Taking inspiration from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, I made a grave error when rearranging the family room to move my music production gear for our Christmas tree. I relocated everything into the living room, now dubbed the music room, filled with production equipment, a grand piano, children’s orchestra instruments, and more. But we hardly enter that room, and since removing the tree, I haven’t returned my DJ table to its original spot.

Duhigg’s book mentions learning guitar by incorporating it into his daily routine. He’d pass the guitar on his way to getting coffee each morning, strumming for a bit. Five minutes a day can lead to improvement. However, I’m not progressing in music production since my equipment is in the music room – ironically not where I produce music.

In fact, I often engage in “music production” while showering in the morning because it’s a natural space for creating new rhythms and melodies. Sometimes I even record simple beats and bass lines on my phone to develop later when I access my music production equipment and laptop. I’m writing this post on this laptop in fact, but usually, I don’t get to that point and don’t practice it since my stuff isn’t where I’m looking for it. So, I think I need to evict the box of dog toys we got for Christmas, which now sits where the tree used to be. I should put my production studio back in place in that corner and play things daily for about five minutes using exercises from a different book called The Five Minute Music Producer.

Hopefully, this will lead me to learn how to produce music, gradually improve, and ultimately establish a habit for something I genuinely enjoy doing.