Relearning

The bass legend Jaco Pastorius once said that he threw out everything he knew about bass – and music – because he realized he got by with playing it by ear. He started from scratch all over again, painstakingly relearning every single line of music he can play in his sleep, only because he wanted to learn the musical foundation of everything he knows.

Sometimes we’ve been used to a pattern so much that we tend to gloss over the details and not see why we do things a certain way. And sometimes we don’t even realize that we’ve been doing things one way that there’s a better and faster option if we only step back and figure out what the hell we’ve been doing all this time.

Taking a step back and looking at what you do, and focusing on the parts that need improvement, and recalibrating. Relearning is what this year is about.