Goals and practicing

Like most musicians, I find there are few kinds of practice sessions.  Meaningful sessions where I work hard an achieve something; Chop-exercise sessions where I don't really focus on anything in particular but at least register some face time; Chop-wasting sessions where I don't accomplish anything except angering my chops.  Compounding that fact is the fact that I'm horribly ADD.  In fact, within the first 3 sentences of this blog, my mind has wandered to at least 4 different, non-related subjects.  ARGH

So, I need a way to not only ensure that more of my practice sessions are Meaningful Sessions but to also keep my attention focused throughout the practice session.  To do this, I whip out my trusty white board.  It's a nice looking board which encourages me to keep it out in the open.  On the board, I highlight 4 goals.

• Yearly goal
• Monthly goal
• Weekly goal
• Today's goal

Yearly Goal -
I try to focus on a broad concept, not something as specific as "play high C."  Instead, for example, this year's goal is "Audition Successfully."  Of course, the word "successfully" has many meanings in this context.  It doesn't necessarily mean WIN an audition; just accomplish something.  If that means making it into a 2nd or 3rd round, or even getting over the fear of preparing for an audition and showing up, prepared then that's fine.  However, If I focus well throughout the year, accomplishing this yearly goal should be no problem.

Monthly Goal - 
Similar to the yearly goal, the monthly goal is a broad, less-specific goal that encourages me to work a great deal towards a collection of accomplishments.   In general, it may be a tad more specific than the yearly goal, but is still not focused on a single accomplishment such as "practice fortissimos." My monthly goal this time around is to prepare the Franz Strauss Concerto and acquire the orchestral parts.  My hopes are that I can tie this goal to my larger, yearly goal and audition with a local community type orchestra (of which there is NO shortage in this area) to play as a solo on a concert.

Weekly Goal - 
This is where things start to get more specific.  In general, I try to focus my weekly goals on accomplishments that are ultimately in support of my Monthly and Yearly goals.  Also, I'll list a few goals in the weekly section.  These are all goals that are achievable.  It doesn't make any sense for me to put goals that I could never achieve in a week.  Saying "work on your cold high Ds" is useless as a weekly goal.  A few weekly goals that I've listed recently have been:

• 3 octave lip slurs
• Expand FF and PP
• Improve staccatos
• Brahms 3 excerpt

Daily Goal - 
Obviously, these goals get far more specific.  Daily goals are what I truly hope to accomplish in that practice session.    They are goals that start with "Work on," "practice," "focus on," etc.  For example:

• Work on Bb to F slur in Brahms 3
• Focus on rhythm in Tchaik 5
• Work on 3 and 4 octave arpeggios
• Practice Fearn exercise #2

While I try to do these goals on a regular basis, there are still times where I fall down and still have a chop-wasting session.  However, they're much less frequent and the sessions where I do work towards my goals are FAR more effective.  It's also nice to scratch off accomplishments and be able to measure some success.