Music Practice Tips

As some of you may know, I’m a big fan of Leo Babauta’s blog zen habits. I recently rewrote one of his pieces to be a more musical form of the 20 procrastination hacks, which has quickly become one of my most popular posts. Today, I’m looking at a system to create better practice habits, and hopefully also reduce stress. I’ll just mention straight off the bat that this is purely theoretical at the moment - I haven’t actually tried this, but will be doing so over the next year.

ZTD stands for Zen to Done, and is based of the highly successful Getting it done method. I really highly suggest you read the full post of Zen to Done, as most of this post is based on that, and it can also be useful if you want to get other things in your life on track.

Why the rewrite? Zen to Done is written from a business perspective. It’s all about getting more stuff done in the workplace in less time (the idea being that if you can complete the same amount of work in less time, you can either do more stuff, or go home early). As such, there’s lots about clearing the inbox (e-mail or desk), and collecting tasks. Music is similar, but we need something just slightly different to help us on the way.

Five Goals

Leo opens with 5 problems with GTD that he’s tried to fix with his ZTD system. I’m not trying to change the systems here, just apply them to music practice. As such, I’ve turned these Five problems into Five goals that I’m going to try and address throughout the system.

1. A Series of Habits

Music Practice is something that needs to be done every day. Because we need to do it every day, it needs to become a habit, something that we’ll feel incomplete with if we don’t do it. Hopefully, you’re already one step ahead of me - if you don’t practice every day, that’s the first habit to form. Take a look at Leo’s blog for some habit changing methods, and get your practice happening. One big thing of this system is that we’ll try to pick up one habit at a time, and we’ll try to form it in 30 days. It does mean that we possibly won’t be completing the whole system for 10 months, but even as we track from beginning to end, we will notice our practice getting more efficient.

2. Focus on doing

With many long programs like this, sometimes there can be an emphasis on planning, which ends up being a procrastination tool. We think we’re making progress, but we’re not actually doing anything. This system will need to incorporate a bit of planning, but we will try and limit it to certain times, so that we can focus on getting things done and completing our tasks.

3. Flexible Structure

Sometimes an unstructured environment can be useful for some people. However, I’ve found that if I don’t have any structure, I don’t get anything done at all. Instead, this program will try to incorporate a few habits that give us structure to our practice, but still allow flexibility for incorporating the odd thing that gets thrown up.

4. Simplicity

If you’re anything like I am, and I know many musicians who are just like me, we often tend to take on far too much. In this system, we’ll try to make life simpler, even if it’s only in our practice room.

5. Focus on Goals

Each week, we will spend time working on our goals to help guide our practice. I’ve often talked about the importance of goal-driven practice, so if a practice system is going to work, then it needs to be based upon goals.

10 Habits of Highly Effective Practicing People

Yes, 7 habits is not enough for us. 8 is, 9 and 10 are more optional, but are important none the less. These 10 habits are designed in nature so that each one of them will help us in our learning and our practice, and they don’t need to be learnt in order. They should ideally be learnt one at a time, or at most 2-3. This helps develop them as habits, which keeps them working long term.

1. Collect: ubitquitous capture

The first habit is to make sure you write everything down. Always carry a pencil with you, and a notepad or some index cards, so that you can make notes of things. You’ll also want a few journals running - though not too many, just enough to make the system work. I’m suggesting 2 journals, a lesson journal and a practice journal. The lesson journal is what you take to lessons, and the practice journal is one for your practice room. I’ll talk more about these soon.

2. Process: make quick decisions on incoming tasks

It’s one thing to write everything down, the next is to process it. With each task, we’ll need to decide whether it’s something that is urgent and needs to be worked on right away, whether it’s something that can be put off for a little while (while you work on more important tasks), or whether it’s not really important at all. The GTD/ZTD have 5 actions for their process function (which is linked with clearing your e-mail inbox) - do it (if it can be done in 2 mintues or less), trash it, delegate it, file it, or put it on your calendar or to-do list. We can’t really delegate it, so we’re looking at 4 actions.

Do it. If it’s a task that can be completed in under 2 minutes, just get it over with and do it. Things that this might include would be working out a fingering for a passage, or a small repetitive passage to help with a tricky section.

Trash it. Something that isn’t worth worrying about. These will be your distractions. If you’re focussing on something that isn’t in your goals, you need to trash it - quickly - and just forget about it.

File it. Something that’s important, but doesn’t need to be focussed on at the moment. For example, learning a bowing that will be useful for the piece that you want to learn next year. Or being given the music for a show that’s 3 months away, but between then you’ve got another show and an exam. Put it in your goals as something to be done, but it’s not important at the moment.

Put it. Similar to the one above, but a bit more encompassing. If you agree to do a show, put it in your diary. Make sure it’s in there, so that you know nothing is going to clash. Been given a goal in your lesson to complete? That’s got to go on the to-do list. The thing with this one is that these are probably going to be the ones that you need to do more urgently. Ones that will take longer than 2 minutes, but need to be done before the File It ones.

3. Plan: Set MIT’s for each day, week.

An MIT is a Most Important Task, and these are your priorities for the day or week. Each week, you’ll decide on 2 or 3 big rocks that you want to have completed. Something like “Learn all the notes of this piece” - a goal that isn’t able to be completed in a day, but should be able to be done in a week. Then each day, you’ll want to review your progress and set your most important tasks for the day: how many notes do you need to learn in order to learn all of the notes in a week. This is where you’ll get things that pop up come in, such as if in an orchestral rehearsal you notice that a certain passage is rather difficult, you would set it as a MIT so that it’s ready before the next rehearsal.

