Fiddle Goals For 2024

Are you someone who benefits from having a goal? Or do goals make you anxious?

I suggest three goals that I think you and all my students can achieve. No matter what your skill level is.

Three Goals For 2024

  1. Play Every Day
  2. Practice Well
  3. Good Mindset

If you think about it, these are just habits, systems and mindsets. There’s nothing lofty here. You just have to decide to do these things. Let’s go into this a bit more…

Play Every Day

Practice six days a week for at least 20m/day.

Allow yourself one day off. This gives you little slack if you miss a day.

If you do practice seven days a week, try having a session dedicated to just playing for the sake of play. Fiddle around and explore.

 

Learn more here: The Practice Challenge of Fiddling

Practice Well

Each week decide on a practice strategy that you want to use every day.

You’ll naturally use other strategies, but let one be the “Lead strategy.” That way you can deeply learn the strategy. There’s also less “option anxiety.”

Practice Strategies & Games

Adopt A Good Mindset

Simply having a good attitude can take you further then you think.

You instantly succeed when you have a good mindset. You enjoy what you’re doing in the present moment. You’re learning and re-inventing yourself each time you practice.

Similar to the practice strategies above, I recommend you pick one and stay with it for a week. Let the idea sink in.

My Personal Goals

These three goals are things that I’m applying to my own work and personal life.

I want to consistently work at FiddleHed and Play Every Day (a new learning system for all instruments). Yet I want to leave slack for family, fun and other interests. This improves the quality of work.

I want to develop good work habits. Breaks, seeking help, batching, working smarter, etc.

I want to maintain a good mindset. I tend to jump from ambitious excitement to downerism. I’d like to work with a bit more equanimity.

All that being said, I’m not necessarily “anti-goals.”

And if you’re someone who thrives on goals, then by all means set them. Do your best to make them realistic.

What about you? Do you have any goals for the year? Do you think you might use any of my suggestions? Here they are again:

  • Play Every Day
  • Practice Well
  • Adopt A Good Mindset

Let me know your thoughts in a comment below 👇🏼

And Happy New Year 🥳

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5 responses to “Fiddle Goals For 2024”

  1. Hello, yes, here are my litte story and the goal for this year 2024: Last year the violin found me 🙂 Due to a prolonged cold, I was unable to attend singing lessons, so I took a few trial violin lessons. So fare I play the piano in our family home music, and with the violin, one of my husband’s wishes came true, a Blue Grass home music. Said and done ! The first song should be “wagon wheel”. I found a Youtube video of Jason and then this platform. So I started playing the violin only on this song since Easter 2023. What can I say, with every day of practicing, a lot of fun with every success and a happy husband, we mastered our first audition in the family celebration with a simplified version of wagon wheel. Banjo my husband, guitar – my son und Fiddle -me.
    What is the goal of this year 2024? I am now starting the violin course from beginner level – to learn something structured. And so far I’m having a lot of fun with it, I especially like the duets and my feeling for the bow is improving. Happy new Year and all the best.

  2. Hey,

    First I am going to start with a little story. I’ll try to do it in my best English 😉.
    A few months ago my classical violin teacher gave me a quite difficult piece of music to learn.
    After some weeks of struggling with it, I wanted to throw it in the trash. Really!
    I was also thinking of quitting the classical violin and to go on with the fiddle. A lot of thinking…a lot of doubts
    Until the day I attended the general rehearsal of Petrousjka, an opera ballet in the opera of Ghent
    I was blown away by the music. These musicians play every day more then 6-8 hours! They also need to practice a lot, even they are professionals.
    Back home I took the piece out of the trash and started again, very slowly with
    small chunks and looping, everything what I learned here for the last 5 months.
    After a week I had a much better result and I was happy to move on.
    So I told this story to set my goal of building a strong bridge between the Fiddle and the classical violin.
    Because choosing is not an option. And I think they can reinforce each other.
    I also want to be satisfyed with my playing, to be patient and to keep smiling 🤩 every day!

    Happy New Year! 🎻❤️🎻

  3. Thank-you for reminding me, time to reflect and look towards next year! Since I started Feb. 7, ’22, I’ve only missed 2 days of practice, so I will also _aim to Play Every Day in 2024_ 🙂 My _2nd goal is to Practice Wisely_. In 2023, I tried to incorporate some Brainjo Principles into my practice, mainly that of “work” for ~ 30 min and then allow your brain to catch-up for ~4 hrs (so 3 mini sessions per day). I like to practice 1 – 2 hrs per day total, but for me, this seems to work better in 2 sessions of an hour-ish, so I’m going to work along those lines. For me, practice is some combo of Scales, Scales, Scales, Bowing, Bowing, Bowing (right hand rhythm development), finger independence exercises, playing 2 notes at the same time exercise, learning new techniques, reviewing songs that I know (this is fun time to me, especially with waltzes). I’m continuing to work towards playing at faster tempos (using an Atomic Habits approach). In 2024, I really need to work at learning by ear (I’m able to do this in your workshops because your pace suits me, but I need to do it quicker during jams). I will improve this area by committing to learning 1 song per week by ear. Happy New Year to you and your family Jason (thank-you for all that you do for us), and Happy New Year to all of you FiddleHeds 🙂🎻