I've been a musician most of my life. Almost exactly half of my life, since I started playing flute in elementary school orchestra and then guitar when I was 10 years old. It really has informed most of my major decisions in life and has been the lens through which I see the world.
I was in bands throughout my teenage years. I still connect more deeply with people when I'm playing music with them. There is a certain teamwork and unspoken grid that you are participating in when you make music with someone. Another big part of music is the discipline and practice that goes into becoming proficient at an instrument. Although when you're doing something that fills you with excitement and feels like home, the work doesn't feel like work.
This is coming to mind because I just finished a book called The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. I was really happy to be reading that many of his secrets to success were things that I naturally rely on to find progress and success in my own life already. It felt validating.
Like compounded interest, the small actions you do repetitively compound on themselves and end up making the most difference in your life.
I really relied on this idea to make it through Berklee College of Music. It is one of the most well-known and demanding music colleges anywhere. I started there when I was 23, late by normal college standards, but many people who went there were older.
I had played in many bands and had some professional credits to my name, but I was never really big on studying, reading music, or in-depth music theory. I got into Berklee, but I think it's safe to say that I was a bit out of my element.
I moved ahead anyway with all the ear training, music theory, and projects that were above my understanding. I joked with one of my classmates before I graduated that the best thing Berklee taught me was work ethic.
When faced with an insurmountable project, I would just get started and put in a manageable amount of work on it every day. In that way, I found myself composing an orchestral piece for a 30-part orchestra and conducting the recording session in my final year — something I never thought I'd be able to do.
That was one big example, but it felt like every week brought a new challenge I couldn't imagine overcoming. That was on top of the fact that I was living away from home for the first time. I was biking 20 minutes to school every day, sometimes in the Boston snow with a guitar on my back.
Needless to say, I graduated and was happy to return to the California sunshine afterwards.
I think discipline and the compound-effect way of approaching problems was one of the biggest lessons of my time there. Now I'm so sold on this way of life that I try to integrate it as much as possible. How can I incorporate actions into my life that are repeatable and will compound over time into something positive?
The key is not choosing anything too difficult. That's where most people mess up. They go to the gym and want to get strong, so they pick up the biggest weights they can lift, not realizing that real strength comes from repeated action. And if you want to repeat something, it can't be painful.
You have to do just enough that your body will be willing to give it another go tomorrow and the day after. Before you know it, that threshold of comfort will keep rising and rising without ever stressing your body out too much.
This idea is responsible for most of the things people find impressive about me. I was really glad to find it written down in a book.
