The art and craft of listening
What many DJs forget, because they can actually get away with it, is listening to music. The DJ equipment nowadays is a space ship compared to what was available just twenty years ago. The audience hasn’t changed that much, apart from people attending an event to SEE a DJ, not to LISTEN to a live DJ set.
But even back then, when we were DJing on vinyl, in the early 2000s, one could argue that over half of the crowd was there to increase their chances of getting laid. To have sex. Or, ideally, to find love. Which was, and still is a perfectly legitimate reason to do almost anything, as long as you’re not bothering other people.
So, from DJs’ perspective, half of our audience isn’t listening, but also never was and likely never will.
That doesn’t make DJs special. It’s the same as about a half of attendees of ballet performances accompany their spouses, trying their best not to fall asleep, because their person, who they love, has a soft spot for this utterly weird activity. So they do it, they tag along, not because they enjoy it, but because they found love. Which is a perfectly legitimate reason to do almost anything, as long as you’re not bothering other people.
OK, back on topic.
This is what professionals in professions do. Read to write ratio is always in favor of reading.
The same way, let’s say, professors of quantum physics spend most of their time learning about quantum physics, not teaching quantum physics. They retire to their chambers to learn.
Or judges. They listen, sometimes retire to their chambers to have a deep think (where they play chess with their own thoughts), before finally delivering the verdict. They spent far more time reading and hearing all sorts of words than writing them to deliver their verdict.
Read to write ratio is always in favor of reading. Listening to music should consume the majority of DJ’s time.
What helps me personally is to glue simple mixes with tracks I'm considering to be potential candidates for me to buy for a particular gig*. I'm listening to these over and over, then decide, by gut feeling, what the final tracklist will include. I'm never 100% right, it always needs on-site last minute adjustments, but I believe the real value of taking the time to prepare is in the journey itself, not what is finally getting delivered.
* Mostly these are corpo gigs or destination weddings where nobody bothers the DJ. What makes these gigs unique is they tend to be quite monolithic in terms of music selection. Either it's up to them or up to you.