Goals and motivation?

Hi,
What do you all do to stay motivated to improve your skills? Anyone here use goal-setting to achieve faster results?

I play with other people a lot... just jamming and so forth. I'm a competetive person so if someone busts out a nasty lick and shows me up... that's all the motivation I need to come up with a lick twice as better as that one. I also find that always playing when I have a free moment keeps things moving through my head. I have a pretty big thirst for knowledge as well... if there's something I don't know I usually will go out and buy a book so I do know it.

That's cool...sounds like you have a lot of inner drive.

competition is the way forward. forget all the teamwork cr*p what makes people work the hardest is to either show that you are better than others (maybee not to other people but certainly to your self), and also forms of greed. eg money privlages.

Is that what motivates you Fret Spider?

i dont mean to be argogant but most of my friends who live near me are not as good as me at guitar. not due to lack of skill but just cos they are at a certain level and dont really want to get better cos the music they play doesnt require it. but i do have friends who live in other parts in the country that are better than me. and every time i visit them i get a huge urge to practice when i get home. i fact if i didnt regularly visit this friend my progress would be way slower.

is not so much that i want recognition from the masses, or especially high social status, just that i want to be able to say to myself that i am better than him.

I had previously written a bit of my own experiences in defense of the lesser competitive, but after evaluating I realized I was still supporting competition. In my situation I don't really have many guitarists to work with, and to compete against them isn't exactly going to do anything for me since one solid sweep would do the trick. So for me to find the desire to get better I would need someone to compete against. I've found that competitive partner in myself. When I write things I try and do something more advanced or different the next time around and that's been going so well that I can't play anything I write up to tempo anymore. So, yeah, I would have to agree with the others, competition is the best way to go, who you compete with is up to you. Just make sure you're still having fun while you compete, though.

I've found that one of the few times I can just relax and be myself is when I'm playing music, especially the guitar. Basically, I'm motivated to play my desire to do what I feel like. I really like jamming with and learning from other musicians, because it involves expressing yourself whilst supporting other people's self-expression.

i listen to Pat Martino, that makes me play! actually, my guitar teacher's guitar teacher's guitar teacher (three generations up for those who failed math) was Pat Martino, so I kind of am playing his stuff...

Or Dire Straits, Mark Knopflers licks cannot be beat

Cool guys....yeah, I've found that one of my biggest motivations to improve is to better be able to express myself.

dont get me wrong i love playing my guitar more than anythin else but often the stuff i play doesnt really improving i am just pissing about or watever. this is not a bad thing, but to actually improve, to do things that i couldnt do before takes some kind of competition (for me), this competition can be with others or in a way it can also be with myself. it can even be competing with peoples expectations, like when i had lessons i would practice hard to live up to my guitar teachers expectations and so i could please him. i think through competition you can in a way see your progress and this helps.

also i a way i dislike the fact that most people are motivated by greed or competition. i would like everyone to do things for others for the sake of it, i just dont believe that happens.