Daily Fill #113: Great Practice Habits – Figure Out Your Goals

Drummers I Like Podcast

Figure Out Your Goals: Why are Goals so Important?What is Up Everybody! We are continuing our study of Great Habits for Practicing, and today we Setting Goals! This is the most important step in the process of achieving what you want as a player and in your drum career. If you want to have any level of Success, you NEED TO SET GOALS. So, how do we set goals? Well, there are many ways to set goals, but I am going to show you a few things I do to set goals. How to Set Your Goals. Long Term: Your longer-term goals will consist of two aspects. Ultimate Goal: What is your ultimate Goal as a Drummer and with your Career? Is it learning a certain technique? Is your career goal playing with a Large Market Pop Music Act, like Katy Perry? This Ultimate Goal is what YOU DREAM about doing with Drums. If it is teaching, that is fine too. As long as you have an idea of what you want to do, and this might change as your life goes on. This goal should be very big and vague at first because as we work backward you will figure out the details to accomplishing the goals Annualized Goals: Once you have your Ultimate goal, you can now work backward, and the first step is to figure out what you need to do every year to reach your goals. So if you want to Master Double stroke rolls, then you need to make sure your annual goal is to hit certain tempi with your double strokes. For example, January 1st, 2017 I will play double strokes using 8th notes and play at 60bpm, however; I will be playing 8th notes at 250bpm by the end of the year. Something like that. Your annual goals are a little more detailed than your Ultimate Goal Quarterly Goals: This will be your goals within a three month period. So, you can manage your yearly goals. Your quarterly goals will start to break down how to achieve your Annual Goals. So, for example, if you have an annual goal of Mastering Double Strokes, you can break up the goals between three-month segments. (January-March 60bpm-110bpm) (April-June 110-160bpm) (July-September 160-200) (October-December 200-250) Remember You want to AIM HIGH. Push yourself to become WAY BETTER than you think you are capable of. Monthly Goals: This will start to break down the Details of your Quarterly Goals. The Monthly Goals should reflect your quarterly goals. This is the detail of HOW you will go about achieving your quarterly goals. So back to the double stroke example. Your Monthly Goal might look like this (March 1st 80bpm March 30th 100bpm so 1 bpm increase every 2 days with a 1 bpm boost at the end of each week, and 1 bpm boost on the last day of the month.) Weekly Goals: The weekly goals will push towards your monthly goals. In essence, this will be your weekly practice schedule. I like to layout my entire week of practice ahead of time. Now, I know unexpected events can pop up that is okay. If you can't make up for the time lost, your next move would be to prioritize what your goals for that week or day. By laying out your entire week, you will also finish the last Goal set. Daily Goals: This is your Daily Routine of Goal Achievement. This will break down WHAT you practice and for HOW long you practice. The key point to remember is it's not about how long you practice, but the quality of practice you achieve during that time span. So, you need to record yourself, listen back to the recordings, and analyze your recordings because that is the only way to truly hear yourself. We will get into this process later. The Weekly Contest: Send a picture of you Documenting your successes while practicing for at least 5 days, and you will get a shout out from Drummers I Like on our Instagram Story. This will be a reoccurring challenge each week. Meaning you can enter at least once every week Here's How To Enter Take a picture of what you wrote down in a log/journal that was successful in your practice routine for 5 days with current dates between 11/20/2017 through 11/26/2017