Once we’ve planned, we need to do. Get your MIT’s for each day done early on - they should be the first things you work on (possibly after a warm up if you use it). That way, even if you do nothing else for the rest of the day, or if your day gets swamped by rehearsals, or assignments, or work, you’ve still made progress towards your Big Rocks.

4. Do (focus): do one task at a time, without distractions

It’s said that men can’t multi-task. In fact, it’s not a very good idea to even attempt to multi-task. The most efficient work we do is when we’re focussed on it, and only focussed on that one thing. When we’re practicing, implement things such as Practice Cells, and only work on that cell. If something comes along that needs your attention while you’re working on that cell, decide whether it really needs your attention or not. If it does, write it down and remember to come back to it later. You’re focussing on that cell, and only that cell, and you don’t want to get distracted.

Speaking of distractions, try to eliminate all distractions that might interrupt your practicing. Obviously, things like TV’s and Computers should be turned off. But even things like hunger is something you should be aware of. If it is a problem, be aware of it, and take precautions against it - either have something to eat before practicing, or have a bowl of nuts in your practice studio that you can take a quick handful of and continue on. Just don’t be eating them all the time. Do whatever it takes to eliminate and control the distractions. Leo has written a great article on How Not to Multi-task

5. Simple trusted system: keep simple lists, check daily

This is getting back to the collect habit. We want to keep our lists as simple as possible. I recommend no more than 5 lists, and these are the ones I have:

1. Lesson Journal
2. Practice Journal
3. Calendar/Diary
4. University/Work

My lesson journal is what my teacher writes in, and also a place for me to put questions that I’m unable to answer for myself and need the advice of a teacher. The practice journal is where I write down my big rocks and MIT’s for the week/day. The Calendar or Diary is where I mark deadlines and events, obviously. My University/Work list is so that I don’t forget about tasks that have to do with them - assignments and the like. While they don’t have to do with my practice, I need to make sure that I don’t get lost in my practice and forget about other important things.

Another option might be to create simple lists for your tasks. GTD and ZTD preface their lists with the “@” symbol, which means at. So @lesson would effectively mean “at lesson” - and would be for everything that happens at your lesson. You might also have @practice, and @performances (where you would list the various performances and deadlines that you have coming up).

The trick is to keep these lists as simple as possible, and in a medium that is also simple. Pen and paper does wonders, it doesn’t need to be some whizz-bang software thing, or kept on a pda or whatever. Keep it Simple, Stupid.

6. Organise: a place for everything.

It’s a simple one, and a habit you might already have. Keep your practice area clean and tidy. When you’re finished with something, put it back where it belongs. Finished with a piece of music? Don’t leave it on the stand, or on a table, put it back on the shelf. This way you will know where it is when you need to find it again, and you won’t be wasting time looking for it. If you’ve got your lists and goals happening, this can filter through as well - when you get a task, decide immediately where it needs to go, and put it there.

7. Review: review your system & goals weekly

It’s no use having goals unless you know what progress has been made towards them. Each week, Go over your goals to see if you’ve achieved them and to see what progress you’ve made towards your yearly goals. This is also a chance to see what steps you should be taking to further your progress of these goals in the next week.

Each month you should spend a little bit more time for a deeper review of the month, and again each year to review your yearly and life goals.

8. Simplify: reduce goals and tasks to essentials

This isn’t always possible, especially if you’re just starting out in your career. A lecturer told me once that starting out in a freelancing career, there’s 3 things that you need to consider when taking on a job: is it paid, am I available, and do I want to do it. When you’re just starting out, you need only one of those things to be a yes, and you should take it. That is, if it’s paid, but you’re not available, and you don’t want to do it, you should do it anyway and make every attempt to become available. Later on, you can start needing two of those criteria, and then finally all three.

However, while our lives might not be able to be simplified, we need to try and simplify as many other things as possible. In your practice room, spend more time working on the MIT’s and leave anything that isn’t important alone.

9. Routine: set and keep routines

You might be the type of person that loves flexibility in their schedule, and can’t stand to think of having a strict routine. However, for some people, knowing that you’re doing the same thing at the same time each day, week or month, is really liberating and can help focus their practice. If you’re not sure if this will work for you or not, give it a try, you’ll know soon enough.

10. Find your passion: seek work for which you’re passionate

I’ve heard a saying that if you love the area that you work in, you’ll never work a day in your life. This might be one of the last things you’ll get to do in the system, but it’s also one of the more important goals. If you can achieve this, it’s really going a long way to simplifying your life. If you really love orchestral music, but can’t stand Opera, then you should try and get more performances in orchestras than operas. It’s not always possible, but we can try.

The same comes to the music that we learn. If you really love Baroque music, and can’t stand Romantic music, then talk with your teacher about this. They might be able to help accommodate this so that you learn more baroque music. Again, this isn’t always possible, as sometimes the piece is set for different reasons. But if you’re loving what you’re learning, it’s always a lot easier to play, practice and learn.

As I pointed out earlier, this is an untested system. I have really no idea if this will work or not. I’m going to give it a try, and post my results on here, but as mentioned, it’s not a system that you pick up over night, ideally it would take 10 months.

If you want to read more about Leo’s Zen to Done system, he’s written a number of posts about it, including tips on picking up the first few habits.