How To Be Motivated To Practice
Mastery, drive, and boring finger exercises.
I’ve been playing guitar for about 15 years. It seems crazy when I say it out loud. That’s a long time to be doing something. You might expect, as I would, that someone who plays an instrument for that long would be exceptionally good at it.
I’m not.
The first 2 years were all pain and no gain. My fingers literally hurt all the time and I had to take long breaks in between playing. All of my time was spent learning chords from songs I liked. I couldn’t solo and I certainly didn’t understand music theory.
The next 2-5 years were amazing. I suddenly understood the relationships between the strings and I could move between them. The only trouble was that this required enough thinking and focus that I couldn’t really be very creative at the same time.
The next several years involved me learning more songs, more licks, more little cheat codes. I had officially become intermediate.
But what’s frustrating, after years of playing an instrument, is that you’re still not a master.
What I realized much, much later, was the importance of practice.
When I say practice, I don’t mean playing the same chords and rocking out to the same songs. I mean, slow, deliberate drills that break down movements to their core components.
What I didn’t realize at the time was how much faster my fingers and brain would remember those moments by doing it this way. What I didn’t realize was how much faster those little movements would become second nature—where thinking was not required.
After many hours of slow, deliberate drills, I can now think creatively about what I want to play and it just comes out without inhibition. Just as we don’t have to think “breathe in, breathe out,” my fingers just go where they need to.
Now that many of the fundamental shapes and movements are easy, I’ve unlocked the motivation to study theory and truly understand the mechanics of the guitar. All of this was boring and unnecessary before. No one wants to learn theory when they pick up an electric guitar. You just want to hit a huge E chord and turn the amp up to 11. That’s true rock n’ roll. We don’t need no education.
And that’s fine for a while. But eventually, you seek to advance further and further. Eventually, your mediocre competence grows unsatisfying and you seek deeper understanding.
This is the path toward mastery.
When we enjoy something we are motivated to continue doing it. When we’re good at something we’re motivated to continue doing it. When we’ve invested our time into something we’re motivated to continue doing it.
In Daniel Pink’s book “Drive,” he unpacks these components of motivation. He describes them as:
Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
For anyone working on their career, a hobby, or another part of their life, this is critical. Yes, we know extrinsic factors can play a role in some of this, but it’s these intrinsic motivators that are responsible for the foundation.
It’s these factors that end up motivating us to do the very boring and unsexy work of . . . practice. In the end, it’s these slow and deliberate movements that unlock all the amazing joy that mastery brings. Motivation to pick up the guitar comes first. Rocking out comes next. The first mountains of competence are conquered. Curiosity and interest follow. And then, suddenly, practice amplifies everything.