The limiting forces on creative work change over time.
When I first began writing music, the pace was glacial. My “bars per hour” was so small that it would take me weeks and weeks of concerted effort to craft an arrangement.
Over time, I got faster – as we all do when we start to know the shape of our creativity, of our preferences, of our process. I can now pretty easily write a good arrangement in a single day, start to finish, if the need arises.
But it still takes me weeks and weeks of concerted effort – because the life beyond my creativity is so stuffed with projects, with commitments, with the stuff of life. I’ve got a 2-page long google doc of ideas and projects I’m just waiting to have time to write. It’s a good thing they go so much faster now, because there’s so much less time!
There has long been a sense that creative output slows over time. Think about the output of your favorite artists in their 20’s and their 60’s. I do think there is an evolution, but one of the biggest pieces is the temporal freedom to create that we have when we’re young.