Do you ever struggle to “find time” to practice? You need to create a better practice routine!
Listen, if you wait to find time to practice, your practice habits are going to be hit or miss, no matter how much you love to play, and no matter how much you want to improve. Until you have really incorporated music making into your life, you need to be intentional.
How do I know? Because life is busy – for everyone! You know the feeling – you walk out of your lesson, motivated to make the changes you discussed with your teacher. This week is going to be different, you’re going to practice more and your teacher is going to be stunned with how much you’ve improved.
Fast forward to six days later, you wake up, realize your lesson is tomorrow and you’ve only practiced once the whole week. Your day is busy, you come home from work exhausted, but you sit down at the piano and force your way through a long practice session, hoping it will make up for the week that evaporated.
You’re disappointed, because you know you can do better, but the time just slipped away.
At the end of the day, your growth at the piano comes down to how consistently you spend time at the piano. Period.
And a lot of making sure you get your time in is just showing up consistently and intentionally. Don’t wait to find time – time is REALLY good at hiding. (And running away faster than my dog trying to catch bunnies in the park.)
So you need to hone in on your practice habits.
And an important element of forming good habits is having an enticing, obvious start-up routine.
Here’s my challenge for you this week: decide on at least 3 specific times that you’re going to practice. Write them in your calendar – not which days, but which TIME on which days. (Wednesday at 7a.m., or Friday right after work.)
Also decide NOW what you’re going to start each session with this week. Your favorite piece? Scales, so you get it over with right away? Write this down, too.
While you’re at it, think about which pieces and which topics you want to practice, and decide the order of each practice session. If you’re relatively new to structuring your practice sessions, go ahead and block out 10-30 minutes to get really specific. If that causes too much resistance, just make a quick “set list”, and leave it sitting on the piano with your music.
Then you need a cue. This is the key for really sticking to your practice habits – until now, you’ve just been laying the groundwork to make getting started easier. Choose a cue that will be your clear signal to go practice. You pour your coffee and walk to the piano. Or you come home from work, change into comfy clothes (and maybe pour a glass of wine), and walk to the piano. Maybe you put your plate in the dishwasher after dinner and walk to the piano.
Now you’re at the piano, and you already know exactly what you’re starting with and what comes next. Now you’re rolling – enjoy!
One more thing to make it stick – be sure to finish your practice session with something you love. If you put off scales because you hate them and finish the session with scales, the next day you’re going to remember those scales and not want to go to the piano. But if you finish by performing something you really adore playing? Magical, you can’t wait to get back to it!
Tell me in the comments – what are your practice appointments this week? I’ll be checking up on you!
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