How to Find Lost Motivation for Practice



Over the last couple of weeks a couple of readers have emailed to ask about finding motivation. One reader asked for tips on finding motivation when the more youthful goals of attracting girls and being a rockstar no longer apply.

So in this weeks post we’ll look at motivation, what it is and how to find it.

What is motivation?

Motivation is defined as:

a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way

Source

When it comes to playing guitar, what is the reason for playing?

Not what do we want to achieve, or what milestones do we want to hit, but what is the reason for playing?

It’s the same for everyone: We want to have fun!

We want an emotional reward from the activity.

So how can we get that reward and why do we lose it?

Two reasons we lose motivation

Comparing ourselves to our past selves

It’s quite common for people to get back into playing guitar after having not played it for several months, or even years.

When doing this, it’s easy to compare our current ability to our past ability - we used to be able to do XYZ and now we can’t.

Because we haven’t played for so long.

Feeling like a shadow of our former selves is a great way to lose motivation.

However, we need to flip this idea around.

Because we achieved a certain level of playing sometime in the past, we know for a fact that we can achieve that level again - we’ve done it once, we can do it again!

Something that we must always do is to accept reality for what it is. We didn’t practice for a long time, so our ability decreased. This is a fact.

But, we once played at a certain level, so if we start practising again, we can reach that level again.

Comparing ourselves is analogous to a topic covered in How to Practice Guitar and Train Your Creativity in the section “The Myth of Talent”. When comparing your current ability, you should only compare yourself to your ability last week, and aim to improve on that, just a little.

Losing belief in our ability to achieve goals

We all harbour some sort of goal for our playing, whether it’s learning a song, making an album or playing to 10,000 people.

And if we lose belief in our ability to achieve the goal (or dream!) then we will lose motivation.

There are a couple of sections in How to Practice Guitar and Train Your Creativity that cover this:

  • Perfection As The Guide, One Step Further As The Goal
  • How To Choose Your Next Project > Dream Big, Move Small

If we have lost belief in our ability to achieve a big goal, then we need to break the big goal down into a series of small and achievable goals, and then we can start working towards something that is easy to believe that we can achieve.

For example, if you want to record an album of original songs, that is a big goal.

That could be broken down into:

  1. Record an album of my own songs
  2. Write 10 songs
  3. Write 1 song
  4. Write 5 riffs and a solo
  5. Write a riff

Working towards writing a riff is a lot less overwhelming than working towards an album.

And once you’ve got a riff, you can write a few more. Then think about putting them together into a song. And over time work your way up to that goal.

Finding motivation

There are two main ways we can rekindle lost motivation:

  1. Work towards an easier goal
  2. Have fun

1) Work towards an easier goal

We discussed this above under ‘Losing belief in our ability to achieve goals’.

2) Have fun

This is the easiest way to stay motivated.

What is it about guitar that is fun for you?

For me, there are two things I find incredibly fun:

  1. Working with great musicians and engineers on creating an album
  2. Getting a great lead tone and jamming over backing tracks

Now when my motivating takes a blip, as it does from time to time, the first item is a bit tricky to “turn on” when I want… but getting a great lead tone and jamming over some backing tracks is always do-able.

So I might take an afternoon off from my regimented practice routine and just jam out having fun with a great tone.

That makes me quite happy, which then leaves me more motivated for working on the other things I want to work on.

I don’t know what your “happy guitar place” is for you, but here are some ideas:

  • Having a jam with some friends
  • Playing your favourite songs
  • Jamming on backing tracks
  • Finding great guitar tones

If your practice routine is currently highly regimented on technique and exercises, then maybe you need to make it 2/3 technique and exercises and 1/3 having fun. Or take a day off from technical exercises once a week to just jam out songs and have fun.

Conclusion

There are a variety of reasons why we can lose motivation, but the main ways to rekindle lost motivation are to:

  • Give ourselves something we can believe we can achieve
  • Have fun

So take the time to “find the fun” in your practice and break your big dreams down into things you can believe you can achieve… then rework your practice time so that you are having fun and working towards you goals.