Motivation or Discipline? What Gets Me to the Goal?
You know how the saying goes:
Motivation gets you to the start line. Discipline gets you to the goal.
Think of something you once learned. Something that still feels like it happened yesterday. You practised it for an hour. It worked, more or less. The next day you sit back down – and you’re right back at zero. Why? What’s that about?
Our brain never forgets. That was Freud’s opinion, at least. But our brain is very good at pushing things away. Are we ever going to need a C major arpeggio from the first fret up to the 24th, across the entire fretboard and all six strings again? Probably not. Bin it.
Annoyingly, that’s exactly the kind of thing we actually want to keep.
So how do we force our brain to store something – and, above all, to recall it quickly? By doing it over and over again. So often that it becomes so present in our head that our brain eventually goes:
“Well, this must somehow be important to the guy who keeps pestering me with it endlessly. Fine, let’s just store it permanently.”
Motivation isn’t enough
Motivation is great for getting started. Some people catch fire for something instantly. They buy the best guitar, the best amp, a 100 USD studio-grade jack cable, get the whole thing signed by Slash, and then start their first song: Happy Birthday from a YouTube tutorial.
The next day, though, the magic is gone. Playing guitar isn’t so magical after all. When can I finally play Sweet Child O’ Mine? How do the others do it?
No. It’s not magical. It’s not magic either. It’s pure discipline.
And even when you see the drunk guitarist on stage shredding something at you, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, claiming he never practised – he practised too. Maybe just differently than you. Maybe he sat in the band room every evening with his friends and simply noodled around.
Yes, that’s ultimately practising too. It might not be the most efficient way. But it’s a way.
Everyone practises differently
In the end it doesn’t matter how you practise. What matters is that you practise. And that it makes sense to you.
For me, for example, it makes sense to have a fixed routine. When I sit down, I know: now I do Exercise 1, then Exercise 2, then Exercise 3. If the order is off, I have a meltdown.
For someone else, that exact tactic is the ultimate horror. Maybe that person would rather sit in the band room and “invent” a riff or a lick, tinkering with it together with the band until it sits. Because the whole band can’t play it either. So it’s practising together.
And practising together is easier for some people than practising alone and constantly wondering whether they’re actually too dumb for it.
No. You’re not too dumb for it. Just too lazy.
(I’m simply going to assume that, if you’re reading this! 😛)
Intrinsic motivation
Intrinsic motivation is a prerequisite for learning anything at all. Guitar, Italian or algebra – you have to be able to motivate yourself. And to motivate yourself, there are a few pretty good approaches.
Set yourself a goal
Don’t say:
“In a year I’ll be able to play Master of Puppets with both solos at 100% tempo.”
That would be… well.
Maybe not even unrealistic. But it depends on the person.
Better to ask a guitar teacher:
“Is it realistic for me to pull that off in this amount of time?”
The guitar teacher probably won’t just say “yes” or “no”. They’ll say:
“It depends on you.”
Do you practise one to two hours every day? With discipline? Piece by piece? Do you learn the techniques you need for it? Then it might, under certain circumstances, be possible.
But why that exact goal in the first place?
Better to set yourself several goals.
- Big goal: in a year, play through Master of Puppets (without the solos) at 100% tempo.
- Small goals:
- The intro in a month at 80% tempo.
- Then the first section.
- Then the second.
- And so on.
Now you have something you can measure. Do you reach your goal after a month? Or do you even beat it? Then you can see your progress.
And that’s exactly what motivates you to keep going.
To wrap up
By the way, I do exactly the same thing.
I too have days when I have absolutely no desire to play guitar. On those days I don’t tell myself:
“Today I have to practise for an hour.”
I just tell myself:
“Come on. Five minutes.”
Most of the time, those five minutes suddenly turn into twenty or thirty.
And if they don’t?
Then it was at least five minutes more than yesterday.
And honestly? You’re a little bit special if you can motivate yourself. It means you can do something a lot of people never manage – like, you know, actually playing the guitar.
My tip for you: take five minutes today and think up one big goal and three small milestones. Write them down. Stick them somewhere you’ll see them every day. You’ll be surprised how motivating it is to be able to tick things off.
And if you have no desire to practise at all today…
… then practise for five minutes anyway.
Your brain will give in eventually.
Just pester it long enough. 😄
Still stuck even though you’re putting in the hours? Then have a look at Stuck Despite Practicing a Lot — What Should I Change? – it pairs nicely with everything above.
And if this gave you a nudge to pick the guitar back up for five minutes, you can toss a coffee my way on Patreon – no pressure, purely for the riffs.