I recently posted a short Facebook video tutorial on ways to document the PATH to your goals and dreams so that they become a reality.  Goals without a plan of action are your dreams, but listing the exact steps needed to get there empowers you to reach your dreams.  I hope these tips are helpful.  Enjoy!

We all know the power of having a plan, right?  Plans are the road maps that get us where we want to go.  Of course, where we want to go (our "destination" or "goal") is crucial to the plan.  Goals are important because they give us direction, and even more importantly, because achieving them empowers us toward higher levels of progress.

Today's post will discuss some ideas on how and why to set goals.  Goals can be simple or complicated, and long or short-term.  It's important to consider the type of goal you are setting when you choose goals for yourself.  

I'm going to break this down into a suggestion for several types of goals that people typically make.  It is up to you which categories you choose!  You do not have to choose them all.  Start with #4 and work your way backward.  If you are playing at an advanced level, be sure to choose all of them.

1. Long Term Goals.  These are your hopes and dreams.  Your "reach" goals.  What they may be depends upon where you are in your studies, but in general these are goals for the far future:  goals for one, five, 10, or 20 years from now.  Think big.  If you are just starting out, go with a one or two year goal.  If you are already pretty invested in your studies, think bigger and go for 5 years.  If you're in college or have graduated, peek into the future and imagine where you'd like to find yourself 10 to 20 years from now.  
2. Mid-Range Goals.  These are your "achievable goals."  These are not just dreams; you can feel that these goals can really be a reality if you work toward them.  Some examples might be:  learn all the notes on the flute (beginners), learn all your scales, make first chair in band or youth symphony (middle and high schoolers), get into music school (dedicated high-schoolers) and whatever goal works for the college player (competitions, placements, repertoire and technique advancement, juries goals, grad school auditions, etc).
3. Short-Term (Weekly or Monthly) Goals.  These are your "deadline" goals, or your "current project" goals.   Goals like this are usually related to your upcoming lessons, learning a new skill, recital preparation, or audition preparation.  They can also be related to how often you will practice in a week (including a plan on how to achieve that).
4. Every Day Goals.   These are things you need to do every day to succeed.  You should probably have a short to medium list of these.  These should be the most realistic and easiest goals to tick off your list.  They should be super-achievable.  For procrastinators, the goals might be centered around the improvement of your practice habits.  The goal list can be as simple as:  remember to bring your flute home, or practice before going out today.  For regular practicers, these goals will relate to fixing problem spots, giving attention to areas we've been neglecting, being sure to work out passages until we truly know them, reaching a certain metronome marking, or just remembering to work on something that really needs work. These types of goals change at each practice depending upon what you need.  These are the most important goals of all, because without them, we cannot get to our longer-term goals.

Some more goal-setting tips:

1. Very important:  not everyone needs to set ALL of these categories of goals (at least not at first).  If you are new to goal-setting, it's more important than anything else to start slow and set yourself up for success.   As I mentioned above, our every day and short-term goals are the building blocks to all future success, so it's perfect to start there, and depending upon your level of drive, it's OK to not have any goals other than that.  No reason to overwhelm yourself.  The most important thing to do is to pick a goal.
2. Make lists under each goal ("the plan!").  For each set of goals we create, it's important to also consider (or better yet, list) what needs to happen in order for them to come true.  "Make All State Band" is a great goal.  Just remember to ask yourself what you need to do or learn to get there.  Everyone's list will be different!  List whatever it is that you know you need to get there.  If your goal for today's practice is:  "learn the G Major scale," then you need to create a list of what needs to be done in order for that to happen.  Plan how you will achieve this.
3. Consider your personality:  If you are really new to this idea, and you are constantly feeling like you need to be more organized or more driven, then it's important to take small bites.  No one enjoys the feeling of failure that results in not doing what we set out to do, so pick something that is very achievable, like "practice one extra day this week," or "repeat tricky passages slowly today" or "check my hand position before starting each piece."  If you have been at this for a while, or you are a very driven person, then your goals might be a bit more intense.  You have the power to decide.  The important thing is to pick something!
4. Be realistic.  Choose goals you know you can check off.  Think about whether these goals will actually work for you.  It's a disappointing feeling to make a to-do list that is too long, and to discover that we couldn't nearly complete it all.  It can make us feel bad about ourselves.  We might need to make our lists a bit shorter, and whittle them down to the very most important one to three items we might want to achieve for that practice or week.  
5. Don't worry if you are "not very good at this."  You just haven't set yourself up for success in the past!  It's the ability to check things off that gives us a feeling of accomplishment.  Short-term goals need to be "check-off-able!"  The feeling of accomplishment we get when we've checked off everything on our list feels so good that it encourages us to keep doing it.  This encouraging feeling turns into what I call "drive."  You don't have to be naturally driven; you can teach yourself to be this way by being careful to choose goals that will actually work.
6. Once you create your goals (and your plan), be careful not to skip too far ahead.  ​If you get so excited about what you want to do several years from now that you skip straight to it, you might be neglecting important skills that you will need to be successful.  A great teacher can help keep you on track and to be sure your basics are well-covered before jumping too far ahead.  You'll get there!

