With the craziness (and illness) of the holidays behind me I’m ready to dive into 2020. But before that happens, it’s always a good idea to look back and revisit the previous year.
Here’s my 2019 wrapped and my goals for 2020.
What were my 2019 goals and did I accomplish them?
Firstly…I got married on June 15th 2019. Tori and I had an amazing wedding and soaked in some of our best memories with some of the best people.
Going into 2019 I didn’t have as much structure as I should have. As such, my goals were quite loose. I wanted regular upkeep of the website, more socials media/youtube presence, and more freelance work (and a steady work schedule as a foundation).
My teaching schedule has been totally full most of the year, which relieved most financial stress. Also, because of the higher demand I was able to increase my hourly rate. Now that my teaching schedule is full, the aim is to keep it that way and continue to balance this with freelance work. Also, all recitals in 2019 were well attended and went well and I have some improvements that I want to implement in 2020. Such as: add clip to sheet music stand; more student prep for mic technique; set up a google calendar invite; etc
How did I grow as an individual/artist?
In 2019 I had the pleasure of working on the film ‘Coming Home’, which you will find in my portfolio soon. For this short film I did all composition work as well as post-audio treatment. The post-audio work was quite difficult, but was a good challenge in audio treatment. It’s a reminder as to why buying Izotope RX in the future will be a good investment.
I also did some composing for a short animation for the recycling company ‘Husky’ – https://vimeo.com/377378588
Also, work for Jim Harris from related.com has been steady. Essentially the project is that he picks some Emerson, Lake and Palmer songs and has my good friend Matt Karas notate them. Matt then sends me the MIDI files from the notation software and I assign virtual instruments to the various parts. Then I can send back the song back to Jim in any combination of parts. That project has been going on for a while now and has been some great/steady side work.
In 2019 I got obsessed with the stock market, and reading books on the psychology of trading helped me learn a lot more about myself. This is leading me to reading more about psychology and also meditation, and has helped me clear my head so that my goals are more clear and my schedule is balanced. I feel like I will likely write a blog post at some point about how the skills as a pianist/music producer overlap with the skills of a stock trader, but that’s for another day.
What are my 2020 goals
In 2020 I want to be more rigid about following my calendar strictly. I know that my schedule has a good balance of work, fitness, mindfulness, entrepreneurial endeavors, and time for family/friends. If I can just follow it I know my home/work life will only get more balanced, and I can be more efficient with my time.
I followed the procedure by Warren Buffet where you write down your top 25 career goals, then make a second list with only the top 5. I took my top 5 goals and integrated that with creating my ideal work week (something I hear ‘growth mindset’ people doing all the time). In the end is looked more stressful than helpful, BUT it’s not the case at all. Some of the time allotted is for the gym, meditation, composition, etc.
So what are my top 5 career goals?
1) Lifestyle/Social Interactions (I can be a hermit sometimes, time to break out of my shell)
2) Stocks – focus on consistency
3) Expand and organize Music Library (working with Artlist.io should help with this)
4) Create more online courses
5) Create more Youtube videos (and generally improve social media presence)
These goals should keep me busy in 2020. If I can stay consistent with this schedule I know I will seriously grow as an artist!
That’s it for now, until next time!