Art and the Productivity Trap

Productivity is wonderful. I feel very much like a worthwhile human after a good day of checking off to-do tasks.

Many musicians, especially ones that are struggling with feeling unseen and insignificant (which might be all of us from time to time), do the equivalent with metrics. How many monthly listeners did I have this month on Spotify? What was my engagement numbers on Instagram?

This feels like progress. It’s clean, factual, measurable. You’re trending up or down, and you control the direction (at least a little bit).

Making art, on the other hand, is messy, slow, nonlinear, and a little boring sometimes. It’s also extraordinarily hard to measure. Free Fallin, The Joker, Yesterday, and Smells Like Teen Spirit are all examples of how difficult it is to measure if the work you’re making is worth it in the moment.

If you make art, the only thing you can do is show up each day with your hands open, expecting to receive. The only outcome that matters is, did you make something at the end of the day that you think is interesting? You do the hard work, the way a child works hard at playing in the backyard. This is serious business, being this playful.

Productivity is great, and definitely check the numbers. It’s just easy to wake up at the end of a career and find you’ve spent most of it chasing the metrics, and not making very much art you’re proud of.