You may think that doing a 10-minute beat challenge is a waste of time since the beat will probably turn out bad or be unusable, but the point of the challenge isn’t necessarily to make a banger beat!
Practicing 10-minute beat challenges can help improve your ability to focus, optimize your workflow, build effective habits, and help to eliminate overthinking. It does this by bringing you into an intense, focused state to complete a goal under a short time constraint.
In this article, I will go over these benefits in more depth!
Time Restrictions Can Help Eliminate Over-Thinking
Time restrictions can help eliminate overthinking by putting you in the moment with the only goal being creating a beat and not worrying about making mistakes.
Living In The Moment
The 10-minute beat challenge allows you to be focused for a short period with only one goal in mind – make a beat. During the 10-minutes the focus will be towards completing a beat instead of choosing what snare or 808 sounds best.
By focusing on the beat instead of the sounds there will be less time spent scrolling through sample packs which can take you out of your creative state.
Less Fear of Making Mistakes
The short amount of time helps remove the opportunity to second guess yourself or be afraid of making a “mistake”. The expectations of making a crazy beat or creating the perfect drop are removed as there isn’t enough time to do so in 10-minutes!
That being said, it doesn’t mean that the core of your beat won’t be good or useable later. After you are done the challenge you take the inspiration from the quick beat and create something crazy – or use the momentum to start a new beat!
At the very least though, you got to practice in!
How Does The 10-Minute Beat Challenge Improve Focus?
The 10-minute beat challenge improves your focus by putting you into a situation that has a single goal with a defined end objective and timeframe. This trains your mind and develops habits so that you can replicate this mindset outside of a 10-minute beat challenge.
Training your brain to focus on one task is just like practicing scales on a piano – it’s hard at first and you’ll notice where your weaknesses are.
The more you practice the easier it will get to remain in that creative mindset.
The more frequently you’re practicing this type of focus you’ll notice the habits translate into your regular beat-making sessions. Or even everyday life habits – much like the discipline most of us have when it comes to brushing our teeth.
Optimize Your Workflow To Get Quicker At Creating Beats
Utilizing the 10-minute beat challenge can allow you to notice what aspects of your workflow are slowing you down or causing you to pause – these pauses could lead to you getting distracted or having your mind wander.
An optimized workflow will allow you to create beats quicker during the 10-minute beat challenge as well as create your ‘real’ beat quicker and more effectively.
A template that maps out the instruments you typically use: kick, snare, hi-hat, etc.., a folder with your favorite sounds, and maybe some presets ready to go on a mixer channel can help tremendously.
If you’re worried about being locked into a box when using a template, don’t be it’s to help you not overthinking the process of creating. Sounds can be changed and optimized later!
Summary
By doing 10-minute beat challenges you are learning what your workflow is and where you may be overthinking components when creating your regular beats.
Enforcing a time limit will allow you to focus on creating instead of what the best sound could be – which can be determined after your creative process. This means less overthinking!
Furthermore, learning where you are taking the most time during the creative process will allow you to create templates or methods to optimize your workflow in those areas. The quicker you can get your ideas out the better!
Live in the moment and don’t be afraid of making a mistake, you don’t have time to in 10 minutes!
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