Do you need to practice less?

Sometimes we can have such great goals when it comes to practicing, we can actually discourage ourselves by trying to achieve too much. For example, let’s say you want to get all 24 scales up to a certain speed, but the thought of trying to do that becomes overwhelming, you don’t feel like you will ever get there, so you keep putting it off.

 But if you instead say, “Someday I want to reach this goal with all my scales, but for right now I just try it with C major”. Now it’s not overwhelming, and feels achievable, so you work on it, and get it done. Even if you stopped there, you achieved more than when you had the goal of getting all 24 done, but once you get one done, you will probably be inspired to do another. 

The same can go for how much time you give to practicing, if you are trying to get in 30 minutes of technical work but you keep putting it off because you don’t feel like doing it for that long, or you don’t have the time, it doesn't matter that you are intending to get the time in, only doing it makes a difference. 

You would make much more progress if you changed your goal to something you could get in, like 10 minutes. 10 minutes may not be ideal, but it is a lot more than nothing. No matter how great your goals or intentions are, if they end up being overwhelming, or unreasonable, you still won’t make progress.

Actions make progress, not intentions. It is better to have a small goal that you achieve than a grand goal that you never achieve.