The Notebook.

Your notebook can be a powerful practicing tool. Here are a few of the things you can do with it.

• Plan your practicing sessions.

• Take notes during your practicing sessions.

• Record your vision of the musician you want to be.

• Write down things you want to remember.

• Record your goals, targets, accomplishments, ideas, dreams and brainstorms.

• Figure out things you’re working on with words, charts, pictures, doodles – anything you find helpful.

• Include photos of musicians you admire and aim to play like.

Notebooks are like shoes: Everyone needs one, but everyone likes something different. Yours has to fit you, and it’s worth spending the time to make it yours and yours alone.

Some tips:

• Put your practicing plan in it, and use it every session.
  Take the time to make it legible.

• Use complete sentences and positive language.

• Describe what you're aiming for, not what you're trying to stop doing.

• Fill the notebook starting from the front. Start writing big ideas, discoveries, universal truths, etc. on the last page and work forwards. They will be easier to find this way.

• Draw things.

• Always put in the date.

• Write your goals on a 3 x 5 card and use it as a bookmark.

• Keep returning to what you wrote before. It will help you keep on track.

• Look forward and backward.

• Keep the old notebooks.

• Personalize it with photos, drawings, decals, stickers – anything to let the world know it's yours.