When I think about personal growth I typically think of horizontal growth. That is, adding as many skills, knowledge, and pieces to the puzzle as possible. And I love learning new things a lot. It helps when I have trouble sitting still or not doing anything that feels productive, which is quite often. A jack of many trades, master of none.
But this year I want to try something new.
Adding different types of pieces to the puzzle makes it more difficult to switch gears in your brain. That’s just in my anecdotal experience. I’m a collector of hobbies and I easily fall into the trap of having too many different types of projects and ambitions.
Just as an example, last year I was working on personal growth in at least 5 completely different areas. I was brewing beer, improving my JavaScript, reading more books, writing and playing music, learning a bit of Spanish, and getting into construction by building a fence, shed, and some other projects. That doesn’t include the countless subjects I read about more in-depth and got obsessive over for weeks at a time.
This year I’m going to scale vertically. I’m going to dive deep rather than spreading wide. I might go crazy by not constantly moving on to a different type of project, but it’s an experiment worth trying. So with my goal of releasing an album this year, I’m going to scale vertically in music.
I’m going to write more music. Record music. I’m going to learn more about mixing, mastering, and audio engineering. I’m going to work on actually improving my guitar skills rather than being content with average. Revive my skills in piano. Learn new instruments like drums and ukulele.
That isn’t to say I’m going to completely avoid everything else. I still have a goal to read at least 15 books this year, and I’ll continue increasing my proficiency with JavaScript as part of my professional development.
But this year I’m going all in with music.
Dan Hauk 