The idea I want to present to you today is the ability to take a deep dive into a subject by eliminating many outside possibilities.

Let’s take a look at playing the guitar, for example. A long while ago, I made the decision to become a specialist in playing the music that I love, which is Heavy Metal. In truth, it was not much of a “choice” really since Metal really grabs the most of my interest. But as a musician, as you grow, you do hear other things and become interested in other styles of music. For me, I always liked the way classical guitar sounded (Thank you, Randy Rhoads), but I realized that if I devoted the necessary time it took to become very proficient at classical guitar, my main goal of playing Heavy Metal would suffer. I decided to expand my ability as a Metal guitarist by eliminating choices that did not lead to the ultimate goal. Yes, even if it was hard to do.

I see this play out a lot in musicians. Many musicians I know want to get good at everything. They want to play a lot of styles and be genuine in each one. Even these days, through teaching many young players, I see a person play as many as several instruments. I mean, sure, it’s wonderful. You learn new things, you develop, etc. But, it’s crowded out there. I believe in order to become a specialist at something you have to 1) devote most, if not all, of your time to become proficient at that one thing and be known for it. 2) you have to understand that it is “ok” not to excel at everything. Believe me, you are still a very valuable person. 3) you have to understand that it is better to do one thing at 99%, than 9 at 40%.

In some way, people feel that they are missing something, or that they do not add up to something, unless they do and know about everything. If you are one of those people torturing yourself, it is “ok” not to be that way and just follow where your true heart leads.

One last point. I am not asking anyone to completely disregard, hate on or never look outside their chosen deep dive. Just know that you’ll have to forgo many B choices and ideas in order to excel at your chosen path.

One idea, or rather analogy, that helped me as a practicing musician over the years was one of a piggy bank. But, not one you put money in, but one that holds the currency of guitar practice.

Whenever I practice guitar I imagine depositing practice currency into the piggy bank. When you practice a lot, you deposit a lot of currency into it.

You see, once you start gigging a lot, playing professionally even, you will be doing a lot of travelling to gigs or shows. If not travelling, you’ll be doing other tasks that will allow you to do music.

When you are not able to practice, you can imagine yourself taking out some of the practice currency. This sounds imaginary, but being a musician works very much like that.

When flying to other continents and generally being in a band, you sometimes spend more time at the airports or vans than with the guitar in your hand. This is why its important to have the practice curency in the bank because you will need to draw on it. But, in order for it to carry you, it must be there first. Thinking in above terms can also be a very motivating factor to play your instrument more.

It’s a simple idea, but one that has helped me in the past as much as it helps me today.

As we head into 2020, I wantto share something with you, which I hope will prove a little helpful. I know realizing this on my own end helped me put stuff in perspective.

Truth is – we are never ready for the next thing that can prove beneficial and door opening for us. If we “were” 100% ready, the “next” thing would not be a big thing at all, you see?

In any big thing that happened to me, I always felt that I needed to stretch my abilities to get there. When joining Halford, I knew that it was the 1st time that I started playing music with true professional players, several of them like Bobby J. or Roy Z. have already done major label albums and have toured the world. I had to step up and learn – a lot. I put in countless hours sweating riffs, working on accents that seemed to be easy for everyone else, or working things out because in my mind – I was always behind.

When asked to join Testament I was also not 100% percent if I was ready. I could play the solos, but the intense rhythm work in the band was beyond what I ever did. Again, I stepped up and spent about 8 hours every day for 4 months prepping and in the end, the experience has brought up my playing to another level.

With Guitar World’s Metal For Life column I thought that I knew enough “stuff” for maybe 4 columns? I ended up doing nearly 5 years of monthly lessons. I had to dig deep, learn new things, categorize what I knew and did not know.

Anything, and I mean “anything” that I ever did that had some sort of a timeline stamp of importance, I had to stretch my abilities to reach it.

I mean, does anyone feel that they are really ready to record their first album? You grab an opportunity and go for it with excitement. Figure out stuff as you go along. And, hopefully get it better the next time around. I recorded my 1st album on a shoestring budget while delivering pizza, but it was enough for the Metal God to hear and to give me a shot.

The Trick is THIS: This is where REAL Happines and Fullfillment lies. As humans, we have to progress. We were designed for it. And pushing ourselves to that excitement area, even though we have to set up, is the only way to do it.

It is important not to stop taking these outside steps. As we get little older, it can seem to be harder to do this. Because now we have responsibilities, mortage, crap we aquired to take care off, etc. But, just thinking out loud – keep above in mind.

And, remember, that you might never feel ready to jam with a drummer, a band, or whatever, but this is were Courage comes in b/c Courage is doing something although although you have Fear. It doesn’t happen to only you, but to everyone, including myself.

So, step into 2020 with some new stuff to prove! There might be some opportunities for you right now that you are considering.

As they say fortune favors the bold, and that I also find true. You’ll see stuff align for you when taking steps. It always did for me and I’m not different than anyone else b/c I go through the same exact process.

I would share with you a system I use to organize some of the projects I might be working on.

I found it too difficult to keep all of the things I have to do in my playing, work and personal life in my brain only. And, we are not great at remembering if we let go of something or did not work on something enough.

So, for the past few years I have been keeping a simple color folder for each project that I am working on. One folder might be called “House”, another “Guitar Retreat 2019”, etc. In each folder, I keep track of what I need to do, what I already finished and I keep my ideas in there. I don’t have dozens of these. This year, I have one for each of my live shows where I keep van rental info in, set lists, hotels reservations, check xeroxes that went out and came in. I have one for my Summer Camp, Guitar Retreat, etc. I often have one for the House and any improvements that I have going on. This system really helps me unclog my brain because it’s already cluttered there sometimes.

Additional plus of this.

The folders also allow me to say that today I want to spend 30 mins on guitar retreat organzation and 30 mins on the show in December. And, I open the sucker up and I start working. Then after my time is up, I close it and open up another project folder. It took me a while to graduate to switch from a project to project like that and put down items that I might not have yet finished. But, just the idea of having things in compartment such as a folder allowed me to keep track of things very well. What is good is also the fact that I can pull up my folder from any year for a project such as a guitar retreat and see what I did then as far as schedule, who was there, the food that was purchased, etc. I can see what I did last year, what my expenses were. This gives me a great starting point for the current year’s folder without having to start the entire process all over again. It saves time, gives you a step up. Inside each folder, I leave notes for myself, ideas. It’s cool, I really can’t see doing this other ways. I might also be a little old school and I don’t work well with keeping everything on a computer screen without physically using a pen to get info down.

“Long term consistency trumps short term intensity” …

This is a great quote by Bruce Lee that I want to share with you in our blog today. I use thinking of this effect to sometimes motivate myself out of not feeling like practicing guitar, music, whatever. It does not happen often, but every once in a while it does. This funk happens to every single human being on the planet. The trick is to have a system to help you combat when this season strikes.

I think many musicians await until they are inspired to put in a lot of practice time in and they do just that; they play a lot over some days or weeks or even months and then they are off the wagon hardly touching the instrument.

To a performance described above I always prefer to live by the Bruce Lee quote instead. Do something small with the instrument today and do it again without taking time off. It’s like a constant deposit into the piggy bank weeks after weeks, year after year – it adds up.

Here is the second part of this, as I mentioned before – inspiration follows perspiration. In short, once you have the guitar (or any instrument) in your hands for a few minutes you’ll often get the inspirational spark and you’ll stay playing for a while and you will put in the necessary time. It works hand in hand. First action, then inspiration.

I hope this helps!