Goal Setting vs. Intuitive Practice — A Musician’s Guide | The Millennial Edit

Goals, productivity, achievement.

Artist life often revolves around these three things. As a musician, we learn to focus on what we must get done during our practice, and spend our professional lives honing that efficiency.

This is essential, after all, many of us supplement our concert work with regular jobs, and this does not often leave us with surplus time.

If we are to stay on top of our game, we must fit as much work as possible into the hours we have, so we can work to the best of our ability, get enough sleep and not go insane in the process.

It sounds optimal.

That one day we will be creative machines, ticking off tasks, allowing ourselves more time to enjoy what we do, or at least the opportunity to sit back every once in a while and appreciate how hard we are working.

Unfortunately, what is optimal is not often simple in real life, and in an artistic life there is a lot more to the equation of work than just putting effort in and getting results out.

Being able to get results from your practise takes more than just being able to sit with your instrument every day.

It takes a dedication that can really only be honed through love as an antidote to the stress of keen self observation; doing a great amount of work every day that costs us time and energy does not always equate to the most loving relationship.

So how can we work from a place of love towards our instruments?

Learn how to observe with a positive mindset

There is no way that we can push the levels of our practice efficiency without critique, but there is a way that we can observe and comment on ourselves without making practice feel like an act of self deprecation.

Psychological studies show that focussing on what we can do instead of what we cannot or what we cannot do correctly can help us to feel less powerless in our work and that over time this can strengthen our relationship with our instruments.

Take the time to focus on what you can do during your practice.

This does not mean playing through the parts that you do not need to work on, it simply means that instead you should focus on the methods you have available to you to fix a passage.

Practising this way helps us to feel like practice is building on something, achieving instead of punishing.

Learn to estimate yourself fairly

It only takes primary school level science to know that a fair test is one where the environment in which tests are run stay the same.

So how come so many of us are comparing ourselves unfairly?

Competition is not just between ourselves and others, but also between ourselves from day to day. Our environments change daily, the amount we sleep, what we eat, the people we see, the weather, all of this has an impact on our efficiency.

The mindset that our playing does not improve if we do not outdo ourselves every day is impossible to keep up with and it jeopardises our trust in our working method.

How can we grow and learn if every time we make a mistake that we didn’t make the day before, our self trust is undermined?

Every minute of practice is another brick laid in your ability, trust that you are putting in the work and that this time is not losable.

Learn to praise when praise is due

Learning can be a tough and tiring process and it can be hard to detect our own progress.

Take the time to praise yourself when you feel that praise is due. Heads up, this should be at least once a day, not just after finishing a concert.

Praise yourself for exploring, for discovering, for finding a solution to a passage, for picking up your instrument even though you didn’t feel like it, for writing out some goals, for taking a break.

With any luck we will be playing all of our lives, there’s no need to stress about achieving everything all at once.

One thing is for sure, we will reach our goals a lot quicker if we feel better about the process (and even if a developing a positive mindset is only a catalyst for moving quicker towards what we want to achieve, it will definitely be healthier for us in the long run.)

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