family, or moving to a new town makes finding time for music much more challenging.

Our goal today is to build your own personal Music Habit in a way that is both sustainable and adaptable to your busy life.

We’ll talk about practical ways to do more for your music and also answer the question, “How long does it take to form a habit?”

Before we get into building our Music Habit we need to understand the two primary modes in which our minds operate…

The Muse and the Critic

The first mode that most artists default to is the Muse. In this mode, you are exploring, testing, and expanding your mind.

You embrace the absurd and reject nothing. You allow your mind to go down rabbit holes and see where things take you.

When our Muse is out of balance, we live in our heads, leave ideas unfinished and hide our work from the public.

The second mode that most non-artists default to is the Critic. In this mode, you are refining, improving, and utilizing your technical skills.

You take pragmatic action and reject the unnecessary. You are laser-focused on what needs to be done and set aside distractions.

When our Critic is out of balance, we overanalyze, judge ourselves and others too harshly, and reject innovation in favor of doing things how they’ve always been done.

There is a time and place for each mode. 

Trying to work in both modes simultaneously or rapidly switching may seem appealing, but will often lead to higher levels of anxiety, less productivity, and less creativity.

It’s important to build our Music Habit within our natural mode to start in order to give ourselves the highest chance of success. Resistance will come, so the easier we can make the habit-building process, the better.

The Music Habit

So, what is the Music Habit?

The Music Habit is a daily practice of intentionally engaging with music.

There are several ways in which we can do this, but I have identified six categories of focus:

• Generate - Write lyrics, songs, bars, record parts, produce beats, compose or arrange for an ensemble, creating content for social media, etc. with the intention of generating new and interesting ideas.
• Investigate - Absorb music, analyze a tune, learn theory, journal about what music means to you or what themes you want to explore in your music.
• Play - Total freedom! Improvise or play a piece you know well and have fun! Includes performing.
• Edit - Taking existing ideas and filtering out the good from the bad, mixing/mastering tracks, rewriting lyrics, re-recording, etc. with the intention of creating a finalized piece to share.
• Promote - Actively sharing music online, telling people about shows, posting content on social media, auditioning, engaging with fans, writing/sending emails, doing some form of outreach, etc.
• Practice - improve a specific skill, whether it be a specific instrument/piece of hardware, a particular software/DAW, lyric writing exercises, composition exercises, rehearsing a show, etc. using a high degree of intention and attention.

Generate, Investigate and Play fall under the Muse Mode, while Edit, Promote and Practice fall under Critic Mode. 

You may be able to identify different categories that are more appropriate for your form of creation – the important part is to understand which mode they fall under.

To figure out which category you want to use as the basis for your Music Habit, think about which mode you naturally gravitate towards and which category within that mode that will have the biggest impact on your life.  

It may be that you have neglected a part of music that you really enjoy, such as listening to new music for inspiration.  

Or it could be that you have stopped practicing even though it would lead to a greater enjoyment of playing and performing as well as new opportunities.

Whatever you choose, understand that by building your Music Habit in this one area, you will likely begin to naturally improve in the other categories. 

Now, let’s build a habit!

Building Habits That Last

How long does it take to form a habit? Well, to make it easier and faster, anchor it to an existing habit.

For example, you may have a habit of drinking coffee every morning. You can use the act of making or drinking it as a cue to start your new habit. 

So if you wanted to build your Music Habit around Generating, then you could keep a notepad nearby and write down lyric or melody ideas while you brew/drink your coffee.

The most important bit to remember when choosing your new behavior is that it must be so easy to do that you have zero resistance, even on your worst days. Put another way, make the behavior ridiculously simple. 

For our previous example, the key behavior you are triggering is to just open the notepad and start writing. You don’t need to worry about how many words you write or how long you do it for — not yet at least. Those metrics will grow with time. 

For now, the name of the game is crossing that first threshold and checking the box EVERY DAY!

It’s the frequency and consistency over time that matters.

This process is like planting and fertilizing a seed.  The seed will grow with a little attention every day.  You may not notice the growth that is happening under the soil, but one day a sprout will appear and soon it will flourish.

You may miss a day here and there — it’s okay, we’re all human. But for the love of music, never miss two days in a row! 

This more or less kills all momentum you had, wrecking the seedling before it has a chance to sprout (yet another reason to make the habit super easy to do).  

But when you do inevitably miss a day, make sure your #1 priority the following day is to do that habit. You may have to modify the behavior given your life circumstances, such as going on tour or having a baby. As long as you can keep up the momentum in some small way, you’ll be fine.

RELATED: How To Form Habits as a Musician (3 Easy Methods)

So we’ve chosen a meaningful behavior and anchored it to an existing habit. The last step is to celebrate!

Seriously. 

When we celebrate, we are giving our brain a squirt of dopamine as a way of telling it to keep doing that thing.

So as soon as you complete your Music Habit for the day, immediately celebrate with intensity.

You can be as ridiculous as you want, such as fist-pumping and shouting “yeah!” — the stronger the emotions you put into it, the greater the levels of dopamine will rush your brain and the deeper your desire to continue the new habit will be.

By doing this one little thing over and over, we set the process in motion and create opportunities to interact with music on a more meaningful level.

Be Kind and Give It Time

So, how long does it take to form a habit?

According to habit expert and best-selling author James Clear, it takes at least two months.

But…

“…There is no reason to get down on yourself if you try something for a few weeks and it doesn’t become a habit,” he writes. 

“It’s supposed to take longer than that! There is no need to judge yourself if you can’t master a behavior in 21 short days. …Embrace the long, slow walk to greatness and focus on putting in your reps.”

For some of us, it may have been years since we picked up our instrument to practice or our notebook to write a new song. That’s okay.

The Music Habit is all about being gentle and kind with yourself.

Music wants to be a part of your life, but it’s waiting for an invitation.  

By adding even just 30 seconds of intention, we are inviting music to show up. As we give it the attention it craves, music will start demanding more of us and we will happily carve out time.  

Music can’t live without musicians, and we can’t live without music.

So find your mode, pick your category, create a ridiculously simple behavior, anchor it to something you already do daily, celebrate your small victory, and enjoy your new Music Habit!

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Steve Davit is a world-touring saxophonist, producer, and life coach. He has a group coaching program designed specifically for part-time musicians who struggle with anxiety, procrastination, perfectionism, and the many other issues that artists face. This is a growing community of kindred spirits that provides structure, support, and accountability for music makers of all types. You can find out more at bit.ly/BestMusiciansYear2022