Creative momentum isn't always about pushing through

A quick note before we get into this:

Most of my writing here has been longer, in-depth essays. I’m starting to mix in shorter pieces like these Studio Notes. More focused, easier to apply ideas you can implement immediately. Hope you enjoy…

There’s a version of creative work that looks like discipline but is actually just stubbornness.

You sit down with an idea, it doesn’t move.

You push harder, invest more time, and it still doesn’t move forward.

And somewhere in the friction you decide that the struggle is the point. That real artists push through, that the block is just your weakness as a creative.

But what if the idea just isn’t ready?

What if you’re not ready for it?

There’s a difference between an idea that’s hard to execute and an idea that doesn’t have energy behind it. The first one asks for patience and craft, the second one asks you to let it go (at least for now).

Most creatives have a backlog of ideas they feel obligated to finish.

A beat that made sense six months ago.

A concept that excited someone else more than it ever excited you.

A project you started because you thought you should, not because something in you had to.

That backlog becomes a weight, and the longer you carry it the more it starts to feel like the reason you’re not creating.

It isn’t.

The real move isn’t to force your way through uninspiring material. It’s to generate so many ideas that you always have something worth being excited about.

This sounds simple, but it’s actually a shift in how to think about creative momentum.

Most people treat idea generation as a phase, something you do at the beginning of a project, then stop. But the creatives who stay consistently productive treat it as an ongoing practice.

They’re always feeding the pool.

Always capturing, always noticing, always asking what if…

When you have ten ideas you’re genuinely excited about you don’t get stuck, you just move to the next one. Then the block dissolves, not because you pushed through it, but because you had somewhere else to go that stimulated you musically.

Here’s what I want you to take from today’s letter:

Excitement is signal.

When an idea lights something up in you that’s not just a feeling, it’s a signal that your instincts, your taste, and your current creative state are aligned with that idea. That alignment is what makes the work flow. It’s what makes the output feel alive instead of labored.

Forcing work on ideas that don’t excite you doesn’t just produce worse results, it trains you to associate creativity with resistance.

Do that long enough and the whole process starts to feel like a grind.

But when you follow the energy, when you let yourself work on the thing that actually has your attention, you build a completely different association.

Creativity starts to feel like relief, like the place you go to feel like yourself.

So how do you apply this practically in your creative process?

Keep a running list of song ideas that excite you and be honest about which ones still have magic within them.

Not every idea ages well.

Some were tied to a mood, a moment, a version of you that’s already moved on. That’s fine, learn to let them go.

And when you sit down to work, ask yourself:

What’s the idea I’m most excited about right now?

Not the one you’ve been putting off.

Not the one that seems most strategic.

The one that has energy behind it, start there.

The other ideas will either find their moment or they won’t, but the work you make from a place of genuine excitement that’s the work that will fill you with pure creative satisfaction.

— Hermes

P.S. If you don’t have a place to capture and revisit the ideas that actually excite you, they tend to disappear just as quickly as they show up.

I’ve been building something around this. A digital environment in your smartphone where your ideas live, evolve, and meet you when you’re ready to work on them.

If that sounds useful, you can explore it here.