Review Your Goals

Remember the anecdote about planes on the bass practice page. Let me recap: for long haul flights (eg London to New York) the plane is off course for around 96 or 97% of the flight time - BUT always lands in the right place because along the way the pilots make a series of course corrections.

Let me put this another way: assume our intrepid beginning bass player is a big prog rocker and wants to play tunes by bands like Rush, Dream Theatre and Yes and sets his goals accordingly. Now if he's followed my advice he'll have broken down his longer term goals into a series of shorter term goals - which is his course to getting to where he wants to.

Now suppose he goes with a friend to a Bela Fleck concert and is bowled over by the antics (fretboard and otherwise!) of Victor Wooten and has a damascene conversion and now wants to play more like Vic. If he carries on with his original plan he'll be learning a lot of material that is no longer relevant to his (new) goal.

And that's where a periodic review of your goals come in.

At the end of every three months make a copy of the 3 month schedule you've just been working on and cross through all those goals you have successfully achieved. If there are any goals from this 3 month period that have not been achieved don't beat yourself up, make some notes on WHY you didn't achieve them (and I bet that 90% plus of the time the reason will be that your original time assessment was too optmistic!)

Then take your longer term goals. Examine them one by one. Are they still relevant? Don't be afraid to change your goals - it doesn't mean that you failed in anyway with the original goals by 'getting them wrong' - it merely means that you are a little older, a little wiser.

Remember: The majority of your practice time will be spent alone, make sure you spend it working towards something you want to achieve!

If your longer term goals have changed in anyway - you know what to do! Go back to Step 1 and start all over again - now that you've done this at least once it will be easier second time around!

TIP:Your goals WILL change over time. For effective and efficient practice it is equally as important to review your goals periodically as it is to actually set goals in the first place.

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