Setting Goals in Practice

I often think I am setting goals when I sit down to practice ... but I'm really not. I am hoping to transform my practice in the next few weeks and start actually setting attainable goals for each practice session.

In group class the other day I really realized this when the teacher asked me - what does that mean to you when I was asking how to go about getting two pieces up to "performance" by a certain date (quite literally for a performance). So, from now on I am going to ask myself "What does that mean to you?" when I set a goal.

The answer for the above question was:

• I get through the entire piece

• If I make a mistake I move on quickly

• I play and sound musical in some way

I've also been practicing performance (on pieces I know very well) with the same goals in mind and recording the "performances" to review and see if I met the above goals.