🎉 32 Lessons I Learned Before 32 🎉

 Today's my birthday, so I thought I'd share 32 things I've learned at 32.

1. "The Obstacle is the Way" - (Ryan Holiday, inspired by Stoic philosophy) What is blocking your path will help you achieve your way forward. When Peter Farrell verbally attacked me online, in the moment it was an obstacle. But, overtime it allowed me to gain more students as people checked out my work and even led to working with George Benson's team and an endorsement from him as "an amazing instructor".
2. Deep work requires deep rest. The quality of your recovery directly affects the quality of your output. Schedule dedicated downtime as seriously as you schedule focused work. This is something I'm still working on!
3. The best of the best never stop learning from the best. This is really one of the main reasons I hire the world's best guitarists each month to give masterclasses inside of Chase's Guitar Academy. It lets me continue learning from masters, refine my teaching, gain new insights, make new connections, and build relationships.
4. Reading fiction before bed will knock you out better than any sleeping pill. I'm a big fan of Brandon Sanderson's work if you need a recommendation. Start with Mistborn.
5. Mental models from other disciplines solve problems in yours. Learning concepts from fields outside music has given me fresh approaches to teaching and playing. I'm constantly applying ideas from math, philosophy, martial arts, cooking, language learning, and more to music.
6. "If you have the money to solve the problem, then you don't have a problem." - (Jack Butcher) Many times we let a problem linger that could be easily solved using the financial resources we already have. Don't hold yourself back from reaching the next level for this reason.
7. Noodling in improvisation is like a child stringing random letters together without spaces. Just as words need breaks to form sentences with meaning, your musical phrases need silence to become vocabulary. Listen, imitate, and build your musical vocabulary phrase by phrase, in the same way a child learns to speak. Otherwiseyoursolosoundslikeyoureplayinglikethis.
8. "You can just do things." This quote is going around on Twitter and various tech circles lately, but it really captures an important spirit about taking action. You don't need permission, qualifications, or a degree. You can just do the damn thing. I didn't have ANY experience coding and this past summer I decided I wanted to finally build out an idea I've had for a while into an iOS app called iRepertoire.
9. The way you frame a problem often determines whether you can solve it. Sometimes the breakthrough comes not from trying harder but from asking a different question.
10. Treasure or Tool? When buying new gear, decide if it's a one-of-a-kind treasure or a tool to help you achieve a specific end. You want to buy the best value tool you can, and splurge on a treasure every now and then.
11. Learning any new skill alone is doing it on hard mode. Learning with the support of an experienced teacher and peers is doing it on fun mode.
12. Rule: No coffee/caffeine after noon.
13. Focus is not saying yes to one thing, it's saying NO to everything else. You'll know you're focused when you're saying "No" to many great opportunities you want to do, but that aren't the #1 thing you are focused on currently. (Inspired by Steve Jobs' famous quote)
14. Forgetting is a necessary step to move something from your short term to long term memory. The effort of recall tells your brain to remember that information better next time. So you should view forgetting a song or lick as a positive opportunity to become better, not as a failure.
15. "A finite game is played for the purpose of winning and an infinite game is one which is played for the purpose of continuing to play." - (James P. Carse, "Finite and Infinite Games") As much as you can, try play an infinite game. Playing music is one of the most fun in my opinion.
16. Get noise-canceling headphones for deeper focus and work. I recently got the Apple Air Pods Pro and they're amazing, highly recommend.
17. Every year you should be actively planning on new projects, skills, and experiences that are beyond your current capabilities. That's how you grow. Who wants to live the same year over and over again until you die?
18. "The map is not the territory." - (Alfred Korzybski) We can't forget that music theory describes the music, but is not actually the music. A scale can describe a melody, but that doesn't mean playing the scale is how you create one.
19. Constraints breed creativity. Some of my best work emerged when I had limited resources, time, or options. Embracing limitations forces innovative thinking.
20. Create in the morning, manage in the afternoon. I do my best creative work in the morning, usually after working out. That time between 8am-noon is when I have the most energy to tackle new ideas and turn them into structured lessons.
21. "Play long-term games with long-term people. All returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest." - Naval Ravikant
22. Your musicality develops in proportion with the quality of music you listen to. You'd be surprised how many people are trying to learn jazz, but aren't listening to jazz.
23. It's ok to outgrow things. This might be relationships, friendships, habits, goals, etc. You are not obligated to spend time in areas that are no longer a value to you.
24. One secret of how master musicians can get so good is that they practice away from their instrument. You can practice anywhere. Visualize your instrument and run through your exercises. Listen to the sounds around you and try to hear the intervals and harmony. Even if you can only get an hour on your instrument, you can practice so much more throughout the day than you are currently.
25. If you can't decide, you haven't clarified what matters most to you. If you lack motivation, it's because you don't have a clear vision of why that action matters to you. When you're not motivated to practice, it's often because you haven't connected how that practice leads to a goal you truly care about. Sometimes it's because you haven't defined a goal, or perhaps you're not being honest with yourself about what you actually value. Remember that enjoying the process of learning can itself be a worthy goal.
26. To me being retired is when your daily activity is generally doing what you want to do anyways. In that way I think right now I'm in a place where that is true, and also why I 'work' 7 days a week on Chase's Guitar Academy. That work is what I find fun, challenging, and creatively fulfilling anyways, so why wouldn't I want to do that every day?
27. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Your practice time should be spent on the edge of your abilities, in the same way a good workout is you pushing yourself to the edge of what you can lift.
28. Accelerated learning requires compressed feedback loops. Monthly feedback creates monthly growth; weekly feedback creates weekly growth. I strongly believe you can improve much faster by receiving more feedback, which is why I emphasize members of Chase's Guitar Academy to post videos of their playing frequently, or to message me directly to get my feedback within hours.
29. A great way to become familiar with playing over a certain chord is to loop it and play different single notes over it to hear the interval relationship. What does a 9th sound like over a Major 7 chord? Can you hear that in your head? Can you sing it?
30. The Mastery Paradox: Consistent practice builds skill, but routine can accelerate your perception of time passing. I'm exploring how to balance focused routine with novel experiences that expand our sense of time. I think the answer lies in deliberate variety within structured consistency.
31. Spend your time on something that will be valuable to you in 10 years. You will focus on the longterm and that time will pass anyways, so you might as well do it getting really good at something you value.
32. Becoming a new creative voice in a field requires deep study of those that came before you. George Benson studied Wes, and Wes studied Charlie Christian. No one would claim that made any of these legends a copycat. The magic happens when you apply YOUR thoughts and experiences to what you learned from the greats.

These are things that I've found helpful for me. They won't all be useful for you, but I hope some of them inspire new ideas, and more importantly, new action. If my work has impacted you, I'd love to hear about. Drop a comment on one of my YouTube videos, or send me an email at "[email protected]".

Thank you for the support 🙏

Chase

P.S. If you want to study guitar with me, click here to learn more.