There’s this threshold every producer crosses when they stop listening to music purely for enjoyment and start listening to it with critical ears. It’s a bittersweet moment. You learn to appreciate music on a completely different level than you did before, but once you cross it, it’s hard to turn off. To be quite honest, it’s a bit of a curse because it can distract you from simply enjoying what you’re listening to rather than constantly thinking about how it could be better.

When we get caught up in that constant searching for “improvement” state, many of us reference tracks we admire from our favorite producers. We compare what we hear with what they’ve created. Our musical heroes set a standard for how we believe music should sound like and what we aspire to achieve in our own work. And while that can be a motivating factor, it can also be detrimental. That fixation can sometimes border on hero worship, leaving little room for our own growth as producers.

This can lead to several issues, especially in how we perceive ourselves as producers. It becomes hard to see in ourselves what we admire in others, and we end up spending most of our time trying to meet unrealistic expectations we’ve set for ourselves.

The devil and the audience

There’s a quote from the movie The Usual Suspects that resonates with me and how it relates to us as producers:

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

In some ways, it can be a very relatable quote because we play both devil and audience, convincing ourselves that the producer we want to be doesn’t exist.

We’re the devil because we’re the ones lying to ourselves. Every time we tell ourselves we’re not there yet, not skilled enough, or not ready to finish or release something. And we’re the audience because we convince ourselves it’s true without questioning it, and accept it as part of who we are.

That’s the trick: convincing ourselves the producer we want to be doesn’t exist. It’s like waiting for someone who never shows up.

Why we do this to ourselves

It’s been said that comparison is the thief of joy, and while that might have some truth to it, fundamentally, it’s a survival mechanism. Comparison exists because we evolved to gauge our social standing, validate our abilities, and find motivation by measuring ourselves against others. It acts as a shortcut to understand complex problems without lengthy analysis.

But in music production, it can be a double-edged sword. The issue with comparing ourselves to other producers is that we don’t compare our rough drafts to theirs. We compare our unfinished and less polished projects to their completed and professionally released music. We’re comparing the middle of our process to the end of theirs… and inevitably we fall short in that comparison every time.

But it can also go much deeper beyond comparison. For many of us, feeling “not good enough” didn’t start in the studio; it began much earlier. Maybe it was a parent who wasn’t pleased with what you brought home, or feeling compared to a sibling or classmate who always seemed better at something. Or maybe no one ever told you that what you made was good, so you learned to assume that it wasn’t. All of that stuff doesn’t just disappear because you grew up and decided to start making music. It sits there unresolved… and a studio, where you’re constantly creating and evaluating your work against your own impossible standards, is a perfect place for insecurities and self-doubt to set up shop.

It’s important to understand these issues don’t just stay confined to childhood. They can creep into every part of your life, often without you noticing. This is why you might downplay a compliment instead of simply saying thank you. Or apologize for things that don’t need an apology, or go quiet in a group instead of saying what you actually think. It’s why you might stay in a relationship or friendship that isn’t fulfilling, because at least the disappointment is familiar.

A lot of us move through our daily lives with these patterns fully operational without ever connecting them to where they come from. And then we sit in our studio, where everything we create is a reflection of us open to judgment, and wonder why we repeat the same pattern. The lack of confidence that makes you shrink in a conversation also keeps you from finishing your music. An when you doubt yourself, it’s much easier to trust someone else instead.

When the skills of a producer we admire seem out of reach, it’s easier to think, “they have something I don’t”, rather than accepting an uncomfortable truth: they simply followed through with the process of producing music from start to finish, repeatedly, until they got better at it. An believing they’re simply better, smarter, or more talented than us is oddly more comfortable than being honest with ourselves. Because if you never finish, you never really have to find out.

This is how we create a version of ourselves that always falls short. It feels easier to believe the lie that we are “not good enough” as fact, rather than recognizing it as a decision we make, or fail to make, every time we sit down to work. For some of us, that narrative was written long before we ever considered getting into music production.

What to do about it

As I’ve touched on before, the first step is just noticing the “trick” while it’s happening. Recognize those moments of self-doubt, whether you’re comparing your rough draft to someone else’s finished track or catching yourself saying you’re not there yet, and have the self-awareness to ask, “there yet compared to what?” Acknowledging how and when these feelings come up is how you begin to move past them.

The second is separating your skill from your identity. Not being as skilled as your musical idols right now isn’t a character flaw; it’s just where you are at the moment. Your identity doesn’t need to be tied to that.

The third is to simply keep working. Finish something, even if it’s not what your heroes would have made. Especially if it’s not. Because the whole thing depends on you never questioning it, never testing your limits, and never finishing a track to discover the truth for yourself.

Once you realize you’re capable of so much more than the lie you’ve been telling yourself, there’s no one left for the devil to fool. –