Goals

Once you have reviewed your musical values, you can set your goals. If values are your compass, directing where you go, goals are the map and the specific plan for exactly how to get there in a behavioural, descriptive way.

Goals can increase motivation, confidence and focus on the task by defining exactly what to work on and what to prioritize. Goal setting is a primary focus in my lessons for this reason. But just setting goals isn’t magical. Emotionally connecting to why the goal is important provides the motivation, confidence, and focus necessary to ultimately succeed.

Identifying your musical values alone isn't sufficient to succeed either. You may know that you value quality practice, for example, but without setting goals your values won’t direct you toward a particular achievement. Goals provide the necessary direction of our energy and actions.

In music, goals that seem to have the greatest effect are moderate in difficulty—challenging but realistic. Neither improbable, difficult goals nor easy goals show any effect on performance. Easy goals don’t push you. You protect your self-esteem with easy goal achievement, but you don’t get very far. On the other hand, setting really difficult goals doesn’t work either. Failure always feels bad, and unmet expectations are disappointing. And who has the motivation to go after goals you are likely to fail at?

In music, absolute goals show the greatest improvement in performance. Absolute goals are specifically defined outcomes— winning an audition, for example. It’s absolute because you either do it or you don’t. Only one person can achieve this goal.

Relative goals are goals that are based on personal improvement relative to prior performances—performing at a higher tempo, for example. Relative goals are also linked to performance improvement, but not as strongly as absolute goals are. 

In general, “do your best goals” are about as useful as relative goals. They inspire effort and focus but aren’t as effective as having a specific, targeted outcome to improve performance.

Research indicates that both short-term and combined short and long-term goals improve performance the most. But long-term goals alone do not.

This makes practical sense. You can certainly have an idea of what you want in the future, but without a practical plan in the short term, you won’t take the immediate steps necessary to move you in that direction. Linking short and long-term goals for both practice and performance sets out a solid plan for achievement, with the long-term goals providing meaning to those short-term, ideally daily, action steps.

Question to Consider:

Set short and long-term outcome, performance, and process goals for each of the musical values you identified in my previous blog.