Goal Setting and Rhythm

Written By Patrick Lovern 

Setting goals in life is important. It keeps you growing, and keeps life moving. That last part might sound a bit scary. A dynamic life usually means a chaotic one, where things are constantly changing. That is true, but it doesn’t mean you can’t control the pace of it. Goal setting can be a wonderful way to add a tempo to your lifestyle, and marching to that beat becomes easier the more you do it.

So let’s talk a bit about that, setting a rhythm to your day to day. For me, that involves a checklist of things I try to accomplish every day: reading, writing, guitar practice, and exercise.

The thing about this daily checklist is that you can start as incrementally as you want. The important thing is to accomplish them. As you go along, you’ll get a feel of what’s achievable and how you can start pushing yourself to improve.

For example, when I first started writing I would set a simple goal for myself of writing at least 200 words a night. At first, it didn’t matter what the subject or degree of quality was, I just had to do it. Over time, as it became a habit, I could focus more on what I was writing, instead of how much. My storytelling improved, my word count expanded, and before I knew it, I was writing a page every night of quality stuff.

Even though my goal was vague and abstract, (become a better writer) by breaking it down into a daily routine, I was able to make progress without labouring over the scope of my goals. I could do the work, then take the time at the end of each week to reflect and plan ahead.

It’s like meal prep, but with your lifestyle.

But how do you structure these daily activities? That part is dependent on what your pursuit is, but generally all goals follow a broad recipe of “one thing at a time”.  

For example, if you want to learn to play the keyboard, you’ll start by establishing a short-term goal; let’s say learning all the major chords by the end of the first week.

Now that you have your weekly goal, parse this out into days. Practice memorising the chords for 30 minutes from Monday to Wednesday. After getting comfortable with finger positions, practice speed on Thursday and Friday. By the weekend, learn some music theory to wrap your head around why the chords are shaped as they are. By the second week, with your newfound knowledge and dexterity, you might set a new weekly goal to memorise a whole song.

Use daily sessions as steps toward a weekly goal.

It’s helpful to regularly remind yourself of what you’re trying to achieve. A skill that someone else has that you can point to is a good way to clearly visualise your goal. Watch someone who inspires you. For me, I watch my favourite guitarists at work like Yoni Schlesinger. His passion for music injects me with a motivation to be like him. It reminds me why I love playing. Why I decided to pick it up in the first place.

Schedule whatever activities you want to do at certain times of the day if that helps. If you’ve got work, then make an effort to wake up half an hour before you normally do, so that you won’t have to do it after coming home. Or inversely, if you’re not a morning person, make time after dinner to do it. Habits are good, and narrowing those down to a specific time of the day is going to help a lot.

Once you settle into these grooves, the days will become weeks, which will become months. All of a sudden, you’ll be in a position where you’ve surpassed your own expectations.

Setting daily goals for yourself alleviates the mental labour you’ll have to go through to psych yourself each and every time. Build up habits, focus on consistency, and push yourself.

Its cheesy but its true. The way you get better at anything is by practice. And you won’t want to practice unless you carve it into your daily being. The goal you set out to achieve in a months’ time begins today. Just remember that everybody sucks when they start, don’t stress.

Take a good look at where you want to be, and go there.

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