DEADLINES.
SOMEHOW INVENT THEM IF THEY DONT EXIST. Ex: Weekly Beats, Compos, etc
This is sound advice for people who own their own schedule. However, there are some of us who often get reminded that school or the day job often require you (and tell you outright) that you dedicate yourself entirely to them, or else. Otherwise, you might be the kind of person who sets tight deadlines, takes ambitious projects only to later realize you bit off more than you can chew, or are more defeatist than the rest of the people.
Deadlines, then, are not for you.
In that case, well... I can't guarantee 100% success yet because I'm merely starting to try it out, but keep a checklist of things you want to try to practice in a whole month. Yes, keep it to a month - you can even use a calendar. Divide your main goal in lots of VERY SMALL goals, and commit yourself to them in tiny timeslots (think 15 minutes); use as may days as you want for each mini-goal.
At times you'll notice that you're unable (for any reason) to fulfill the practice time on a certain day... It's OK! Just don't mark it on the calendar that day, that's all. At the end of the month, check how many times you could practice. Say, 20 out of 30 days, sessions of 15 minutes? That's 10 hours of practice on the month. Your goal for the next month is to do more than that.
People who already have solid practice or work routines could tell you "isn't that too slow?". Yes, it is slow, but the point is to actually do as much as you can manage to do. Say you're only able to pull off 6 10 minute sessions in March. Only one full hour of practice seems like almost nothing, but let's be honest here - if you weren't at least committing yourself to the tiny daily sessions, would you have had any practice time on March? I've only been able to practice guitar for 103 minutes so far this month; but if I weren't using this system, I'd have 0 practice under my belt.
So do as much as you can in as much time as it takes. It's not gonna feel like it was "too slow" once time has passed and you realize you mastered an instrument and released 3 or 4 albums on Bandcamp (or your platform of choice).
Believe me, I'm not the kind of guy who can benefit from goals and deadlines. I mean, I said I was gonna learn more about music and more about tech and more about... when I was 17. I'm 28 and I've only now started. I don't want to be 35 years old and look back to see I've still "only just started".
Last edited by El Huesudo II (Feb 20, 2015 3:58 am)