I tripped into this piece today in such accidental fashion that I can’t tell you how it happened, but I’m glad it did. It’s entitled, “Learning Guitar as An Adult, the 5 Obstacles You’ll Face (And How to Beat Them)" by Josh Frets. The whole piece is pretty good, but the first point really resonated with me.

“Bad Goals.” Frets follows this up with an awesome quote from cartoonist Scott Adams: “Losers have goals. Winners have systems."

Okay. I love this statement. Why? If you think about it, “goals” are destinations. It’s a spot on a map without roads or topography. If you’ve never travelled the territory on that map, then all you’ve got is hope - and that’s not much of a strategy. You want to play guitar or you want to build on your current guitar skill set, but you have no clue on how to do it. Sure, there’s a ton of resources you can use, but sometimes all of the options make the process of moving off the ‘I want to learn to play guitar’ spot confusing. (Not to mention all of the “wonderful players” online who will offer you their unsolicited disapproval of anything that doesn’’t resemble “the way I learned it.” Yeah, they’re really helpful...)

Before you go and flame me for disparaging goal-setting your guitar aspirations, give me a minute to explain something. I think goals are fine mile markers on a journey, but I’m the kind of guy who needs to be about the business of accomplishing goals, not talking about them. (I hate committees. I hate small talk about the future. I hate big talkers. I have the unique curse of being a self-starter. I need a “Doesn’t Play Well with OIthers" T-shirt.) If you never start, you’ll continue to talk about your goal and never reach it. Thanks, Captain Obvious. But if you change your focus from the destination (I wanna play guitar like Jack White) to the journey (I’m going to find a way to learn the first 8 bars of “Salute Your Solution" by Wednesday then work on the chorus by the weekend) you’re on your way in less than a week.

If you couple this with what author Malcolm Gladwell has to say in “Outliers” regarding the "10,000 Hour Rule,” you’ll realize how much more important it is to get going than it is to set the goal.

Having the goal of learning to play the guitar is great. Having a method to attain that goal is what turns “great” into “awesome.”

 

Christopher Heille is the Music Product Specialist with Zivix LLC - the company behind the jamstik and PUC. Chris is a champion for musicians everywhere and encourages anyone with any type of musical ability to get connected and start making music. His earliest "bandmates" were Tascam PortaStudios and Ensoniq SQ80's, supplementing the missing bass and keyboard players for his original live shows as a teenager. As a guitar player who wasn't intimidated by keyboards or MIDI, he was an early adopter to recording on DAWs and has been involved in various capacities (musician, vocalist, programmer, songwriter, engineer, producer, studio owner) on more projects than he can remember. Chris believes the future of the music business is not in New York City, Los Angeles or Nashville, but in the network of shared ideas and creativity. This belief continues to drive his efforts at Minneapolis-based Zivix, LLC. Find him on Twitter @drewchowen.



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