Focus, music and the marathon mentality
One thing that I try to emphasize with students (or anyone that’s willing to listen) is that achieving anything worthwhile typically requires dedication and commitment. In pacing terms, musical proficiency isn’t a 50 yard dash – it’s a marathon. It something that requires a lot of training and an understanding of pacing. If you go full bore and don’t pace yourself properly you’ll burn yourself out before you reach your goals. Not reaching your goals is also a possibility if you don’t push yourself hard enough.
Keeping an end goal in sight can be a difficult thing to maintain. This will be a general theme that will thread its way through a series of short articles that will get posted here regarding the general topic of practicing. In my own life, tackling 2000 pages of manuscript and trying to wrestle them in a series of books is both invigorating and overwhelming.
One site that has posted a lot of really good observations about maintaining goals and focus is Mike Torres’ refocuser site (http://www.refocuser.com). There are some really salient points there and for a more immediate resource in goal setting you may want to head over to his 12 goals site (http://www.12goals.com). Some good general information that can be directly applied to getting things done on the guitar (or maybe in other areas of your life as well).
