#143: How To Improve Anything - Including Your Harp Playing

Today I’m going to tell you how to improve anything. I know that sounds like a tall order, but we harpists are all about improvement. Every day in every way we want to get better and better. Many of us like this idea too: slow and steady wins the race. Yes, but remember tortoises live for a very long time. They can afford to take only the slow and steady approach. Some of us have a little shorter time frame in mind.

I’m a fan of the author and productivity guru Brian Tracy. His book “Eat That Frog” is one of my favorites when I need a little kick to conquer my procrastination. There’s a quote from his book that I considered as a starting point for our discussion today: “Practice the philosophy of continuous improvement. Get a little bit better every single day.” 

But something about that left me a little unsatisfied. Yes, certainly the continuity of improvement, like practicing every day rather than once a week, is important for us harpists. However, that same philosophy is what seems to keep a lot of harpists from making bigger progress. When you seek improvement ONLY in small stages, you get only small improvements. And I hear from harpists all the time that they don’t feel like they’re getting anywhere, and asking me to help. 

And so I’m going to try today to shake up that “slow and steady” habit just enough to make the improvement that you’re looking for actually visible, to get where you’re going faster. I’ve broken this down into three easy steps and one hard one. I realize that may not sound like the help you’ve been looking for, but I think it will be more encouraging than you might think.

Extra good news - this is a system you already know and have been using, but perhaps you haven’t thought of applying it to your harp playing. It really will make everything just a little simpler and should help you identify what you need to do so that you can actually experience growth. 

Sometimes that tortoise strategy of “slow and steady wins the race” isn’t what we’re looking for. We secretly know that the hare was onto a good thing by sprinting ahead. He just didn’t have the good sense to actually get to the end before he stopped. You’re smarter than that, I assure you.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode: 

• Register for the webinar, “The Magic of 1%: Learn the Small Steps That Add Up (Almost Magically!) To Big Progress”
• Join our February Hub Challenge, Express Yourself
• Related resource The Fork in the Road blog post
• Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]