Setting practice goals is just like mapping out a route for your musical journey. Just as a traveler plans their path, musicians need to set practice goals to guide their progress.
In this blog post, we’ll walk through a simple, 5 step process to help you establish effective practice goals, and explain how to create a practice routine tailored to helping you achieve them.
Why Is It Important To Set Practice Goals?
For a lot of musicians, the thought of setting practice goals may seem foreign, because it isn’t discussed often. However, setting these goals are incredibly important for the following reasons:
- Clarity and Direction: As mentioned earlier, setting practice goals provides a clear roadmap for your musical development. Without a clear path, it’s easy to wander aimlessly, unsure of what to focus on or how to progress (especially if you are self taught). By setting specific goals, you give yourself direction, ensuring that each practice session serves a distinct purpose in advancing your skills.
- Motivation and Focus: Practice goals serve as powerful motivators, fueling your dedication and commitment to improvement. When you have clear objectives to strive for, you’re more likely to stay engaged during practice sessions. Moreover, as you make measurable progress towards your goals, you’ll experience a sense of accomplishment that will propel you forward.
- Measurable Progress: Without goals, it’s challenging to gauge your progress and track your improvement. Practice goals provide tangible benchmarks against which you can measure your advancement.
My 5 Step Guide On How To Set Practice Goals
The guide that we are about to go through is one that I’ve developed through months of experimentation and research. It is what provides the best results for me, so it is my hope that it will work wonders for you too.
Lets begin!
1. Identify 3-4 Goals You Would Like To Achieve
Most musicians have two main problems while setting goals:
- The goals aren’t specific
- The goals are above their skill level
When you set goals that aren’t specific, it will be much harder to identify what steps you need to take in order to achieve them.
For example, let’s say that I set a goal to get better at jazz piano. That goal is quite vague. There are so many aspects of jazz piano. Do I want to get better at improvisation? Voicings? Harmony? Playing “outside”? Bebop lines? Playing at fast tempos?
Truth be told, we all want to get better at our instruments. That goal is already recognized, but in order to achieve it, we need to set goals that are specific to what we want to get better at.
If you’re a jazz piano beginner, your first goal shouldn’t be to learn Donna Lee at 300 bpm. Start with fundamental concepts, and then slowly work your way up.
I recommend setting 3-4 practice goals. You can add more goals if you think you can handle it, but do not overwhelm yourself.
2. Pick Your Timeline
After you have identified your goals, you will need to pick the timeframe in which you want to achieve them. DO NOT set open-ended goals. Open-ended goals promote procrastination. You won’t feel the same sense of urgency that having a due date will give you, which will slow down your progress drastically.
When you choose your timeline, make sure you write it down. The well-known book Think And Grow Rich talks about the importance of writing down your goals and the timeline in which you want to achieve them, instead of keeping them in your mind.
The book also speaks about reading them aloud twice a day (once when you wake up and once before bed) and seeing yourself in possession of what you want as you read.
It may seem a bit strange at first, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a try.
Pick your timeframe, write it down and read it daily, seeing yourself playing at the skill level that you want. It doesn’t matter if its 3 months, 6 months, or 2 years!
3. Break Down Each Goal Into Small Manageable Tasks
So, we have our goals and our timeframe. Now, we need to observe our goals and see how we can break them down into manageable daily/weekly tasks.
To demonstrate this, I’m going to hypothetically say that my goal is to “improve speed and agility on the piano”.
This is a technique related goal, which means that I may have to work on different technical exercises, and that it would probably be best to use a metronome.
An example of my tasks would be:
- Practice Hanon/Czerny exercises daily with a metronome. Increase the BPM slowly each practice session.
- Learn an etude every 3-6 months that focuses on improving speed and agility.
- Learn and implement techniques that will help to make playing faster easier.
When you are able break all your goals into at least 2-3 manageable tasks, you are ready for the next step.
4. Create A Practice Routine
Now that all of your practice goals are identified and broken down, it is time to create your practice routine. A great template to use is The Music Educator’s Jazz Piano Practice Routine.
You can change the exercises around to suit your goals, or even take out a part to be able to focus on another part more. For example, if I am focused on improving improvisation, I may take out the “Classical Study and Sight Reading” section until I’ve completed my goal, and then re-introduce it as my goals change.
Always remember that you can not work on everything at the same time. At times you will need focus on a particular area of your development. When you are done with that area, you can tackle another area.
This ensures that you have the time to grasp all that you can learn out of a particular concept, instead of rushing through because you have so much other things to do.
You can not work on everything at the same time!
The Music Educator
5. Assess Your Progress
Last but certainly not least, you NEED to assess your progress.
This is the most important part of setting practice goals. If you do not assess your progress, you will never know if you are getting any closer to achieving your goals.
A good way to be able to assess your progress is by keeping a practice journal. This way, you will see how every practice session went, which will help when you are doing assessments.
I’d recommend assessing your progress every 2 months, to give yourself enough time to improve. If you are not improving, the assessment will be a great time to find out why. Are you sticking to your practice routine? Did you end up setting a goal that is above your skill level? Did you break down your goals into the right tasks?
These are all things to consider when you are assessing your progress.
Conclusion
Through this five-step guide, you can embark on a journey of intentional practice, steering your musical path with purpose and precision. Remember, specificity is key, and each goal should be tailored to your aspirations and skill level. By breaking down larger objectives into manageable tasks and adhering to a structured practice routine, you lay the groundwork for improvement.
Embrace the journey, celebrate the small victories along the way, and stay consistent. There is no progress without consistency. Find comfort in knowing that there is no way that you can’t get the results you’re looking for, if you do what you’re supposed to do!
There is a free printable outlining the guide which you can download by clicking the button below.
