Hi All!

How was your X-mas? Did you manage to surprise any family members, playing ‘Wonderful Christmas Time’ from last weeks lesson?

I sure did. Well, ‘surprised’ might be a bit to big of a word, as they know I can play a bit of piano by now ;), but we sang.

Oh did we sing.

For now, I think I’ve had my portion of Santa’s and Jingling bells. I say: Onto the new year!

 

New years resolutions.

I might have a few to many for this year. Yet, a very interesting book I am currently reading, inspired me a whole lot about ‘goal-setting’ in general, how goals can act as milestones to help you achieve more of the things you really want and this way even actually get you closer to your ‘ideal life’.

The fact that, -coincidently (or is it?)- the new year is coming in a day or two, seems to be perfect timing for both implementing this new way of goal-setting for myself, as well as sharing a bit on the subject with you guys.

The importance of goals and how to reach them.

 

Goals, when set ‘correctly’: ambitiously and structured can not only GREATLY increase your learning curve (read: help you learn -for instance- how to play the piano, faster), but also your increase your ‘general life output’ including, but not limited to: overall happiness, personal development and even bringing some joy to others.

 

A more controversial statement: SHARING goals, among other benefits, might be one of the greatest ways of committing to them: stick to them and ultimately reach them.

If you’re interested in learning more about this (highly recommended), I recommend reading this blog post on how sharing can help you achieve goals and watching this short video of one of my personal hero’s: Derek Sivers.

Where Dragos mainly speaks about the benefits of sharing, Derek on the other hand will tell you NOT to share goals. At the end of his talk though, he’ll also say how the negative effect of sharing goals can be omitted.

Pay extra close attention to the end of the video (+/- 2:50) where he tells how to prevent the sharing from ‘tricking’ you into the satisfaction that should only be received from actually achieving the goal (and not from sharing it):

 

• Define the steps to get there: What do you need (are you going) to do to achieve it?
• Why are you actually going to do this / How will you feel when you fail?

 

Just being aware of the facts David tells you in his short talk, I think will greatly help to prevent the unwanted result he talks about when using ‘sharing’ for it’s benefits: commitment/accountability, clarity, motivation, progress measurement and -very important here- connection.

As I myself am currently in the process of structuring my personal goals into different categories and time-frames, I got the idea to use the benefits of the above mentioned ‘sharing’ aspect to all of our advantages right here on this website, helping each other reach our ‘piano goals’ and speeding up everybody’s piano-learning curve.

So, since it is that time of the year where everybody is sharing all kinds of new years resolutions anyway, let’s follow this example that will immediately help you and every other reader to reach a specific piano-goal: let’s share!

IN THE COMMENTS BELOW, please share:

 

1. ONE ‘piano goal’ that you want to achieve for JANUARY 2013 (to give you a time frame).

   It doesn’t matter wether it’s a technique, a lick, a trick, a pattern, a rhythm, a style, write your own song, learn a scale, a key (or all the chords in a specific key), finish a specific chapter of the course, or learn how to play a specific song (these were all suggestions by the way ;)).

2. WHY you want to achieve this (is it going to improve your overall playing, will it help you with a specific song, will it just give you joy (learning your favourite song might), or maybe you want to learn a song to play to somebody else and improve their state of happiness)?

3. HOW you are going to get there.

   I suggest to study for 10 minutes every day, STARTING with the thing that you cannot yet play -> the thing you want to learn. If however that is impossible for you to do (have you done this before for more than 7 days in a row?), tell us what you’ll do to achieve your goal, but TRY TO BE REALISTIC. This is very important! Telling that you’ll study for 60 minutes every day, while you also have an 80-hour-work-week, soccer practice and follow yoga classes three times a week, is asking for failure.
   On the other hand, planning on studying for 5 minutes per week might make it hard to reach any piano-goal, but if that’s the best you can actually do: do that! (and adjust your goal to it: You might be able to learn a few new chords with last mentioned 5 mins-a-week study plan and time frame. Writing a song a week will get a bit tricky).

 

Apart from all sharing-benefits already mentioned, your goal might very well inspire somebody else to want to start reaching the same, inspiring them to grow.

My own ‘piano goal’ for this month? Check the comments ;).

We’ll evaluate at the end of January and all set a -hopefully new- goal for February!

Tutorial-lesson: Still Dre. How a simple pattern turned two chords into a classic.

For the tutorial of this week (very simple, very educational and -again- illustrative on how to combine chords with patterns to create a killer piano-driven classic) click here, (AFTER you’ve put your goal in the comments! :)).

Want to share even more and spread all this wisdom and joy to whoever may benefit?

Please share this post with three of your friends or family members that you think could use some help in reaching their goals!

For now, happy playing and a very happy new year!

Cheers, Coen.