Why are you practicing that?
by Darrin Koltow

Why are you practicing what you're practicing? Sounds like a simple, innocent question. But how easily can you answer it for everything you play and practice?

Believe it or not, this simple question can give us powerful motivation to achieve our musical objectives. Master motivator Jim Rohn says we can achieve anything if we have enough powerful reasons to do so.

Asking and answering "Why am I playing this?" -- and especially doing so in writing -- forces us to dig deep into ourselves to find answers. The answers we come up with give us fuel for our quest for musical excellence. Asking "why" can also help us expose weak reasons, so we can replace unproductive parts of our practice time with productive ones. If we don't apply Why continually, we could waste years learning things that do nothing for us.

Let's see the power of Why in action. Let's say you have a goal of learning the chords for every tune on Eric Clapton's album "There's One in Every Crowd." A musician whom you admire comes along and asks what you're up to. You tell him your goal, and he asks, "Why?"

"Why not?" or "Because I like Clapton" is all you can come with. But the fact is, you're not sure why you've chosen this goal yet. Here are some ways of answering this question that will justify your Crowd goal to this admired musician and, more importantly, to yourself.

Search your feelings. At least some of your answers to Why should indicate how you'll feel when you achieve the objective.

• I want to achieve this objective because playing like Eric Clapton would make me feel like an accomplished musician.
• I would feel great the next time I listen to a tune on Clapton's "Crowd" album, knowing that I can play along.

Apply triangulation. To produce unshakable confidence in the value of your objective, get three different expert sources saying why your objective is sound or valuable:

• I want to achieve this objective because esteemed rock critic Horace Gomshoovat says that Clapton's "Crowd" album is his best.
• ...because renowned guitarist Strings Snufblat says, "The harmonies on Clapton's 'Crowd' album rock."
• ...my teacher says that learning the chords on the "Crowd" album will help me hear the 6251 progression.

Emphasize different parts. If you're having trouble coming up with reasons for this objective, play with the Why sentence like this:

• Why learn the chords for every tune on the "Crowd" album (instead of only the tunes you like)?
• Why learn the chords for every tune on the "Crowd" album (instead of the tunes on Clapton's "Slowhand" album)?
• Why learn the chords (and not the melody)?
• Why learn the chords for every tune on the "Crowd" album (by Eric Clapton, and not some other great musician?)

These are just some of the approaches you can take to answer Why. To make Why as powerful as possible, do the following:

• Answer Why for everything you practice or play
  
  This will force you to weed out exercises that you may be playing simply out of habit, or because they are important to someone else. It will also give you greater certainty about the exercises that are truly important to you.
• Answer Why on paper


Writing any thought on paper focuses it more and clarifies it. And it's also a simple reminder mechanism: "Why am I learning that Bach etude again? Oh, yeah, it's right here in black and white: 'This etude is teaching me how to...'" The importance of writing -- and rewriting -- in accomplishing something and learning why you want to accomplish it is reflected throughout the articles on this site. Experts in every field will tell you that writing a goal down moves you light years ahead in achieving that goal.
• Answer Why at least once per week


Don't let your reasons become stale. The reason you're doing something today may disappear tomorrow. For example, that Christmas tune you've been working so hard on in November may lose its luster in January. Why are you still practicing it?
• Add new and remove old


Add a powerful new reason, and delete any old, irrelevant reasons on a regular basis, for example once a week. Before long, you'll have amassed so many powerful reasons for completing an objective, that nothing will stop you from achieving it.

Why is a powerful yet simple way of getting at the reasons you play what you play. It will strengthen your resolve to play what you truly want to play; and you'll have more time to play by using Why to drop what you don't want to play. So, learn Why well.