It turns out the same dynamic is at play with songwriting - your standards get higher, what seemed novel when you were 20 now seems boring. I’m sure it is the same across disciplines. The irony is, it kills creativity.

Does it though? I often find it's fun to find new and novel ways to create things that are both clear and efficient. Creative problem solving can be leveraged anytime.

I think the problem is you start saying "no" to more things (literally and metaphorically) before you've even worked the idea or given it a shot. This is purely supposition.

That is the gist of it, yeah. You get discouraged because you can't come up with anything interesting, whereas when you were 20 everything you came up with seemed interesting. I'm just generalizing my own experience of course, and there are more things at play than just this - like I think not yet knowing all the rules has something to do with it. I try to be aware of it, and take some advice I heard once at an artist-in-residence talk: sometimes quantity is better than quality. That is, treat making like sports: practice.

> You get discouraged because you can't come up with anything interesting, whereas when you were 20 everything you came up with seemed interesting.

This is so true. I'm 37 now, and I'm struggling with that - I'll come up with a project idea, only to second-guess myself whether it's ambitious or innovative enough, and really worth spending the limited time I have available. I end up questioning whether it would really count, or just serve as frivolous self-entertainment.

When I was younger, it was good enough that ideas were interesting or would help me achieve mastery. Once you have a bunch of well-worn skills under your belt and have plenty of options and the ability to make commitments, everything becomes just a function of effort/time and choosing what to do next becomes the biggest challenge.

I'm trying to cut myself some slack and allow myself some amount of time to pursue frivolous ideas. At least you can intentionally combine them with e.g. new implementation technologies (e.g. a new tech stack or new tools) to get important first-hand experience and maintain relevant skills (and therefore decision freedom).

I'm also hoping that some day, having kids might help me with some of these anxieties :-). If I revisit/retread older ground then perhaps to make it accessible to them at home or teach them by doing little projects together and give them a boost and allow the next generation to take it further. I.e., even doing non-innovative stuff could count, as a fundamentals teaching moment for someone else. Hope they take an interest!

I like to think of creativity as out of the box thinking, and as we get older and more experienced, the box grows.

That is a great way to phrase it.

I have not heard this take but it does seem plausible. What to do about it ?

Give yourself credit for working at a higher level of quality.

Yes. Also, don't think you are too good to fail, we still learn by failing even at 50. I've said some more in another part of the thread.

If you're not failing, you're not learning!

That definitely matches my experience. I spend so much more time re-writing existing songs than I did when I was younger. It used to be almost entirely creating new material and moving on to create more. I wonder how much is my standards have gone up or lack of novelty in general as opposed to how much I've become attached to some of what I've created and feel it is worth polishing. Some of both I think.

I returned to the first project I made as a software developer after being about ten years away from it. Never do that. Haha. But it was quite educational to see how my problem solving had changed. Fortunately I didn't need to refactor everything because if I did that would have been a nightmare.

Yeah old code of ours, reminds me of a now old comic ...

http://notinventedhe.re/on/2011-11-9