Set an outrageous goal—you’ll surprise yourself with what’s actually possible.

Look, there's an art to it. Saying you want your first million dollars tomorrow might be a stretch.

But there is something to trying to do something you think isn't achievable. Or something that seems a little crazy.

I am a musician. I love creating music. I particularly love making albums.

After my last recording went live in 2024, I wanted to keep a track record of at least one album per year.

I would say to myself: "if my resources were unlimited, I would make 10 albums a year".

I'd share this with others. Seems a little nuts.

And let's be real—it's not as interesting when you have infinite resources.

Sometimes there's an elegance in getting the thing done before you've won everything in life.

Let’s be clear—I haven’t made 10 albums in a year. But aiming that high cracked something open in my thinking.

I've been thinking more and more about how I could actually achieve this goal. After a visit in Chicago with some jazz musician friends, I learned they were able to record two records in 3 days.

Wow—that’s faster than I thought. Could I push myself the same way and come up with three albums’ worth of material in a few days?

In order to do that—and in order to achieve the broader goal of 10 albums a year—I couldn't make records the way that I had done before. The meticulous planning, the songwriting, the whole endeavor of putting together a carefully planned list to make the most of recording studio time—that model wasn't going to work.

No. We had to try something different.

What if we approached an album with zero planning?

And that's what I did. Over the past 3 days, I've been in the studio from 10am to 6pm. I haven't even had a chance to review all the material, but I'm pretty sure we recorded about 35 usable tracks.

That's easily 3 albums worth of material.

How did we do it?

We didn’t overthink. We barely planned. We just showed up.

But here’s the thing—it wasn’t chaos. Some important context made this work.

We played completely improvised music, yes. But my colleague and I also have a lot of history playing together. We are playing music that is meant to be improvised—choose a mode (a musical scale), start playing, and listen to each other. Both of us have had years of training to do this.

So it's not starting from nothing. It's also having the experience of recording, of knowing what to expect from a studio. This is my 5th (maybe 6th and 7th) album after all.

But I have to admit: I am very pleased and excited by this experiment. Showing up and trusting that coming into a studio together—of simply bringing in great musicians and letting them roll—could create so much material.

It's an absolute blast. The most fun I could ever think of.

So here's my invitation: when you feel an excitement for a crazy goal, don't limit yourself. Don't say it's impossible. Hell, it might be. But keeping it in mind, thinking of it as something to strive for, may prime your brain to find ways to make it happen.

I thought it was impossible. And yet, here I am, with 35 new tracks.

Sometimes it takes an outrageous goal to find out what’s really possible.