I’ve always been a very goal oriented person. For me, goals have always kept me motivated and working towards something specific. Essentially, when you’re in the midst of it all, a well defined goal can be the one thing to keep you focused on what’s important and help sort through the “fog.”

As a musician, I find goals to be even more important than other aspects of my life. Mostly because music is not just the daily mundane task stuff, but a fulfilling pursuit. What I mean is, I might set goals to clean the house, wash the car, or return library books, but all of these things don’t add a sense of purpose or fulfillment to my life. At the end of the day, I might feel accomplished, but certainly not purposed. That is, in my opinion, the reason why having music goals for your life is so important.

A lot of the musicians and students I’ve spoken with over the years have often said their goal was to “get better”. In all honestly, everyone wants to get better, no matter what their art is. Once again, getting better is such a broad spectrum that you may find yourself getting better and still disappointed in your progress. I don’t think that’s because you’re an underachiever or that you’re not improving fast enough, but more so that you are improving in a different area than is related to your specific goal. I think it’s vitally important to spell out the specifics of your goals.

For example, don’t just state, “I want to improve”, but state how you want to improve. Something more along the lines of “I want to improve my alternate picking”, or “play out in front of a crowd” better defines exactly what you want to do as a guitarist, keyboardist or other musician.

Now, for those who are REALLY motivated, you can even attach a date to your goals. It’s important to keep the date (as well as the goal) realistic. Don’ set a date that’s the ideal for a perfect situation, but allow extra time for “life” to happen.

Once again, I think goals are a great idea that can help motivate anyone to accomplish more, but at the same time, if you don’t schedule them properly or if you dream too unrealistically, you’ll find yourself severely disappointed in yourself.

Example Goals
Here are a few example goals that can work for any musical ability, style, genre, or level.

• Get faster and more accurate at relative tuning
• Get faster and more accurate at harmonic tuning
• Memorize the fretboard
• Memorize barre chords
• Learn to play a song from start to finish
• Play your first gig in front of an audience
• Learn to sing and play

Also, keep in mind that some goals might have two or three steps involved before you can accomplish it. Thinking of harmonic tuning, you might find that it’s important to understand harmonics, then be able to accurately and quickly play harmonics, and finally actually focus on harmonic tuning.

To help you develop your own set of music goals, download our free Music Goals Worksheet.

Keep Rockin’