12 lessons I have learned in 2024

One week is left until this year is over and I am looking back on the past 12 months and the different lessons I've learned along the way. These lessons have to do in part with my activity as a musician and an artist, but are relevant at the same to broader aspects of the day to day life. Some of them derive from ideas I've heard or read over the years and for some reason I understood them now. Here's my list:

Black pen resting on lined paper with handwritten blue text. Close-up shot, academic or studying setting. — Reflecting on the past year, capturing life lessons one pen stroke at a time.

It will take the time that it will take. In today's fast-paced world, patience is becoming increasingly scarce. We are more and more used to getting the result in a matter of minutes and sometimes even seconds. Just think how annoyed you were the last time a website took more than 3 seconds to load. Hence, not seeing results of your labor immediately is sometimes frustrating. BUT, just like a piece of music requires time to be practiced and matured, some ideas and projects need their own time to grow. Allow it the time it requires.
Trust the process. This lesson connects with the first one. Once you have set a system in place, keep going. I sometimes tell my pupils "You might not see or hear results this week or even the next, but if you trust the process of practicing you WILL see them. I don't know when, but the results are guaranteed". We might feel like we are not moving anywhere and might get bored of the process, but if we set the correct vector and keep on moving, at a certain point the results will appear and be visible. Whether learning a piece, writing a book, putting a project together, building a website, building your podcast or social media following, keep going.
You can't make people change. It needs to come from within. Only when they matured the will to change something and, most importantly, take action, you can be there to support them. But you can't do the work for them.
Nothing is forever. The only certainty is uncertainty, so don't settle. Learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Don't make excuses for your inaction.
Stop waiting, just try. I should write this in capital letters and put it on my fridge so that I see it every day. It is incredible to realize what mental gymnastics our minds are capable of in order to keep us from exposing ourselves to the possibility of rejection. Hence, being idle becomes a trap of comfort which keeps us from taking action. It is preferable to let others reject us rather than self-rejecting by not taking action at all.
Diversify/decentralize. Don't go all in on just one thing. Take calculated risks. The more decentralized you are, the less risk you run. Identify the main areas which bring you value and don't run yourself thin on unimportant things.
Invest into people and relationships who invest in you. I've heard this thought from Matthew Hussey in a conversation with Simon Sinek on the "A bit of optimism" podcast and it was so powerful that many of the relationships that left me puzzled over the years immediately made sense. It doesn't mean the relationships are transactional and must be seen with a lens of "what can I get from this person?". It simply means that there are people out there who put the same amount of energy, time and importance as you do into the relationship with them. But if you keep on investing with little to no return into it, perhaps it's time to rethink the relationship.
Invest in your career. Don't throw money into the wind hoping for some sort of return. Identify areas with the most impact and invest there. The 80/20 principle, also known as the Pareto principle, is a good framework for this. The basic idea is that 80% of the results come from 20% of input. As an example, 80% of your activity will come from 20% of your network. Identify that 20% in any sphere of your life and invest into it.
Coincidences don't exist. I've had this thought for some time and this year I became certain of it. I believe that what we call coincidences are the results of our own actions. A fun story from last month: I was looking for two weeks for a particular method for learning a diatonic harmonica and couldn't find it anywhere. I was thinking about it for several days and on a Wednesday evening I met, completely by chance (or was it?), a colleague of mine who told me "Oh, I need to show you something in the closet of my classroom". I went with her and, together with a small accordion and a few sheet music books, I found... EXACTLY the method I was looking for!!
Check in on your goals at least 4 times per year and set a deadline for them. More about this in the next blog post where I will analyze what worked for me this year and what can be improved.
Energy levels. Energy is everything. Some argue that instead of time management we should be thinking about energy management. We live in a performance culture in which we are supposed to be 100% (if not more) every single day. I'm not entirely sure that's possible at all times. However, if you feel like 50% on a given day, that is your 100% for that day. Take it easy and don't burn yourself out.
Start doing the things that you like and want SOONER rather than later. One of my goals for 2024 was to travel somewhere once per month on a weekend. I have always traveled for concerts and not necessarily just to get to know a city. I finally got to that goal in autumn with the help of Skyscanner (let me know if you'd like a separate blog post about that). With its help I found return flights to Greece, Portugal and Spain for an average of 55 Euros from an airport near me. I plan on doing that in 2025 as well and work on some other projects that have been on my list for months and years. If you have had something on your mind that you wanted to do, start doing it sooner rather than later. Start it in 2025!