When I was younger there were so many things I was trying to express through my music and I was trying to fit them all into one piece of work. I spent ages perfecting something would never live up to what I wanted it to be. I had this voice in my head comparing what I was doing to what other people were doing, so I wasn’t releasing anything, I wasn’t finishing anything.

I used to have a lot of self-doubt and criticism but with this album, Big Blue, I set out to do a specific thing and I completely achieved that, and I feel great.

I write a lot of songs, but I don’t finish writing a lot of songs. With this album I tried to record the ones that seemed easiest to record. I forced myself to let it be and not to mess with it and they came out great. It involved not being hung up on the preconceived idea of what it should be and just doing it and seeing what comes out at the end and I like it. I think it sounds good.

The biggest piece of advice I feel I can give, specifically to myself five years ago, would be to keep going. Focus on quantity rather than quality which I know sounds counter intuitive.

The best way to get better is to set the bar lower for yourself so that you can finish things; so that you can finish many different projects and keep going. The process of finishing projects over time is what makes you a better artist.

I needed to stop thinking that my music has to be the greatest music in the world and instead I thought of it as, “it’s mine and that’s enough”. The fact that I’m doing it, is enough.

There was a video of Dan Harmon, the guy who wrote Rick and Morty, and Community, I think it’s a five-minute video called Dan Harmon on Procrastination. In that video he says that the turning point for him was detaching yourself from the idea that your art is amazing. Just focus on finishing the thing. Finishing multiple projects shows people the breadth of your skill. That video helped me.

There’s this complex that a lot of artists have where, on the one hand you think of yourself as being a genius and you want to show people your talent, then on the other hand you have a voice telling yourself that you’re awful. The way Dan Harmon spoke about it, shattered that concept in a way that was helpful for me.

I feel confident that the projects I work on now are not good or bad. I make what I make and I’m happy with what I make.

I know so many people who make great music but find it so hard to release it or finish it because they’re trapped. They’d be so supportive of everyone else’s music but when it comes to themselves they’re so critical.

At the moment, I feel like I don’t have a lot to prove. I’m just making music because that’s what I like to do. The result is I can finish it and feel really content and satisfied which I wouldn’t have been when I started making music.

Henry Earnest’s album Big Blue is out now.

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