Hey a,

When a producer tells me they "don't have enough time" for music, I get suspicious.

In our mentorship program we work with people running companies, leading big teams, raising young kids.

Somehow they all keep making progress instead of excuses.

Here’s why:

At some point, they installed what I call the 3 non-negotiables of a producer's workflow.

Instead of forcing yourself to be more disciplined or grind harder, these tips will help you remove the friction that quietly slows down your sessions before they get going.

So read on and see if you tick all three boxes.

Non-negotiable #1: A template you actually trust

Here’s the problem with templates.

Most producers set them up in a way that limits creativity and adds to the overwhelm instead of removing it.

They’re trying too hard to craft the perfect session instead of asking themselves what the minimalist version would look like.

A good template has one job: to kill the cold start.

Routing already done. Color-coding in place. Reverb return channels ready to go. Safety limiter, analyzers, and reference tools set up on the master channel.

None of that limits your creative options.

It's just infrastructure you set up once so you never have to think about it again.

You open the session and you're making music within seconds instead of minutes.

The goal is to get into the flow before the part of your brain that’s constantly second-guessing gets too loud.

Non-negotiable #2: Your Secret Weapon Library

Most producers think more options = more creativity.

The opposite is true.

When you've got 40GB of Splice loops and 300 presets you've never opened, every creative decision turns into browsing paralysis.

You spend more time auditioning than creating, and you walk away having made nothing.

The fix is what I call the Secret Weapon Library.

A small, curated collection of sounds, samples, and presets you actually know and feel secretly guilty about using because it sounds so damn good.

When you reach for a sound and already know how it's going to behave, you stay in the flow and actually make progress with your track.

Curate it over time. Save your own custom presets from tracks you’ve finished.

Within a few months you'll have a personal library worth more than a lifetime Splice subscription.

Non-negotiable #3: Knowing your god damn shortcuts

I'll be blunt about this one.

If I catch you clicking through the Ableton browser instead of hitting CMD+F, I’ll give you some tough love my friend ;-)

It feels minor. It isn't.

Each time you click around with your mouse, you’re not just wasting time, you’re ripping your mind out of flow state.

Do that a few hundred times in a session and you've spent half your creative energy operating Ableton instead of making a track.

When the moves live in your muscle memory, your hands keep up with your ideas. Your brain stays on the music. The DAW disappears.

My task for you today:

Pick five shortcuts you don't currently use and force yourself to learn them this week.

Five more next week.

Give it a month and you'll feel like you upgraded your whole setup without spending a cent.

Here's the thread connecting all three:

None of this is about being more "productive" in the hustle-culture sense.

It's about protecting the fragile moment between having an idea and actually executing it.

The producers who finish tracks consistently aren't more talented or more disciplined than you.

They've just removed the friction between themselves and the music.

Less time fighting your setup. More time creating.

Tick all three boxes, and "I don't have enough time" stops being a problem you talk about and starts being one you've quietly solved.

Your music matters. Make it count.

Philip

PS: If you're thinking "I've tried to get organized before and it never sticks," you're not the only one. It usually falls apart because people try to build the perfect system in a single weekend instead of letting it grow naturally around the way they actually work. That's a big part of what we do together in the mentorship program: build a workflow that fits you, not some YouTuber's idea of the "right" setup. If you want to see what that looks like, book a free discovery call here and we'll take it from there.