I have been working on some long term secret projects that I hope to unveil in the months ahead, and the following has been on my mind.
Maybe this applies to you too…
How Can We Stay Motivated to Finish Big Projects?
When we work on something “new” and exciting…it’s easy to start, but hard to follow through and finish.
After the excitement and newness loses it’s glitter dust, the hard work really starts.
The Lyrics to “On Broadway” say this well…
They say the neon lights are bright on broadway
They say there’s always magic in the air
But when you’re walkin’ down that street
And you ain’t had enough to eat
The glitter rubs right off and you’re nowhere
Some projects offer “quick and easy” gratification.
For Example – I get Instant Warm Fuzzies from
- uploading blog posts (instant responses from you- my reader)
- uploading Youtube videos (instant responses fans!)
- buying something (instant “in your hands”)
- cleaning something (instant visual feedback)
You see, when we see an immediate (or almost immediate) result, it’s fun…especially when we get positive feedback.
The catch? Sometimes these instant results are fun, but not so meaningful 🙂
On the other hand, many meaningful projects require serious follow through, like
- working on a new piece of music
- writing a book
- preparing a DVD or CD
- building a new guitar teaching website (oops – did I just say that? shh…)
These kinds of projects leave you with just a “little piece” accomplished at the end of a day.
It can be hard to stay on track, because the feeling of “drudgery” can leave us uninspired and tired. At the end of the day, we get
- no instant gratification
- no instant results
- the vision of a a long road ahead…
The Solution? Build Your House – One Brick a Day
The following metaphor came to mind yesterday while I was running.
I ran past a construction site and had a moment of clarity.
Let’s say I have ONE brick every day that I can place somewhere….anywhere I want.
I have a choice – I can place that new brick in a brand new spot here on planet earth every day, OR I can put it on a foundation that I have been building.
It’s a choice. Where will I / you / we put a brick today?
In a year’s time when we look at those bricks…
A house will surely get built if we put a brick each day on the foundation.
But – it may feel more fun to start new each day…but where will we be in a year?
The feeling of drudgery, and work suddenly becomes more do-able when you realize that chipping away at that guitar arrangement, book or project – will certainly pay off, in hindsight.
Someone wise once said….”Slow & Steady wins the race”.
I’ll see you in the slow lane!
Sometimes or oftentimes, we need ‘a good contamination’ like work ethics; in a simple lay man’s language ‘finish what you start’.
Sustaining the fire is not that easy; there has to be a positive seethe…to get things done.
The fast hare slept…the patient turtle won the race!
Delayed Gratification. “A growing body of literature has linked the ability to delay gratification to a host of other positive outcomes, including academic success, physical health, psychological health, and social competence.” Not available on TV or in stores. Sadly, not taught in our schools, either. Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification.
Travel Well and Keep Your Chops Up!
Thank you Adam. i been watching your videos on youtube and i have to say you are an inspiration to me. i aim to be as you are. keep up with what you are doing many look up to you so do i. thank you.
Hi Adam, Yet again you’re bang in the money. I’ve started so many new pieces and got the first 20 bars down but not persisted to finish the job. Thanks for the inspiration to go back and take another go at it.
Nige
Nige – thanks for commenting! AR
I enjoy your life lesson approach to your blog instead of living too deep in the weeds. The best teacher I had in college knew how to make even Calculus interesting. He spent the first 10 minutes of each class teaching us why todays lesson was important. Knowing the big picture first always helped us know why “laying today’s brick” was important. I will remember your analogy as I move forward constructing my life. Thanks, Lance
Thank you Lance!
A timely pick me up – have been going through a dip/’loss of mojo’ lately with several unfinished projects that have lost steam! Now ready to re-apply myself with your wise words in mind.
Thanks Adam.
R
PS. Look forward to the results of your ‘secret’ project!
C U in the slow lane . 🙂
I dont know if Twitter is good for me . ¿?¿?
Thanks for the post, Adam. Kinda makes me think that “we’ll put our bricks in areas that are important to us.” Appreciate your insight, as always.
I really enjoyed this post. These couple of months I completely lacked the motivation to pick up my guitar or do anything for that matter. But after reading this, I found some inspiration. Not only for the guitar but other aspects in my life. Thank You!
Good article! I used to get bored working on one piece from beginning to end. As a result, I would often abort a piece and switch to something else that would hold my interest for a while. I now work on two to three pieces at a time. Often in different genres. I never get bored and I use the one brick at a time approach on each piece and I’m getting more work done than ever. Thanks for this blog Adam. You’re inspiring! Cheers!
Thanks for commenting Robert!
Nice article & perfect timing as I revisit a few of my ‘Adam favorites’ including, “Killing Me Softly” and “Michelle”. Most of the bricks are in place … but I definitely need to finish these construction projects.
BTW … Happy Thanksgiving! I am very thankful to have Adam as my guitar teacher via his online lessons. My playing has improved dramatically! I love how the different techniques I have learned seem to ‘pop up’ in solos and chord choices–where they certainly wouldn’t have a few months ago.
More slow lane for me in 2016!
With appreciation,
Stephen
I place one brick at a time on several pieces every day. It works for me. Desmond Tutu replied when asked how can we fix the environment. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. I enjoy your input Adam.
Travel safe Man.
