What is Success?
A Soft Synced Companion Guide
Core Track → Why Learn Anything? → Lesson 1
How to Use This Guide
This guide contains essential concepts you'll need for Your Turn and beyond. Read it at your own pace and take breaks when needed, but don't skip it. The depth here is what makes the play and practice work.
Shortcuts to Key Sections
Use these links to jump to the sections below.
Introduction
Before reading further, write down what you want to achieve through music production. Don’t just say it in your head, right it down, so it’s in front of you. Be specific. What do you want to achieve? Stream counts? Bookings? Quitting your day job? Signing to a label?
Done? Keep that list nearby.
This guide helps you distinguish between tangible achievements and intangible development, understand what you are actually building, and use that clarity to make deliberate learning decisions. The work here is foundational. Every choice about what to study and which skills to prioritize flows from how you answer this lesson's central question.
1. Tangible vs. Intangible
Most definitions of success fall into two categories. Most meaningful goals include both.
Tangible Success
Tangible success involves measurable achievements. Outcomes you can track with numbers or external validation. Stream counts, show bookings, target income, awards, publishing deals. Tangible goals have clear thresholds. You know when you have reached them.
These metrics depend heavily on factors outside your direct control. Streaming numbers depend on platform algorithms, audience behavior, timing, market trends. Venue bookings depend on bookers, budgets, competition. This does not make these goals invalid. But it does make them unpredictable.
Intangible Success
Intangible success is about what you develop in yourself. Capacities that cannot be measured externally. Translating the music you hear in your head into finished tracks. Creating work that feels emotionally authentic. But one that is relatable enough to connect with others. Building confidence in your creative judgment. Building mental stamina to persist through difficulty.
Intangible goals do not have finish lines in the traditional sense. Progress is often felt rather than counted.
Consider two producers. One defines success as releasing an album that reaches 1 million streams within six months. Another defines success as completing twelve tracks over the next year that represent their current creative vision. Both definitions provide direction. The first producer will prioritize release strategy and audience building. The second will prioritize consistent output and creative clarity.
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Psychologists studying achievement call this distinction performance orientation (focus on tangible comparisons and validation) versus mastery orientation (focus on intangible development and capacity-building). Decades of research tracking students, athletes, and professionals find that mastery orientation produces better long-term outcomes. People focused on developing capacity experience less anxiety, greater persistence when facing setbacks, and higher overall wellbeing than those focused on performance comparisons.
Why? Tangible markers tied to comparison and validation create fragility. Your sense of progress depends on factors you cannot fully control. Good work that does not produce external recognition feels like failure, even when the work itself is solid.
Intangible capacities create resilience. Your sense of progress depends on whether you are developing skills, improving relative to your past self, building judgment. You can see progress even when external results are not yet visible.
As Mark Manson says: "You don’t get to decide what other people do. You only get to decide what you do and how to respond to what other people do."
The balance between tangible and intangible is personal. What matters is identifying which category carries more weight for you right now, because that knowledge determines where to focus your learning energy.
2. How Your Definition Shapes Learning
Your definition of success determines which skills matter most at any given time. Immediate consequences for how you spend your hours.
If your goal involves reaching a large audience, you need to understand release strategies, playlist pitching, and social media presence in addition to production skills. If your aim is creative expression or skill development, you’ll prioritize sound design, arrangement depth, and mixing techniques. If your aim involves earning income from production work, you need to learn client communication, collaboration, project management, and how to consistently deliver technically clean files on schedule.
Your resources (time, attention, energy) are finite. Your definition helps you allocate them effectively. It answers the question: "What should I focus on this month?"
Without clarity, you’ll study skills in random order, guided by whichever tutorial catches your attention. You make progress, but it's diffuse. Defining success gives you a compass. You can change direction later, but at least you know which direction you are currently moving.
3. How to Use This Framework
The tangible goal identifies which intangible capacities matter. Then your daily focus shifts to building those capacities.
Here's how this works in practice.
Identifying Required Capacities
Take one of your tangible goals. Ask: what capacities do I need to develop to pursue this effectively?
