Are You Spending Your Time on What Actually Moves Your Music Career Forward?
One of the most honest questions you can ask yourself as a music producer or audio engineer is whether what you're doing right now is actually moving you toward where you want to be. Scrolling through YouTube, watching tutorials, reading forums, absorbing other people's content: some of that is valuable, a lot of it isn't. Knowing the difference is the skill that separates people who make progress from people who stay in the same place for years.
The Question Worth Asking Every Session
Before each session, it's worth asking: is this action getting me closer to my goal? Not in a rigid, productivity-hack way, but as a genuine check. If you're watching a mixing tutorial because it directly addresses something you're working on, that's useful. If you're watching it because it's interesting and you're avoiding finishing the track you've been putting off for two weeks, that's a different thing entirely.
The same applies to consuming content in general. Social media, YouTube rabbit holes, forums. There's useful information everywhere and endless distraction dressed up as useful information. The ability to distinguish between the two and make deliberate choices about where your attention goes is a skill that compounds over time. People who do it well accumulate hours of focused work. People who don't end up with a lot of knowledge about mixing that they never apply to actual mixes.
Why Sharing Knowledge Matters
On the other side of the question, there's a reason to share what you know. After 25 years of professional mastering, the knowledge that's accumulated is genuinely useful to people who are earlier in that journey. Getting it on video, in a structured way, means it has a life beyond a single conversation. It helps people avoid mistakes that would otherwise cost them years of misdirected effort.
That feedback loop, of someone applying a technique they learned and getting a better result, is its own form of progress. Creating value for other people with expertise you've built over time is a legitimate and meaningful activity, not a distraction from real work.
The Practical Application
The goal is awareness. Not constant self-evaluation, which becomes its own form of procrastination, but a regular check-in. Is the time going into things that build skills, produce work, or create something of value? Or is it going into passive consumption that feels productive but isn't?
Every person watching this has goals in audio production, whether that's finishing a track, learning to mix properly, building a client base, or developing a specific technical skill. The hours available for those goals are finite. Making deliberate choices about where they go is the thing that most separates the people who achieve those goals from the people who stay interested in achieving them without actually moving.
FAQ
How do I make more progress as a music producer?
Focus deliberate hours on one specific skill. Minimise passive consumption dressed up as learning. Ask whether what you're doing right now is moving you toward the goal.
Are tutorial videos a good use of time?
When targeted at a specific problem you're working on, yes. As a substitute for actually doing the work, less so.
How to stay focused on music goals?
Regular honest check-ins. Not constant self-evaluation, just an awareness of whether the hours are going somewhere useful.
When you're ready to put the hours into structured, practical learning, the Mixing Accelerator and Complete Mastering System at streaky.com are built around doing the work, not watching it.