Great article Adam. For myself, it’s difficult to stay motivated because as a soloist there’s no band to sort of kick your butt and support you. We are the band and it’s isolated and lonely at times but reading about other guitarists having similar struggles gets me psyched to move forward slow and steady.
Thanks, Rob
Great thinking, Rpb. I wonder if it’s possible to assemble an on-line community that would be willing to be our bands. A few people willing to review your progress and let you review theirs. And of course to kick you in the rear if you’re letting projects languish.
Those of us in the Study With Adam group should be able to do this easily,
Wise words.
Thanks for that adam had a few things go really wrong lately and my guitaring has fallen by the wayside, thank you for reminding me to place just one brick will build the house…so off to practice i go.
Hey Adam,
I know you don’t transcribe your arrangements into TABs until you need it for your students. I’m going to suggest you give some thought to the approach I’m working out. I have taken to working like this:
1. When I first tackle a particular song, I gather as much material as I can find, of other guitarists’ versions. I take a couple of days to listen to them all, and try playing them. Not all laughs, but nonetheless includes listening to a bunch of interesting on-line performances and often experts talking about how a particular recording or performance was done. I always enjoy that.
2. This is the “fun” part, with maximum innovation, and without paper. I spend a couple of days to a couple of weeks playing around with the piece on guitar. Try bits and pieces of arrangements I particularly like on guitar Just noodle aimlessly and let it flow. A lot of time playing well into the night and early morning, often lubricated by a favorite beverage (I don’t smoke, but whatever works for you). Now the juices are flowing and my brain will be tinkering with the tune 24/7. Even when I’m not holding a guitar I’ll be imagining a performance of the piece with some idea I didn’t know I had, and my brain will try a bunch of ideas anyway. I do my best arranging when I’m just walking (I do a lot of walking). Pretty soon my pace is in time with the music and my left hand is fingering air-chords. Sometimes people look at me oddly, but really, what do I care?. I’m a musician, we’re supposed to march to a different and unseen drummer. If they ask, I’ll tell them. After a half an hour or so, I usually have a new section arranged enough to play it when I get home.
I still don’t write anything down, for fear of putting the brakes on my imagination. There’s a chance I might discover something cool and then forget it because it wasn’t written down. I just figure if I can’t remember it day to day, it wasn’t really that good anyway.
3. At this point I know what elements I want in the arrangement and where to put them, I know the key, the tempo, tuning, Capo position and so on. This is when I start to transfer it to paper. I use GuitarPro. Sure, it’s not the easiest software to work with, but Version 7, released in June I think, is miles better than Version 6. They knew the user interface was a big problem, and that’s what Version 7 fixes. In V7, I can get the bare bones down quickly enough to keep my artistic momentum.
The reason I take the time and trouble to use Guitar Pro is that I can play my arrangement back as I go, without having to actually learn it fluently on the guitar. It’s a very powerful technique, and it keeps alive the fun of playing with it. I can write a 4-bar line in a couple of minutes and immediately listen to it, fix my mistakes, and sometimes try something new. And I can save every version of it as I go, because sometimes the idea doesn’t work out in the end. So I can just backtrack to where I went astray and choose a different path without playing everything from the start to remember what I did and to establish the context for the next bit. At any time I can just try a timing change (on the beat, or syncopated?) or a fill or transition, and I will know instantly if it works or not..
Using Guitar Pro and constantly listening to the playback keeps the fun in the tough part of arranging, and prompts me immediately if a new idea is good or not. I tend to learn a song the way Adam teaches it, in sections, and lines within the section. Guitar Pro is perfect for that. Once I commit to the arrangement of a section, it will still play the A Section the same way if I spend a couple of weeks on the B section before coming back to it.
4. The final step is to learn to play it right through. This also becomes much easier because I only have to play what Guitar Pro is playing, and if I can’t immediately play it at speed, I can just leave that bit until later. And when I finally learn the performance-ready arrangement, I can play it back at any speed I like, pause and change something (should that be two notes, or a hammer-on?) and just carry on, without losing the thread of how the song works.
Philosophically, I see these ‘virtual music’ tools replacing hand scoring, the same way voice recognition replaced word processing, which replaced typing, which replaced hand-writing. So we might as well learn the tools, and clearly for our musical world, Guitar Pro has emerged as the winner. It supports any instrument anyone would use on stage, and enough tonal controls to actually make a virtual guitar sound like a particular one of Pete Townsend’s guitars, with Pete playing. Or Eric Clapton, or Julian Bram, or whoever. There are now Guitar Pro versions of hit recordings which are virtually indistinguishable from the original (except for the voices, which inevitably will come). There are a bunch of samples shipped with GuitarPro 7.
No question the classical. “serious music” world will continue to go their own way, (but adopt technology more slowly). It will continue to be piano-centric, and no doubt adopt Finale as their tool of choice. I don’t see that as a problem. It’s just a New World/Old World difference in approach, and the two don’t really have to meet in the middle.
The only thing holding back virtual music now is copyright, My forecast is that artists will continue to find workarounds, or just ignore copyright until the laws are fixed. Just like the Napster wars, the lawyers will have to come up with a workable modern solution or just give in to chaos, where song-writers starve.
.
Hi Adam,
You said it right. That’s exactly what I do, I seize the opportunity whenever an inspiration in a particular piece seems do-able and fun. I find this out more satisfying.
Thanks. I need to reinforce these words and thoughts daily. There’s a bigger plan than the day-to-day turning up. Trust and stick to the process.