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Remember:  one of the reasons many of us (me included) avoid making lists is because we make lists that we can't possibly achieve because there are too many things on them.  Choose smaller lists.  Start with just one thing!  Just start.  Because once you do it, and check it off, you have achieved something.  And then you can move on to the next thing.  Each item you check off moves you a step further toward one of your goals.  It's a good feeling.

Good luck!  Please contact me with any questions or comments!

I  have a bit of advice for students out there, young and old:  if your teacher is a performing artist, and your teacher invites you to see a concert, GO.  I have been teaching students of all ages for 25 years.  I can pretty much count on my fingers and toes the amount of times I've had students of mine come to see and hear me perform.  Keep in mind that I've given a heck of a lot of performances during that time frame.  When you compare the number of fingers and toes I have (and I do have all of mine) to hundreds upon hundreds of performances, you can see that this is an incredibly low number of times that I've looked out into the audience and seen the face of one of my students there.

Why is this?  When given an opportunity to attend a performance by someone who exemplifies what you are striving for on your own instrument, you should jump at the chance!  Especially those of you who are studying music in college.  For you, missing hearing your teacher play is like skipping class.  Attending your teacher's performance should be absolutely mandatory.  It is an indispensable part of your education.  You need to go.

A big reason for your lack of attendance could be that your parents don't feel like taking you (if you are school-aged).  Or they want you to stay home and do your homework.  I get that.  But you can ask, beg, cajole...get them to drop you off and pick you up...there are ways to get there anyway.  In high school, my teacher was not a very active performer, but she not only used to invite me to go hear concerts that she felt would interest me, she would also offer to drive me there and back.  My parents always told me that if I was invited and I was available, I should go.  Maybe I just had weird old-fashioned parents.  But they believed that one should absolutely honor an invitation with one's presence.  There were times when I felt a little bit awkward about it, but each time I was surprised at how enjoyable it actually was.  I will never forget those incredible opportunities.  I also got to know my teacher better and discovered she was a really great person.

Another reason you don't go may be that, at the moment, it just doesn't interest you that much.  You might have to just pull yourself by the ear on this one.  It's always easier to "just stay home," but if you love playing your instrument and you enjoy your lessons, you owe it to yourself to get there.  Your teacher invests a lot of time and effort toward your progress.  You could invest an afternoon or evening in support of your teacher.  You will likely be more than surprised at what you hear and see.  

Why does your teacher invite you?  The reasons are many.  The number one reason is that, when you are learning an instrument, seeing and hearing a performance LIVE is the best way for your mind to model what playing your instrument should be like.  Yes, there is YouTube.  I know.  You can look up anything on there.  It.  Isn't.  The.  Same.  It really isn't.  There is no comparison.  End of story.  Your teacher knows this, and this is why you get invited to get out and see the real deal.

Why else?  Music can touch you.  You can literally feel it at times.  You cannot feel music through YouTube the same way that you can through a live performance.  You will learn by watching and listening.  It's an easy, relaxing way to jump-start your advancement.  You need to just go.

I could go on and on, but I won't.  The bottom line is, if your teacher offers you FREE tickets to a concert, take them.  Go.  Learn from the masters.  People pay a lot of money to go see these concerts, and I have been saddened time and time again that I've offered valuable comps to all of my students and there have been absolutely no takers.  Ask yourself this:  if it were free tickets to a sports game or a performance by a pop icon instead, would you find the time to go?  Would you get your parents to make an exception for this?  If the answer to that hypothetical question is yes, then there really is no excuse.  If you would be able to make it if it were "something else," then you can make it to a music concert.  Go.

One last thing:  Students may feel that they "hear" their teacher play during lessons already.  There is really no comparison between what your teacher does during your lessons and what your teacher does on stage.   You won't believe how different it is in the heat of performance when he or she is "in the zone." You may be flat-out shocked at how amazing your teacher REALLY is at what he or she does.  You have to experience this.  Go.  And you will also be supporting your teacher and showing him or her that you are willing to reciprocate the efforts your teacher spends on you.

Here's hoping that when I look out and tally up familiar faces in future performances, I'll run out of fingers and toes with which to count them.