Guitar Goals

What are your guitar goals?

I am a firm believer in goal setting as an essential tool for improvement. Consider the following slightly absurd analogy: Lionel Messi and I are side by side in a penalty shoot out. Messi has the skills, power and experience but he’s blindfolded and doesn’t know which way the goal is. I’m an absolute amateur, but I can clearly see the goalposts so I know which way to shoot. How much better are my odds for being able to see my goal?

The point is, you can develop power, accuracy and skill but unless you know where the target is and how to tell when it’s been hit, you’re sure to limit potential progress and can easily become demotivated. On the other hand, if you define a clear goal, you can map out a path, identifying the exact steps needed to hit that goal. You can measure your progress and feel the great sense of achievement that comes from being able to do something you could once only imagine.

I always encourage my students to develop this thought process and utilise the resources and knowledge they already have to figure out how to reach their target.

Let’s apply this concept to learning guitar. Larry, a beginner student, has the goal of ‘playing No Woman No Cry’. This is a decent place to start but it’s a little vague. By adding some more detail, we can ‘narrow the goalposts’, tease out what Larry really wants to achieve, and direct his focus appropriately. What if instead, Larry decided he wanted to strum the chords of No Woman No Cry along to the recording of first song? This is better as it starts to indicate the specific actions he needs to take.

- Holding down a consistent strumming pattern

- Playing along to the recording in time

- Changing between the chords quickly enough

- Memorise all the chords in the song

Once these have been identified, the goalposts have been narrowed. The next step is to think about the best order for those actions to be taken – are there any steps Larry has to tackle before other steps will be possible? If Larry tries to change between the chords before he’s remembered them individually, he might find it more difficult than if he memorised each chord first.

At this point, Larry’s almost ready to start practicing but before he jumps in, he should consider two more things. Firstly, the skills he already has. He already knows the names of the strings, he’s practiced strumming an Em chord and he’s known the lyrics by heart for years. Secondly, as he completes his plan, he should think about what resources he has access to in case he needs help along the way. He knows about ultimate-guitar.com which has the song written out with the chord changes above the lyrics he’s already memorised. He’s also having lessons from me and knows I’ll be delighted if he comes to me with a specific question about something he’s been working on (I love it when students do this as it shows me they’ve really been putting effort into their learning).

So, after:

1) Carefully considering the specific goal

2) Acknowledging existing knowledge and skills

3) Breaking down the actions needed

4) Creating the best order for those actions

5) Gathering the resources he might need

Larry has an excellent plan of action. There is hard work yet to come, but now Larry's working smart as well as hard, thanks to setting some excellent guitar goals.

Take 5 minutes and consider what guitar goals you might have. What skills do you already have, and what resources can you easily access to help you get there?

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Footnote: For illustrative purpose, this example is broken down in quite some detail. Much of the time it won’t be necessary to include this many steps - you’ll be able to rely on your intuition to combine actions thus saving time. Where this approach comes in handy is when you get stuck, or run into a hurdle you can’t immediately cross. This is where you can break things down and identify a more manageable action you can put into immediate practice. This focused practice will really save you time and effort.