What is/was your biggest self sabotage habits or mindset that held you back writing and recording music?

GAS

Echoing many others here; discipline and a hyper-critical inner narrator are probably my biggest hurdles. In the last year I’ve been trying to remind myself of a simple dictum; The perfectionist, typically, accomplishes very little.
Just meant to remind myself to be a little more forgiving, and understand that a piece of art that retains and acknowledges it’s imperfections means immeasurable more than a perpetually in-progress ‘masterpiece’ that is never shared out of fear and fragile vanity.
I think largely it’s a matter of getting over myself and freeing expectations of what my music “should” sound like.
That and tech inept-ness - - I really struggle to create workflows in a DAW. Having played around with Reaper, Ableton, Adobe Audition and now Logic, I realize that I really need to dedicate some time to building a fluency in one ecosystem.

For writing in particular I have two big problems, the first being that I have this ridiculous block on writing 'simple'. I think this comes from how what got me into music in the first place was technical stuff. Guys that you would listen to and think 'how the hell did they write / play this' is what got me into this in the first place, so I think there's some kind of switch in my brain set to view that as the 'correct' way to do it. That's despite the fact that as time has dragged on, my taste in what I enjoy listening to and playing has shifted further and further into caveman territory. I still feel like if I whip out a riff that's me just slamming on some big heavy chords that that's just 'phoning it in,' and I need to add more to it in order for it to be worth listening to- which I'm not good enough to do (lol), so I stall out.

The second, and much more difficult to overcome block, is that I never really know where to start. Like I can just puke out a riff, that's no problem. But how do I get to that riff? What does the lead up to this sound like? How do I transition from this riff to this other riff that I just puked out? Because both are great riffs that I'd love to use, but I can't link things together to save my life, it always sounds so forced and inorganic.

This one I think gets solved with just sinking time into it, which all but evaporated around COVID when I let a bunch of people move in with me. I'm a super private person, especially with when I'm experimenting / learning new things, so when there's people around that can hear me, the last thing I want to do is pick up my guitar knowing that I'm just going to be making noise for a couple hours in a futile attempt to brute force some kind of composition. All but one of these people are gone now though, so hopefully this year I get more time to myself to try and get my reps in.

tl;dr: terminal insecurity.

I remind myself often of something a friend and frequent artistic collaborator shared with me, a mantra she uses in her own work; "it doesn't have to be perfect - it just has to be my best."

Great topic and responses.
I have several songs that have odd time and tempo shifts. I've had no luck trying to use drum loops or clicks. The click tracks come close but the transitions are awkward and I'm ignorant on how to make it work. Trying to find a drummer who is willing to learn these songs is difficult and they need to be good enough to pull it off. This leaves me with 4/4 tunes which isn't the end of the world, but it is frustrating and causing a bit of writers block. I've purchased EZ Drummer but that didn't work out for me. I'm time challenged and won't sacrifice my sanity to sit down and learn the software.

Getting carried away while trying to write riffs and just purposelessly noodling in the upper registers until I get my focus back.
Trying to write a specific genre outside of my „natural“ go to genres (metalcore and shred).
Trying to write something completely new and unique and being afraid of subconsciously copying songs.

budda said:

I could say its because of two young kids but it’s me.

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Same situation. It's not you, it's just how hectic and full life is with two small kids and a full time job. What I found works is try to divide my time in three (non-equal but planned) parts: family time, couple time, and alone time. If it's planned it's much easier to get exited and into something.

Anyhow, why am I not making new music into a recording? Because I don't think it's fun or for me so I'd rather spend my time differently. Noodling, building stuff, etc. brings me more joy and doesn't make me less of a hobbyist musician. Once I understood that, everything else became easy.

On the flip side of the whole "discipline" discussion, I also need to remind myself to make time to just noodle, play in the literal sense, and Just Have Fun With It

That's why I got into playing guitar originally, it's where a lot of my best ideas come from, and it's a totally different kind of satisfaction than finishing something. I read something the other day distinguishing art as a skill and art as a behavior. I think both have their place but it's important not to forget that being creative is something humans just do. Practice is well and good but it isn't everything.

Per @Asdrael “what i enjoy doesnt make me less of a musician” quoting for emphasis.

