The 10% Report - 2021 Edition

I think we can all agree that 2020 was a pretty hellacious year. We have all said it, we’ve all lived it, but what did we do in these long ten months? Some of us baked bread for the first time, others had time to pick up a book for the first time in years, others spent hundreds of hours building fictional islands filled with digital animals with different personalities. I for one also fell into that Animal Crossing trap, but this time has got me thinking.

As a young musician who makes a living running around from state to state playing in different ensembles just to make ends meet, I barely make the time for myself. My practice sessions fell into what I was getting ready for in the next week or month. I never really focused on myself as a musician, especially as a Masters student where my time should be spent making myself an amazing player to go into the professional world. I was hardly sleeping or even eating and I felt so mentally unhealthy, and I didn’t even bother to address it. It didn’t take until around February when my teacher sat me down in her office one day after Spring Break. I had just come back from an audition for the Air Force Ceremonial Band after we did a tour with our university’s horn choir. I had spent months preparing, and my result turned into not even advancing past the first round. That meeting was my wake-up call. She sat me down and said that I need to just stop everything I’m doing, and think about why I’m doing this to myself. Think about the fact that I’m not improving as a player for one sole reason - I’m not focusing on the basic fundamentals to make me a great horn player. Sure, I practiced more than three hours a day like any other music student, but I was practicing the music just so I could get by. Not even a week later after that meeting, everything shut down. No more gigs, no more travelling, no more normal.

Sure, I could’ve spent the first two weeks of quarantine sulking and complaining about what had happened before as I watched my calendar slowly erase itself as I fell into the void of Nintendo’s new release, but what was the point? My teacher is fantastic, and every time we’ve had chats like this, it was to make me better - but what difference was doing nothing going to make?

The continuation of that story can be given for a different time. I’m a different person, a different student than I was this time last year. Now, I practice smarter, my playing has improved tenfold, and I have a new hunger as a musician and student - but what changed? Simple - goal setting.

Every January of each new year, people make these false end games that they strive to achieve by the finish of the year - cook healthier and from home, work out more, spend more time on mental health. We call these resolutions, and by the definition itself, a resolution is a way of fixing oneself when we’re not happy with what we’re doing. Yes, I’m guilty of doing these resolutions - I’m never always happy with the person I was in the previous year, and I always want to make a change - but in the end, I always go back to my creature of habit and never meet the finish line. Here’s the thing though, I wasn’t ashamed of the person I was in 2020. That Tyler was someone who fell down, got himself back up, and pushed so hard to be the way 2021 Tyler is now. I’m proud of 2020 Tyler, and he taught me something that I’m never going to forget - resolutions are absolute garbage.

Why do we strive to fix ourselves? It's a way of saying that we aren’t good enough and we’ll never achieve unless we fix problem after problem. As musicians, we are taught to make goals for ourselves - win orchestral auditions, get into a good graduate school, successfully play a lip trill - why can’t we make personal “resolutions” into achievable goals?

“Resolutions” are made at a certain time and they have a set end, whereas goals are achievable at any point of time, they can last days, minutes, or even years, but the trophy is still at the end of the finish line. Goals can also be changed at any point. The great thing about goals is that when they’re met they can be rearranged to be made larger, bigger and even more self-glorifying. By the second week of January, I set a few goals for myself, added some things, taken some things out, but by now on the fifth week of the year, I’ve started to reflect on my progress of these goals I’ve set for myself. 10% of the year is gone and I’m happy with who I’ve become in this amount of time. Here’s what I have as of yesterday (Friday, February 5, 2021)

1. Walk/run 500 miles - (48.9/500)
2. Read 20 books - (2/20)
3. Journal every day - (35/365)
4. Listen to 200 albums - (21/200)
5. Reach 600 consecutive days on DuoLingo - (312/600)
6. Reach 150,000 points on DuoLingo - (52,897/150K)

These are some goals that I have given myself for the course of this year. Every Friday, I come back and reflect on my progress. I think through my week and I think about what I have already done to achieve my goals thus far. Some weeks I put a goal down that I’m wanting to try and I reflect on whether or not it is worth my time or energy, if it is something that is going to make me happy, and if it’s something that I can be proud of myself in the long term. While these look like your typical New Year’s Resolutions, I will argue that it isn’t the case. These aren’t things that I’m requiring myself to do every single day in order to make me a better person, but rather something I can reflect on and continually change to make myself feel better at any point in time.

I am guilty that journaling every day didn’t happen. I skipped a day early in the first week of the year, and it jokingly haunts me everyday. Journaling is something I do every morning when I wake up. I go downstairs, I make breakfast for my fiance and myself (of course, he doesn’t wake up until several hours after I do), and then I spend the next hour writing. It is something I enjoy, it is something that I look forward to, and I highly recommend it in these times when all we want to do is get our words out. Everything else is on my own time. I go for a walk whenever the weather is nice and I need to clear my head, I always go and listen to an album or two or three in its entirety and then I log about my walk (my current apartment complex is massive so it’s great) - the distance, the thoughts, the albums critiques. I read at least 25 pages a night before bed, and that is something I really enjoy because for someone who doesn’t sleep easily, it winds me down instead of falling down the TikTok rabbit hole. DuoLingo is a completely different story and I will have to talk about that in another post, but I’m 313 days strong currently and I’ve enjoyed every second of it. Every single thing that I have listed is something I do every day because I enjoy it. The arbitrary number beside them is just something to look forward to. 10% of the way through 2021 and I am already ahead on my goals, every single one of them, and it makes me happy every Friday when I write down the percentage achieved.

Anyone can write goals for themselves at any time. I put mine in a journal, some put them on their music stand, some on a giant white board above their desk - heck, I know someone who puts them inside the refrigerator with a pad of sticky notes. Goals are meant for self accomplishment - you don’t need to fix yourself through a crippling resolution. Start with one thing that you want to achieve in the next week or month. Write down your progress when you do it, and take days off when you need to. I don’t go out for a walk or read every single day, I do it when I make the time to do it, but if I fall behind or fall short it is on myself, and I’m really ok with that. Whenever I don’t get a chance to do any of these things, I make up for them on my own time, not because I have to, but I want to. Trust me, when I’m into a good book, I am sometimes happy about the fact I’m behind so I can spend hours reading hundreds of pages getting lost in my own world.

Please comment down below a goal that you have for yourself this year. What have you accomplished so far in these last 5 weeks? How are you celebrating yourself right now?