Practice Routine: Self Evaluation

If you’ve followed this series, then you would have first figured out what to practice and then set about creating a practice routine that focused on those goals. After some time, however, you’re going to need to make sure your practice time is still being used effectively.

I can’t tell you how long you’re gunna be able to go before stopping to evaluate your own progress, because that will depend on how much practise time you’re putting in. There should come a time, maybe after a few months, where you would have reached most of your goals and need to update and improve your practice routine.

Why only “most” of your goals? Why not all of them? Because sometimes (and I’m probably the worst person for this) we can actually set targets that are a little too high for ourselves.

Be Honest with Yourself

Recognising whether or not your goals were maybe a bit ambitious at this stage requires you to be honest and very strict with yourself. I mean, do you really think you could get that difficult exercise from 100 up to 200bpm in only one week? It’s for you to decide, but you’re really gunna get the most out of your time if you set smaller, more achievable goals that act like little steps towards your main, ambitious goals.

Don’t force Yourself

If you feel like you’re forcing yourself to practise, day in, day out, then it really will become more of a chore! You should only practise the right amount- again, this requires your own judgement. Too much practise and it becomes boring (and loses it’s effectiveness), but too little practice wont be enough for you to reach your goals.

Ask yourself: are you really practising as much as you could be? or are you practising to the point where the guitar just isn’t fun anymore? Again, honesty pays off here.

Setting new Goals

What you need to do next is to set yourself new targets based on your progress so far. So, if you honestly think that you’re practising too much (and aren’t just being lazy…), then shorten your routine a bit. If you haven’t come close to reaching any of your goals then you should be able to realise that maybe they were a bit too ambitious.

Of course, if you haven’t achieved what you thought you could, don’t feel like you’ve somehow totally failed. The only person you have failed is yourself- and you’ve only done that because you’d given yourself unrealistic targets! As I said before, try and give yourself a lot of little, easier targets to aim for, like stepping stones- rather than one massive, insurmountable one!

You know yourself best, and so it’ll be up to you to judge how well you think you’ve done (or even how good you want to be…).
Rob.

May 27, 2011 at 8:00 am | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments