When it comes to musical training success, you may not have considered keeping a journal. Maybe you aren’t comfortable writing everything down, or you feel as if it’s a waste of time and effort. Many of us are unaware of the benefits that come from starting a progress journal. At Musical U, creating this journal is essential to attaining musical goals and training success.
How to Use a Progress Journal
There’s no wrong way to start your progress journal. The main objective is to track where you’re starting from and work toward the goals you want to achieve. These types of goals are realistic, achievable, and specific. They should roughly become your M.A.G.I.C. – Musical, Attainable, Growth-Oriented, Interesting, and Clear – goals.
The progress journal will also help you assess your current musical skills and the skills you would like to develop or achieve. You can have single or multiple goals, but the main idea is to help you get organized on how you should approach each one and how you can attain them. You can even set target dates for when you think you’d be able to achieve your goals.
Progress Journals in Musical U
Musical U members use their progress journals to track their personalized training plan. Every training plan is created based on a member’s musical goals. Each member has a crystal-clear path to what they want to achieve in the next 4 to 8 weeks.
A member’s progress journal also serves as a way of sharing their training techniques and practices with other members. For example, a member might list their training goals, the specific modules and quizzes they passed, or the time frames for their practice sessions. By sharing progress journals, members who are feeling lost can learn from reading journals of other members.
One of the best things about having a progress journal is saving successes. A journal helps you keep a record of all your “baby steps” toward achieving your goals. Its greatest advantage is giving you the opportunity to congratulate yourself on every milestone, no matter how small.
For example, maybe you’d like to achieve Chord Recognition, but there are too many chords in a chord chart. To start, your approach might be to recognize major chords first before moving on to minor, augmented, and diminished chords. By making smaller goals, you won’t get too overwhelmed with theory and you get to enjoy your training at your pace and style.
Most importantly, Musical U is a community of like-minded people who share their own experiences, expertise, and tips. When you ask the community for help, you may be surprised by the number of suggestions you get from members who can relate to your concerns. They can – and want to – help you get unstuck to achieve your goals.
Getting Started With a Progress Journal
Here’s an example of starting a progress journal:
Progress Journal Updates
Members can post updates to their progress journals through replies. This way, they can easily track their activities and training.
In this example, you can see members interacting with a progress journal update, giving helpful feedback, interesting updates or tips:
A progress journal should be in a format you are comfortable with. The most important thing is to write your points down where you can see and work toward them. Correct grammar and appearance don’t matter.
It’s your personal journal, so keep it in a way that works best for you. You can make yours by writing in a physical book, writing in a Musical U discussion thread, or keeping notes in a sketchbook. As you continue to use your progress journal, you’ll develop new ideas for tracking progress as you go along.
So what’s the “moral” of this post? Start a progress journal of your own and you’ll quickly see how it can greatly help your musical training success. You can also join Musical U to be inspired and learn more from members all over the world.
