Finding motivation despite a million excuses not to

I'm clearly not an expert in finding motivation despite life happening around me. To provide a perfect example of this, I've started this blog to note my progress on the ukulele and to possibly help others learn how to play along with me. My last post was May, 2013. It's currently October.

So how do we pursue our hobbies in a way that doesn't get blocked out by life's happenings?

I don't know, but I have a few ideas.

1. Set a goal. When we work toward something, we are more likely to commit to pursuing it on a regular basis.  There are millions of articles on goal setting, so this is a summary of items that resonated with me:

• Be specific yet realistic: what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Is it possible? Do you want to play songs for your friends, or do you want to sell a million records of ukulele solos? One is much more attainable than the other.
• Set a timeline: what do you want to be able to do and by when? How are you going to accomplish that and how often will you need to work on this before you reach that goal.
• Accountability: Who is going to keep you accountable? Are you going to tell your friends about it? Are you going to post it on the interweb and have millions of people inevitably both cheer you on and discourage your efforts in order to prove you can accomplish the goals you set out to achieve?

2. Once you have a goal set, the best way to pursue it is to make a daily habit of it. I'm specifically talking about the ukulele here, so the nice thing about it is it's 1) highly portable and 2) addicting and easy to play. With a goal in mind, you're going to be more likely to make a habit of playing on a regular basis. But this leads to the biggest obstacle of all.

3. Always seek improvement. As a musician, I've dabbled at guitar, bass, drums, piano and ukulele throughout my adult life. I've been described as bi-polar in these pursuits because it seems to be all-or-nothing. I decide I'm going to get better and then I go crazy and practice all the time and people get annoyed quickly with these excessive efforts. But the only way you are going to get better at any level is to decide to get better and put forth the effort to do so. If you can make a more consistent effort of improvement, and a habit to be constantly learning, then you don't have to worry about such incidents where you constantly annoy the people around you who like to hear you "play" but do not enjoy listening to you "practice". A big difference between the two.

My goal is to start posting more tutorials in the near future because that's something I genuinely enjoy, and I think there are people out there who benefit from it. Pretty fun. This post was really just to get me thinking and motivated to begin posting stuff again. I hope to post stuff soon!