Fun to see this thread getting so much traction, interesting topic for beginners and seasoned pros alike! I do believe there’s some value in the “Hemingway method”. There are already many suggestions above on similar approach. In some text editors you can find this function. It basically disables the back space, so you just CANT erase what you have written, it makes you produce and not edit. The value/lesson here is to not go in to the edit phase just yet. So you can focus on just creating things. Much like when you sit with a piano or guitar and start writing/practising.
As suggested above, I think it’s important to have the two processes separated. Like the traditional way of recording a band. The band writes the music and gets real good at performing it. The producer later comes up with a trick or two, some suggestions maybe, and then it gets recorded, mixed and mastered. It has so many stages! I don’t think they all need to be fully separated, but it’s easier on the one-man-operation to take some of this into practise. IMO ofc.
I usually have some idea of what I want to do. Usually I start with a synth or rhodes and just write something, a foundation, a hook or a melody, or just a sound I like. Then depending on the track I try to make a few variations. Still just on hardware, most of them have sequencers so it’s all there if I need to leave! If it’s an acoustic I try to record the idea, maybe even just on the phone. After I’m starting to get satisfied with the foundation and some variations, I record all instruments on separate tracks and go into a producing stage, that’s when I try to embellish(?) the track, edit, add some basic effects like reverb/basic eq and so on. Often I want to add a new section or just scrap some parts (THIS is the hardest thing though!). When I feel I’m getting close, I go the final arrangement/edit phase, and after that it’s just polish. It’s all a hybrid method, but more focused on what the goal is. I too have a final destination with songs. I have played guitar on the side of my bed all my life, that is more of a nice therapy thing, to just play. To finish songs is something more fulfilling to me. When the tracks finally get finished I take the stems I want as samples and recreate the rest in hardware when I play live. The preparation is almost as fun as the actual gig, it never sounds the same as the recording and to me, that’s the charm of live sets.
I don’t know why this became such a long post lol, but it was nice to share