None. I’m the perfect bedroom guitar player

AwakenTheSkies said:

None. I’m the perfect bedroom guitar player

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I do have to mention though, it takes some work to get here; no college or university, no girlfriend, no qualified high paying job, meet up with friends like 1 time every few months. Do these things and you’ll be just as good as me

Waiting until I was "ready" to play, or "in the mood", or "inspired".
Learned I just have to sit down and put the hours in everyday or it's not gonna happen.

I mostly just paralyze myself being too worried that I'll use up my "good" ideas on mediocre songs. I have 3-5 absolute banger (to me) riffs that have sat unused/finished for years because I'm too afraid to actually commit them to a song where the rest ends up being meh.

R34CH said:

I mostly just paralyze myself being too worried that I'll use up my "good" ideas on mediocre songs. I have 3-5 absolute banger (to me) riffs that have sat unused/finished for years because I'm too afraid to actually commit them to a song where the rest ends up being meh.

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Sometimes I have the same thoughts, but or a riff, there are many variations, and also the context matters. Is it an intro, outro, chorus, verse riff, what does the drums do in the background, what's the tempo...

dan the man said:

Waiting until I was "ready" to play, or "in the mood", or "inspired".
Learned I just have to sit down and put the hours in everyday or it's not gonna happen.

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That's one of my problems also. I am never in the mood. So I need to force myself. But then I complain that I don't enjoy it, I just NEED to do it.
Writing 4 song for 1,5 year and struggeling like with a massive constipation...and stil think it worth it!

wheresthefbomb said:

I remind myself often of something a friend and frequent artistic collaborator shared with me, a mantra she uses in her own work; "it doesn't have to be perfect - it just has to be my best."

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Hmm, the perfectionist mind reads this and says "exactly. My absolute BEST".

Screamingdaisy said:

Not having a deadline.

If every day you woke up and said, "by the end of the day I'm going to write a song", you'd produce a new song every day. Not every song is going to be amazing, but each attempt is going to refine your songwriting process, and amongst all the crap you'll create a few diamonds.

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Yeah and the way I see it, even if you "finish" a song, no-one's prohibiting you from going back and improving it later or even combining it with something else. It's just better to get stuff out of your system rather than to linger on it forever.

Also, by just making something, you get better at all the aspects of it - if you just sit and come up with riffs and more riffs, you might never actually learn to arrange the stuff into songs, you might never learn how to record (and that's definitely a skill in itself)... And then of course production, mixing and mastering.

My biggest self-sabotage? Uh, my first one was not practicing alternate picking from the start. It took me years to be able to do that, because the first ~2 years of playing guitar I downpicked absolutely everything. Yeah it was cool to play Metallica songs that way, but you can probably imagine how limiting it became My downpicking is still pretty tight though, so there's that...

I also never had the discipline to sit and practice sweep picking and other techniques properly so I never got very good at it, even though I definitely could have mastered it...

I've also always been kinda manic-depressive, so in the manic stage I might go absolutely nuts practicing and forget to eat and sleep, and then when the down-part comes I basically decide to quit the instrument altogether because I suck. And then I beat myself mentally even harder for thinking such stupid thoughts, and end up writing really depressed sounding and relatively simple stuff, whereas my manic material is usually way above my skill level and with very weird and intricate arrangements. Then sometimes I manage to combine the material from both phases and it turns out awesome

p0ke said:

Yeah and the way I see it, even if you "finish" a song, no-one's prohibiting you from going back and improving it later

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I do this a lot these days. The first "finished" version gets gigged on and eventually I'll be able to decide what I don't like and change it up. This allows me to keep up the momentum of "finishing" songs but still also be constantly looking at ways they can be better.

Stiman said:

Hmm, the perfectionist mind reads this and says "exactly. My absolute BEST".

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It allows for both is why I like it. I am also a perfectionist, but it's important to be able to recognize that your best isn't going to be perfect. It can also still be really, really good. Being realistic about what you're actually capable of is challenging no matter who you are. Similarly, I don't expect perfection from people I collaborate with, but I fully expect them to try their best. It's people who don't want to put in the effort that I have no patience for. You gotta pick a lane.

There are no finished artworks, only abandoned ones.

Thinking I didn't need to know theory. Some people are naturally gifted songwriters. I wanted to be one... I'm just not. I could write a few riffs but had no idea where they should go from there. After learning some basic theory I've had way easier a time writing.