Tag Archives: Goalsetting

Clear vision for 2020

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It is now 2020 – Welcome to the new year and the new decade!

Just like every new year, we are encouraged from many sides to develop resolutions – to define those things we need to “fix” to improve ourselves.

How about this – in 2020, the year of clear vision – just give it a rest.  Resolve to make no resolutions. Don’t set any goals.

After all, if the goals were important, you’d have set them right when they became clear.  If you need to work on specific things, you would have started right then – if you wanted that to become a goal!

There’s nothing special about short cold days for achieving anything.  Up to 91% of people who set resolutions drop them, most before the middle of January!  So, setting resolutions is really not a useful thing to do, unless you like to set yourself up for failure and to give yourself a specific thing to beat yourself up about not accomplishing.

New Year 2020Then what should you do? How about you take on just these four things:

  1. Just Stop. New Year’s resolutions really seem to be about false notions of self-improvement and possibly about self-aggrandizing virtue signaling. And really, unless you made a significant wager with someone, no one else really cares if you make it, so stop pillorying yourself about having resolutions, goals, visions, whatever.  Use that energy to – just play!
  2. Be Nice. Be kind to yourself – if you’re not where you want to be, you probably not only know it, but you likely also know how to get across that gap.  You might just not be ready to spend that energy. And if you are not sure how to get there, work with your teacher (or me!) and keep reading (because you know that here, we’ll talk about ways to improve!).
  3. Take a smarter path. The path forward that begins by recognizing the reality of your life will be a smarter path. And possibly there’s more to your life than playing the harp – like family, friends, day jobs, other hobbies, other instruments, and myriad other things you prioritize ahead of the harp (otherwise, you’d have more time to practice).  By examining your real life – and using that as the foundation of your thinking about your playing – you will be more likely to be able to find the time to practice and to better fit your harp playing into your reality!  Your life is a system and it needs to be kept in balance so that you can accomplish the requirements of each of its parts.  That balance starts by understanding where all the pieces lie.
  4. Practice! You know it will all come down to this – but you need a wider definition – you have to practice:
    • Practice the instrument – probably that old saw of spending at least 30 – 90 minutes a day (depending, again, on where you’re trying to get, your level of performance and development, and your real life)
    • Practice fitting everything else in too (you know, like dinner, exercise, sleep, work, chores, etc.) (after all, 3 above will not happen by magic, it will take a little work to analyze what will fit, where it will fit and how you might have to adjust things to get it all into the day).
    • Practice having balance
    • Practice being kind to yourself
    • Practice stretching
    • Practice learning
    • Practice spending time away from your harp productively
    • Practice being present
    • Practice practicing – you can’t just sit on the bench and have magic pour out your fingers – you know you need to warm up, work on fundamentals, analyze music, think about your approach and strategy for new music, work on learning, learn new things, develop musicality, hammer out new burbles, etc.
      • Practice the tunes you love
      • Practice the tunes you don’t love
      • Practice the way you play and developing your technique
      • Practice becoming more accomplished
      • Practice sharing your music
      • Practice being better
      • Practice enjoying the process
      • Practice capturing your progress so you can see your improvement
      • and practice identifying where you need to improve and practice

It’s going to be a busy year, and you’ll do exactly as much work as you fit in (and no more).  Setting improbable or impossible goals will not help and could actually get in the way (by making you feel like you’re failing or not making progress when you actually are).

What will you do with all the energy you have from not developing resolutions or goals that won’t work for you?  Let me know in the comments!

Tired of Christmas yet?  So, what’s next?

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I get it.  We’ve been teaching, learning, practicing, and performing Christmas music since it was hot!  It’s a limited pool of tunes.  It’s a short window to share them.  And they really aren’t that different from one another.  It can get boring.  And at this point, it is too late to start changing them up…or you’re already doing that and you’re running out of ideas for changes that you can perform on the fly.  After all, by December, we’re likely to be operating on autopilot just a little.

So, while you’re on autopilot, you might be thinking about what’s next!  What do you want to do?  What tunes are you going to take on?  Do you have a longer-term plan?  Now’s your chance to make a workable plan for the post-December season.

To do what’s next, we need a plan.  How do you make a plan for your music?  Same as any other plan you might make, you just need to take a few (ok, 10) steps –

  1. Know where you are – take stock of where you are right now.  Be honest and rigorous and identify where you’re starting.  And it’s the foundation of the plan. If you’re not honest, you will have a hard time succeeding in the plan.
  2. Set realistic expectations (based on your real life).  It’s easy to build a perfect and beautiful plan.  But if the plan doesn’t reflect your real life, it will fail.  Do not promise yourself that you will get up at 5 and practice for 2 hours if you are responsible for getting your household up, fed, prepped and out the door by 6:30 every morning!  While it’s a lovely plan, it won’t fit your life. (we’re back to being honest and rigorous with yourself).
  3. Make a schedule.  No matter how good your plan is, it will help to write it down and ensure it fits into your (real) life…the messy one with chores, and work, and meals, and traffic, and showers, and all the other stuff of daily life.  Writing it down will let you see the conflicts and were you have (actual) practice time…and plan in free time – you’ll need it.
  4. Where are you trying to go?  You should begin with the end in mind.  ‘Nough said.
  5. What will it take to get there?  You have to see the space between where you are and where you want to go.  In business and engineering this is called a Gap Analysis.  Be sure to note which specific, steps, techniques, etc. are missing to close the gap.
  6. When do you expect to arrive?  While you may not know how long it will take you to master skills, techniques, or tunes on your path, you may want to develop some idea of how long you think it might take.  Be prepared to be thorough, but also be ready to be wrong.  Remember to be flexible too.
  7. How will you know when you get there?  Before you begin to execute your plan, you will have had to identify where “there” is…so you’ll know when you have arrived!
  8. Do you know why you’re going there?  It helps to define what you need to work on (where you’re trying to go), but it is also important to keep in mind why you’re trying to get there!  Are there techniques you need to learn or perfect?  Is there a particular repertoire element you wanted to build in?  The why is essential to getting there!
  9. What happens if you don’t get there?  Sometimes your plan is to achieve something before a specific event.  Or you need to tackle a particular element on your way to nailing a particulate tune you want in your rep.  But what if you don’t get there – what’s the worse that will happen.  Do you have a contingency?
  10. Did you write any of it down?  You know I’m a fan of keeping track of stuff – and this is no exception!  Take notes, write on your plan, keep a calendar, make a scrap book, use a practice journal.  I don’t care how you keep track, just be sure to keep track.

Like the meme says, no matter where you go, there you are.  Make a plan so you’re there is somewhere you’d like to be.  What are you thinking you might make a plan for?  Let me know if the comments.