A Gem from Mind Gym by Gary Mack

I am rereading Mind Gym by Gary Mack, because I know there is more for me to absorb. I feel like every couple pages is another gem that I want to share with every musician in my life. One that seemed particularly apt right now is his acronym for goal setting: SMART. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. Mack differentiates between dreams and goals, which is extremely important. One achieves a dream by making lots of goals and achieving them. Goals are

Practice Does Not Make Perfect

One of the worst old sayings for students is the classic cliché “practice makes perfect.” This saying implies that you simply need to keep doing something over and over for it to eventually be right. The problem with this saying, is that if you do something wrong over and over, it will never become perfect over time. For example, if you add yeast to bread dough in the wrong order -or you forget it all together, your bread will not rise properly no matter how many times you practice making it