Have you asked yourself these questions lately?

“How do I make practicing less boring?”

“How can I make myself more motivated to follow a routine?”

“What do I work on next?”

“How do I know what to practice next?”

“How do I not run through what I know?”

“How do I find new concepts to work on?”

“Why does it seem I’m stuck in the same phase of my development?”

“How do I avoid burnout and information overload?”

Everyone runs into problems with music from time to time. The problem is not necessarily the material to practice. In fact, the pursuit of music would require four to five lifetimes to master. Mainly, the problem lies with not setting clear enough goals for yourself as well as not having vivid and realistic reasons behind your goals.

Not surrounding yourself with like-minded and more advanced musicians can lead you down an unproductive path. Lastly, the amount of material you decide to take on can affect your musical sanity. Taking on too much will leave you frustrated. Taking on too little will leave you bored. Fortunately, I list multiple solutions to fix these problems.

First, select some main goals and break these down into action steps. With action steps, you’re simply taking a big to-do list and breaking it down into smaller to-do lists. For instance, say you want to become a great blues guitarist. First, you need to assess what you actually know about the genre. Once you gather your research, you need to break it down into smaller components.

My action steps may look something like this: learn the blues -> develop a list of blues artists to listen to (past and present) -> learn the song form and variations -> study Delta, Jump, Texas, Modern styles. Though beyond the scope of this blog posting, you can make it very precise and detailed and you can have multiple categories of action steps. You can also add in short, mid and long-term goals to keep you on track. Lastly, to keep committed you need to have some sort of accountability in place. Draft an agreement to have a friend and yourself sign. This piece of paper can have an impact rather or not you commit to achieving your goals.

Secondly, do not feel afraid to break up your routine from time to time. The same routine can yield to redundancy. Try to make a few different routines or plans to cover specific material, then mix these up during the week. You can make a routine to review the material you know as well. Additionally, make sure you allot enough time to cover items in your routine. A stopwatch or kitchen timer can help keep you on track, especially under time constraints. No matter what, make sure you make the most out of each minute of practice time. Intent is the keyword.

Thirdly, take a day out of the week to not practice. Refresh your mind. Maybe explore new music, revisit old music, or don’t listen to music at all. You can clean and organize your practice and work space. You can reflect how much you’ve achieved thus far. You can see a concert for inspiration. Mainly, refresh your mind.

Hopefully, these steps can help you if you’re feeling any of these unproductive musical symptoms. Though these can seem like simple solutions, I’m constantly amazed how often we ignore these and force ourselves to keep with the same routine. So, to recap:

“How do I make practicing less boring?” Mix up your routine.

“How can I make myself more motivated to follow a routine?” Practice what you want. Set time constraints. Apply concepts into music.

“What do I work on next?” Your action steps will inform you if written correctly.

“How do I know what to practice next?” When you and others feel that you’ve mastered a concept and you feel at peace with it.

“How do I not run through what I know?” Keep a master list. Check off the stuff you’re proficient with doing. At this point, this is the material you can review down the road.

“How do I find new concepts to work on?” Research to see what other musicians are working on. Seek out lessons from the musicians who inspire you.

“Why does it seem I’m stuck in the same phase of my development?” Make sure you have reachable goals, vivid reasoning behind them and that you don’t leave out any fundamental steps needed to achieve your goals.

“How do I avoid burnout and information overload?” Break down and organize information. Create small action steps to achieve the big picture.