Hey a,

When you think about good "producer habits," you usually end up with cookie-cutter advice like using a template or saving presets.

And while that's not wrong, I've often found the habits that go against what you've been told to be the ones that made the biggest difference.

Here are five of them that have actually served me in 15+ years of doing this professionally.

1. Make decisions, shut down options.

You've been told to keep your options open, because you can.

Endless CMD+Z, recall everything, change your mind forever.

You probably know how that plays out.

There's a bassline clip in one of your projects with three different MIDI variations, still undecided after weeks.

Every time you open that session you nudge it in a slightly different direction and close it again.

But decision-making is a muscle, and you need to train it.

So I make it a habit to commit.

Print things to audio while you still like them.

Record that filter sweep on your analog synth even if the curve isn't perfectly dialed in.

Those imperfections might be exactly what makes you stand out while everyone else polishes their tracks to death.

2. Fewer tools, better outcomes.

Five stock tools you actually know beat 50 plugins you use superficially.

Most producers have a folder full of things they bought on Black Friday and never get around to learning any of them deeply.

Make it a habit to learn one tool deeply, then keep it in your stack instead of swapping it for something fancier.

There's a reason some of the best mix engineers in the world still reach for plugins that came out 10 years ago instead of the flashy new thing you heard about yesterday.

3. 20 minutes can beat four hours.

You've cleared a whole Sunday for music before.

Then spent the first hour auditioning kicks, the second going through bass synth patches, and the rest trying to make progress on a track you already feel out of touch with.

I'd rather have a 20 minute slot of maximum focus than four hours of second-guessing every move.

That's why I use short sprints between two other things in my day to make progress on my music.

The decisions I make in those 20 minutes are the ones that actually move the track forward.

4. Extreme references beat "great" references.

Most producers choose reference tracks they like.

So you put one on next to your own, feel that sinking feeling, and then can't name one specific thing you'd change.

All you know is that yours sounds smaller.

That's because "I like this track" gives you nothing to measure against.

So I choose tracks that are extreme in one way or another.

One with very powerful sub bass. One with really aggressive mids. One that sounds impossibly deep, and another that's as dry as the Sahara.

That's how I can place the track I'm working on across a spectrum, instead of just feeling that "something's off."

5. Action over connection.

Everyone tells you to network.

That so-and-so made it because they were on good terms with this or that influential person.

I thought the same way, until I realized that every single step that let me go full-time in music traced back to an action I took, not a connection I made.

Even worse: a lot of the connections I was hoping would do something for me became a reason to procrastinate.

You might know the version of this where you send a demo somewhere and then spend the next two months half-waiting on a reply instead of making the next track.

These days I just ask myself "what action can I take right now" instead of waiting on something external.

None of these are complicated. They're just uncomfortable in a way the usual advice isn't.

Curious which one you'd argue with. Just hit reply, I read everything.

Your music matters. Make it count.

Philip

PS: If you want to install some actually useful habits together, meet other producers that support you, and get in-depth 1:1 feedback and coaching on the things that move the needle for you, book a free discovery call here.