Heh, 25 year overplayer on guitar here. My teacher’s advice recently was to quit trying to impress myself or others. I went home and ripped into some stuff by ear and I am the happiest I’ve been with my playing after years of overplaying and overanalysis. It’s nice to be able to say “oh in that section I played 42 notes demonstrating Lydian b2”, but it also feels entirely useless for what I’m trying to accomplish.

I think graduating from endless analysis and “lots of notes” playing is a part of the journey.

Playing more the strings of soul instead and less the strings of the brain?

I think there’s kind of a delicate mix. When I practice analysis can be a good tool for idea generation, but I only have so much CPU and it leads to boring playing.