One of the most beautiful things about music is that it defies the mind-body split that has guided a lot of the ways in which we see ourselves ever since Descartes put the idea in our heads. For music is both an embodied art, as well as an aesthetic ideal that exists in our minds. I try to consciously appreciate this fact in my daily practice, making sure that I do something to nourish my musical intelligence each day.
But remember, it's about progress, not perfection, so this nourishment won't look the same each day. Some days it will just look like going down a YouTube wormhole, (re)watching Adam Neely or Rick Beato videos, going 'ooh' and 'aah' without doing much else. On other days, it will look like reading a new book and trying out some of the ideas. Don't let the naysayers get you down - doing something is always better than doing nothing. We are not robots, so we won't be active, engaged and committed learners every single day.
And that's okay.
In fact, there is plenty of research on creativity that highlights how it ebbs and flows from day to day, and how the ability of creative people to think non-linearly is what helps them progress and come up with new ideas. Boredom is part and parcel of it. Even as we hang back in our comfy chairs to sip on coffee and look out of our window without a specific agenda for the day, the creative sprites are hard at work.
I would, however, like to add a caveat - make sure you are feeding your mind a buffet of music theory activities - daydreams are fine as long as they aren't exclusively what you're doing, and the same goes for everything else. Be a voracious generalist. It helped me tremendously in identifying my musical palette and coming to know what I like and don't like.
Of the things I like to devote time to as often as I can, solfege is probably the most important, especially as a singer. Learning solfege unlocks associations between scale degrees and reveals aspects of functional harmony that you can use in your music from the get-go. These aspects can jumpstart your musicking because most popular music in the world is diatonic, meaning that exists purely within the notes of a single scale, and is therefore at the mercy of solfege.
Here's a specific example. Solfege can help you see things intuitively, without needing added theory knowledge, such as recognizing that chords that share two scale degrees can be substituted for one another. In a major key, the I chord is do-mi-so, and the iii chord is mi-so-ti. So, you can see that as two scale degrees are shared between those chords, it may be possible to swap one for the other and see what that sounds like.
You can also intuitively see that chords that share only one scale degree will have a more spurious connection, while extended chords provide even more avenues for substitution, embellishment of the basic harmony, and interesting passing chords that you can hop to and from to add a moment of musical pizzazz.
Plus, whatever you learn is transposable, so doesn't rely on any one particular key or specific notes. The better you get at it, the more you'll solidly move between keys with confidence. In fact, why don't you go ahead and practice the same solfege ideas in different keys, just to see its power for yourself!
As you can see, solfege can help inspire ideas for your own songwriting even without knowing any advanced music theory or principles of modulation.
How will you sharpen your musical mind today? What will you feed it? Let me know in the comments below!