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Break it down:
Creative capacity: Ability to create tracks with replay value that keep listeners engaged
Technical literacy: Understanding of arrangement structures that maintain interest, mixing skills that produce competitive sound quality
Learning ability: Research and understand distribution mechanics, playlist pitching, promotion strategies
Mental stamina: Persist through the months or years it takes to build an audience
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Break it down:
Performance skills: Translate your studio work to live context, entertain audience, maintain energy across a set
Creative judgment: Build a portfolio demonstrating your capabilities, make setlist decisions
Professional communication: Interact effectively with bookers, manage logistics
Mental stamina: Handle rejection, continue improving your live show despite setbacks
Notice what happened. The tangible goal became a list of intangible capacities. Your daily question shifts from "Am I closer to 100k streams?" to "Am I improving at arrangement? Am I building my understanding of promotion? Am I developing mental stamina?"
Progress becomes visible and frequent because you're measuring development you can actually influence.
Why This Distinction Matters
Tangible markers might never arrive. Market conditions shift. Timing works against you. Algorithms change. Someone else gets the opportunity you wanted.
The intangible capacities you built? Those remain valuable regardless. The tangible goal provided direction. The intangible capacities are what you built.
Tangible Goal
(Direction)
Intangible Capacities You're Building
(What develops)
a label
TV/film
known artist
following
When Goals Evolve
Quick question: will what matters to you now still matter in five years?
Probably not entirely. Definitions of success change over time. This is normal. What matters now might shift in one year or five as you gain experience or develop different priorities.
Some producers begin wanting playlist placements and later realize they prefer the creative process itself. Others discover they enjoy the business side (negotiating deals, managing projects) more than they expected. Still others find that teaching becomes more fulfilling than performing. None of these shifts represents failure. They represent growth.
Your definition of success might change without your awareness, leaving you pursuing an outdated aim out of habit. Every few months, revisit the definition you wrote down. Ask whether it still represents what you want. If your priorities have shifted, update your definition and adjust your learning focus accordingly.
Producers who thrive over decades are not the ones who picked a goal at twenty and never reconsidered it. They are the ones who paid attention to their evolving preferences and priorities.
See further examples below.
4. External Influence
Are These Goals Actually Yours?
Where did your definition of success come from? Think about it honestly.
Borrowed Goals
External influence is always present to some extent, but the question is whether you have examined that influence and decided it reflects what you genuinely want.
Comparison
When you see another producer reaching a milestone, the visibility of their achievement can make it feel like the milestone you should pursue. This is natural human behavior.
Validation vs Effort
Goals that depend entirely on external validation (follower counts, streaming numbers, industry recognition) are particularly vulnerable to comparison and frustration. These metrics shift with trends, algorithms, and factors beyond your control. Someone intending to live a healthy life may want to wish for things within their control.
Goals that depend on factors beyond your control:
- Follower counts
- Streaming numbers
- Industry recognition
Goals rooted in effort and skill development:
- Complete a track every two weeks
- Master a new synthesis technique each month
- Improve your mixing consistency
As pointed out earlier, both types of goals are valid, but the latter tends to sustain motivation over longer periods.
Your Turn: The Three-Part Definition
This exercise establishes your working definition of success. You will return to this in Lesson 8, so treat this as a document you will revisit. Set aside 20 minutes with no distractions. Consider starting a fresh notebook for this exercise. There will be more where this came from. Of course, you can choose to do these in digital format. What matters is your system works for you.
Step 1: List Three Components
Write down three things success means to you. Be specific. Instead of "making good music," write "creating tracks that capture the atmospheric quality I hear in my head." Instead of "getting noticed," write "complete and release one track per month for the next year."
Notice the difference between those examples. The first in each pair is vague. The second is actionable. The second also emphasizes what you can control: your creative clarity, your consistency, your output. External recognition may follow, but it is not the measure of success itself.
Step 2: Explain Each Component
For each item, write a short paragraph (four to six sentences) that addresses:
Why this component matters to you personally
How you will recognize progress toward it
What you are willing to trade or sacrifice to achieve it
The third question is critical. Every goal has a cost: time, money, comfort, other opportunities. If you cannot name what you are willing to give up, the goal may need further examination.
Step 3: Identify the Intangible Capacities
For each component, identify which intangible capacities you would need to develop to pursue it effectively. Think about skills, knowledge, judgment, personal qualities, and professional capabilities.
