How To Achieve Your Goals

By Elizabeth Fitch

Motlow Buzz Contributing Writer

         "The Secret to Success: Work Smarter, Not Harder." 

         Have you ever really taken a moment to think about what this phrase means?

         When I was an undergraduate student at Kentucky Wesleyan College, I decided to major in classical piano despite never having taken a formal piano lesson in my entire life. I gathered up the courage to go see the head of the music department, a concert pianist, and ask her if she would listen to me play. I asked her to give me the honest truth after hearing me play: Am I good enough to major on the piano? I didn’t want her to lie to me, or attempt to save my feelings. I wanted her to tell me the truth. When I finished playing I was shaking, waiting to hear the verdict. She calmly said, “Yes, you are good enough. You can major on the piano.”

Elizabeth Fitch

         From that moment I dedicated myself to the instrument. I spent hours and hours each week practicing the classical pieces I was assigned to learn. Each week I would have a one-hour lesson and a review of my progress. After a few weeks she told me that I was not getting better at certain parts of the music. I was messing up at the same places every time I played them.

         My response to the constructive criticism was to practice even more and increase the hours I played each week. When I returned for a lesson the next week, sure I was going to get praise, she calmly told me that I was still not improving. I repeated my reaction to the criticism, increased my hours of practice, and was certain this would solve my problem. Upon returning to a lesson, I was told again that I had not improved, and that I was continuing to stumble in the same parts of the music.

         This pattern continued for a few weeks until I felt utterly defeated, and admitted out loud to her that perhaps I was not cut out for this. Maybe I just wasn’t good enough to learn the piano the way I had wanted to. I was ready to give up.

         She looked at me and said, “How are you practicing, exactly?” I explained the increase in hours and all my hard work, and reiterated to her my readiness to give up on my dream. She didn’t respond to my open self-defeat. Instead she advised me to start with the hardest parts of the music, to identify my weak points in the music that caused me to fumble and mess up. She told me to start with these parts of the music, at the beginning of each practice session. She added that I needed to slow down. I needed to practice slowly enough that I would not make a mistake, ever. Even if it meant playing the same line, the same bar, the same five notes over and over and over until I was so confident at playing that part that I knew I would not mess up. Only then, could I increase the speed. If I messed up, I had to slow back down until I achieved perfection at that pace. I was only to speed up when I was not making mistakes.

         Once I really took this advice to heart, I began to accomplish my goals. Before this point in my life, I had thought “practice makes perfect” when actually, “perfect practice makes perfect.”

         Slowing down to focus on details and small steps allows us to build the skills we need to achieve much more complex and larger, long-term goals. When we get in a hurry and try to do too much too quickly, it can cause us to stumble, make our work appear sloppy, and ultimately make us feel like we are not capable of accomplishing our goals. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, and give up.

         The secret to success is taking a moment to identify our weaknesses. Focus on improving these first. We shouldn’t run from or avoid the parts of life or work that we are not initially “good at.” We should embrace these challenges, break our goals down into small sections, and focus on the hard parts first. It’s in our nature to gravitate toward the easy, fast path to success. Ultimately, this does not lead to greatness. Greatness is achieved by taking the time to do the right thing, abandoning the fear of failure, and identifying the process that will allow us to improve in the areas that challenge us the most. This deliberate approach will allow us to achieve anything that we want to accomplish.

         There is nothing we cannot do or overcome, if we dedicate ourselves to taking the time to do things right and consistently. This is the essence of working smarter, not harder.

(Elizabeth Fitch serves as Academic Dean on the Smyrna campus of Motlow State Community College)