Tartellog

As it’s the beginning of the school year, now is a great time to think about how and why we practice.  If you’re in school, there is a lot asked of you.  There are the time commitments of being in all of your classes and rehearsals.  Then there’s the work associated with classes, rehearsals, and lessons.  All of that is important.  But if you only focus on what’s right in front of you, it’s possible that you can get frustrated and lose track of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

This can happen in our daily lives, especially while we’re in school.  It can be frustrating to sit in a practice room working on whatever is most difficult for you (for me it was piano- learning the proper fingerings for scales made me want to throw the piano out the window).  It is very easy to go to the “will I ever really need this?” question about any single aspect of school or work that you find tedious or difficult.

That’s because all of that is the Little Picture.  Don’t get me wrong- the Little Picture is important.  This is what you’re doing right now for the immediate future: homework, learning music for an upcoming performance, learning material for your lessons.  You want to do well in school, sound good in performances, and be prepared for your lessons.

Here’s the hard part- You shouldn’t let the Little Picture obscure the Big Picture.  The Big Picture is the overarching reason you’re doing all of this work.  You get to decide what the Big Picture is.  Please let me offer some advice:

• Make the Big Picture a concept, not a goal.
  • If you make your big picture a goal, like winning a certain job, then as soon as you achieve it, you’re done.  My big picture is to be a great trumpet player, musician, and teacher.  If my goal was to play lead on Maynard Ferguson’s band, I would have been done with my Big Picture before I was 30.  If it was teaching trumpet at a great music school, then I would still have been done before I was 40.  Make no mistake, those are things I wanted to do and am happy to have done.  But those were all Little Picture things.
• Stay aware of both the Little Picture and Big Picture.
  • When you lose sight of the Big Picture, it can feel like what you’re doing is pointless, and you’ll never get anywhere.  My career is going well, but it wasn’t exactly a straight line.  I worked at America Online for a short period of time, taught kindergarten for a year, and worked for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Education Department.
• Invest heavily in every Little Picture.
  • As hard as it can be, take every step in your potential growth seriously.  I have lots of rules.  One of those is:  Knowing is generally better than not knowing.  When you encounter those parts of your education that you don’t like, don’t care about, find difficult, or any combination of those- take the time to do the work and, even if you never see any concrete benefit from it, you’ll be the better for it.

If you can operate this way, you can’t help but continue to grow.

Now get to work.  And never forget why you’re doing it.