Example: Component is "reach 50k monthly listeners on Spotify." Required intangible capacities might include:
Ability to create tracks with replay value that keep listeners engaged
Understanding of arrangement structures that maintain interest across repeated listens
Mixing skills that produce competitive sound quality
Learning ability to research and understand distribution mechanics
Step 4: Define Controllable Actions
For each component, write down one action you can take this month that moves you toward it. Focus on what is within your direct control. If your component involves streaming numbers, the controllable action might be "finish and release one track." If your component involves creative clarity, the controllable action might be "spend two hours per week on sound design exercises."
Expected Outcome
By the end of this exercise, you should have a document that states clearly what you are working toward, why it matters, which intangible capacities you need to build, and what specific actions you can take. Save this document. You will reference it when making decisions about which skills to prioritize.
Next time you open the app, mark this Turn complete!
Bonus Tip: Add a reflection to Your Turn to earn Depth points, which unlock Extension Courses!
Producer FAQs
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This is common, especially early in your development. Start by identifying what you know you do not want. Many producers find it easier to rule out paths than to choose one. If you know you are not interested in performing live, or building a large social media presence, or working under tight client deadlines, those exclusions narrow the field. From there, experiment with small commitments. Spend a month focusing on one type of work (sound design, arrangement, mixing, promotion) and notice which activities feel engaging versus draining. Note that you should still find the activity challenging. We’ll discuss the importance of desirable difficulty in lesson 6 of this course. Your definition of success will emerge through experience, not through thinking alone.
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Most producers pursue both. The question is how to balance them given your current resources. If you have ten hours per week for music, you will need to prioritize. A balanced approach might involve dedicating 70% of your time to the category that feels most urgent right now and 30% to the other. The percentages will shift as your situation changes. Make the allocation deliberately, not by accident. Remember, goals rooted in intangible development and consistent effort tend to be more sustainable over time than goals that depend entirely on external validation or market conditions.
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Ask yourself two questions. First: if no one ever heard this music, would I still want to make it? If the answer is no, your motivation may be tied more to external validation than intrinsic interest. That is not inherently wrong, but it is worth acknowledging. Second: when I imagine achieving this goal, what specifically will feel different? If you cannot name a concrete internal shift (greater confidence, deeper creative satisfaction, financial stability), the goal may need further examination. Another diagnostic: notice your emotional response when you see someone else achieve a milestone you are pursuing. If you feel inadequate rather than curious, that response may signal that comparison is influencing your aim more than personal priority.
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This happens a lot, and the time is not wasted. Skills transfer. If you spent two years building audience growth skills and then realized you care more about creative depth than reach, you have not lost those two years. You have gained communication skills, platform literacy, and self-knowledge. The time becomes wasted only if you refuse to acknowledge the shift and continue pursuing an aim that no longer aligns with your priorities. When you notice your definition changing, take time to reassess. Write down your new definition using the same three-part structure from this lesson. Then adjust your focus.
Quick Reference
Tangible Success
Measurable achievements you can track with numbers or external validation. Provides direction but depends on factors you cannot fully control.
Intangible Success
Capacities you develop in yourself. Progress is felt rather than counted. Remains stable regardless of external conditions.
What You're Building
Tangible goals help identify which intangible capacities to develop. When tangible goals change, intangible capacities transfer.
Controllability
Focus daily on building intangible capacities (what you control) while using tangible goals for direction (influenced but not controlled).
Next Steps
Next Steps
Success is the accomplishment of your stated aim. This lesson asked you to identify that aim, distinguish between tangible achievements and intangible development, and recognize that what you are building are transferable capacities. Pay particular attention to which of your goals depend on your effort and which depend on factors outside your control.
Now that you have defined success, the next question becomes unavoidable: can you make a living doing this? Lesson 2 examines what happened to musicians thirty years ago and why producers are facing a similar shift right now. After that, you will learn which specific capacities producers need (Lesson 3), how creativity develops (Lesson 4), how habits form (Lesson 5), why you should embrace discomfort (Lesson 6), and how to build agency (Lesson 7).
The Guides are your reference. The app is your journey.