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The top guitar goal that I recommend is this: Enjoy the process of learning guitar in order to enrich your life with music.
Notice that this goal is free from judgement, comparison, achievement, deadline, or even a sense of urgency. This is definitely on purpose. If guitar is a hobby for you, this goal will help you learn it in a very satisfying manner without it taking over your life.
Let's break it into two chunks, and get into why this goal is so helpful.
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Having the right goal can help you learn guitar in a way that is smooth, enjoyable, and delightfully surprising. I call the top reason your top guitar goal. Having the wrong type of reason will make learning hellish for you.
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Comparison-based guitar goals are goals that depend upon being favorably compared to a better guitarist.
In order to achieve any comparison-based guitar goal, we must be specifically viewed by all other people as being better at guitar than the guitarist we are comparing ourselves with.
Ouch!
The rest of this post will go over some very common comparison-based goals, how beginners are negatively by having them, and how to rewrite them to be more useful for enjoyment of guitar in the long run.
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Deadline-based guitar goals imply that if you don't finish your goal by your deadline, you have failed and wasted your precious time. This is bad news for learning guitar.
Deadline based guitar goals make learning super difficult, and it's worth your time to get rid of them altogether. Thankfully, the rest of this post will help you do just that.
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When most of us think about setting goals, we think about setting achievement-based goals. These are goals like, "I want to learn how to play five songs."
Achievement-based goals are clearly defined and they can help us measure our success, but it depends on how emotionally attached we are to achieving them: The more we need to complete the goal, the harder a struggle to learn guitar we will have.
This post goes over some very common achievement-based guitar goals that beginners make for themselves, and how to make them stronger. Let's hit it.
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