Supercharge Your Guitar Practice Time

Lesson 4: Use SMART Goals

To get the most out of your practice sessions, you should have one or two goals for each session. And you should use SMART goals:

S: Specific 

For example, “learn to play a Dave Matthews song” is a vague goal; “learn to play the arrangement of ‘Fall Into You’ published in Guitar Player magazine” is a specific goal. 

M: Measurable 

How can you tell if you’ve achieved your goal if you can’t measure it? Starting with the previous example, we could make that goal measurable like so: “Learn to play the arrangement of ‘Fall Into You’ published in Guitar Player magazine. Be able to play it without any mistakes at a metronome setting of 60 bpm.” 

A: Attainable 

Your goals should be within your reach. For instance, if you’re just starting out playing rock guitar, a goal like “learn to play Stairway to Heaven in one week” is probably not within your reach,, but “learn to play the first two bars of Stairway to Heaven in one week” might be. 

R: Realistic 

This is similar to the previous point. Your goals should be neither too easy nor too difficult. They should be goals that you believe you can accomplish. And they should be goals that you are willing and able to work to achieve. 

T: Timely 

Every goal should have a time element. “Learn to play Freight Train” is an open ended goal with no time element; you can put it off forever. “Learn to play Freight Train in one month” is time-bound.