Honor self promises
Honor self promises. It’s a phrase I picked up from Body for Life by Bill Phillips. I struggle with this one, especially when it comes to practicing or other things that I want to do for longer periods of time. Consistency is essential if you want to increase your skill level or gain a certain level of mastery at a thing. I want to improve my skills as a guitarist. I want to improve my skills as a bassist, as a trombonist, as a pianist, as a singer, and so on. These things take consistant practice. How does one do this? Do you set daily time based goals for yourself? (Eg.”I will practice for 2 hours a day for five days” Is it more important to build the habit by setting realy really achievable goals for yourself? (Eg. “I will practice at least 10 minutes a day for 7 days”) The concept being that the most important thing is the habit, and not the amount of time you give to the instrument.
The reason for the rumination above is that I’m considering setting myself a practice goal for guitar for the rest of the month. I’m considering making a promise to myself that I will practice guitar for 30 minutes a day from today till the 31st. I’m hesitant because I’ve made such promises to myself before and not stuck to them.
As I finished typing the paragraphy above I looked above my desk and saw my “SMART” post-it note. Maybe what I need to do is make this goal SMART. Let me take myself through it.
My goal is to play guitar for 30 minutes a day for the next 11 days (from July 20th – July 31st)
- Specific
Specific is the What, Why, and How of the SMART model
- “WHAT are you going to do? Use action words such as direct, organize, coordinate, lead, develop, plan, build etc.” / I’m going to practice guitar for 30 minutes each day from July 20th – July 31st.
- “WHY is this important to do at this time? What do you want to ultimately accomplish?” / I want to become a better guitar player so that I may one day perform on stage as a singer/bandleader/soloist. These skills that I develop as a guitarist will also help me as a songwriter.
- “HOW are you going to do it? (by…)” / I will make practicing in the morning my top priority. If for scheduling reasons I am unable to practice for 30 consecutive minutes, I will break it down into either 3 sessions of 10 minutes each, or 2 sessions of 15 minutes each. On heavily scheduled days I will make a point of getting up 30 minutes earlier to play my guitar. (This is the thing that has thrown me in the past. As I’m taking myself through this process, I realize that this is the part of the equation that I’ve skimped on.)
- Measurable
- Action based / I originally learned SMART with “Action Based”, the page I reference above uses “Attainable”, which seems redundant to me. Action based to me simply means “There are definite actions you can take consistently. Those actions are:
• Schedule time to practice, especially on busy days.
• Place my sticker on my calendar after finishing practicing.
• Assess the process after the 11 day period. - Realistic – I feel like I can do this, though I’m nervous about actually setting the goal.
- Time bound – I have a clear timeline for this goal.
“Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goals.” / I will track my daily practice on the calendar next to my desk. Each day when I complete my 30 minutes I will place a little red sticker on that day. My goal is 11 little stickers by July 31st.
Going through this process has been helpful to me. Specifically the “What, Why, How” part mentioned above. I think that once I go through this process with more goals it will become quicker and more second nature. I think I’ll also read up on SMART from other sources to get different takes on it.
–Update: 8/5/05–
Just a note to this post. I successfully met my goal. The tracking the red dots on my calendar was extremely helpful. It’s also helpful to know that I can set goals for specific numbers of days or amounts of time, depending on my schedule.