Because you’ll forget what you don’t write down.
Here’s an easy way to make your life as a songwriter much, much easier:
As you sit down for this course or anything else that you’re studying, open your practice journal. Keep it close to hand with the idea that if you hear something important that relates to your situation, your goals, your needs as a songwriter… that you’ll flip your notebook open and write it down.
Do this whenever you notice that a point resonates with you, or you hear something you want to remember, or whenever you notice that you don’t quite understand something.
Feel free to take a break from reading the transcriptions or press “Pause” in the middle of these lessons so that you can write in your notebook. Capture any thoughts that this course sparks. Develop plans. Take notes. Form questions. Make connections between this course and your own experience or your own goals. And finally, resolve to take certain steps and actions to actually put these things into practice in your actual life.
Just listening to the course and agreeing with me won’t actually lead you to a practice routine. Actively engaging with the material, doing the worksheets, and incorporating it into your life will.
And the start of that is your practice notebook—where you can spend a little time with yourself to work out what this stuff means to you. And how you’re going to use it.
Whatever you don’t write down, you’ll likely forget and lose. My own memory is like a sieve. I write everything important down.
Keep your practice journal close.