I Obsess Over The Number Of Hours I Work, And Here's Why...

I've been tracking the amount of work I do every day for the past 811 days (since late 2018). Last year I only did ~780 hours of deeply creative music work, which comes out to 2.7 hours per day for 286 days. I run a studio and have business admin work, so I’m certainly doing more than 3-ish hours of non-deep work per day. Even still, I believe those numbers to be low for what I want to do with my life.

This year, I’m hoping to get an equivalent of at least 3.5 hours per day so I can get closer to ~1000 hours/year. I recently read Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey, and it seems like, historically, many highly creative people work about 3 hours/day on their craft. I realize that this book covers tiny snapshots in people’s lives, but I don’t mind basing this on that paper-thin slice of knowledge. Ultimately, my goal is to create as many great works as I possibly can before I peace out.

In my mid 20's I started to feel like I had to make every day matter. I didn't have a near-death experience that inspired this, but I did have a realization that life is fantastically beautiful, and my time here is tragically limited (even if my generation does live 100+ years).

Since then, I've never been able to shake that feeling of "do it now, or you won't get to do everything you wanna do." That's what has made me truly enjoy every part of my life. It's also what drives me to help other people do what they wanna do as well. There is no greater joy.

For my friends and colleagues (and literal strangers sometimes), this is why you've seen me obsess over your projects, and why I, a musician, enjoy spending hours figuring out how to make "that one character" in draft 2 of your script become more compelling.

I'm just trying to do as much as I can. I'm trying to release all of my creativity out into the world as intensely and consistently as possible. The human experience is too great and too wonderfully varied to not share with each other. That's the root of my creative obsession.