I was talking to a fellow New Horizons member about practice habits and explained how I stay motivated to practice. It is not always an easy thing to do but you have to find the tricks that work for you. For me, there are two thing that keep me going back regularly. I'll start with the second one first because many people would think this should be first. That is to practice music that you find interesting. While I tend to practice longer if the music I am learning is interesting, just my interest in the song doesn't draw me into the music room unless I have a lot of spare time or am bored. Usually, I am either busy with kids activities or work or work around the house or I am just so exhausted that I don't have a lot of spare time. So to draw me into the room to practice, the song has to be really really interesting, or I reliably use my first trick - to play with my pets. No, Hillary Hahn got me started on my real trick. The thing that draws me in is the desire to keep a routing or a streak going and to improve. A couple of years back, Hillary Hahn started posting on instragram her practice routine doing a 100 day challenge. It became the thing to do for budding musicians. I started seeing posts of kids and challenges by music teachers for their students to try the 100 days. The point for Hillary Hahn was not to practice 100 days in a row, because she is a professional musician and usually did practice every day anyway. But the challenge for her was to use it as a tool to document and and improve on small things that she might not otherwise have committed to do. I am not a professional musician, but had been playing and practicing irregularly for a couple of years and felt like I was in a rut of not improving. So I decided to try the challenge. I wanted to see if adding additional days of practice to my routing could help me improve. I did not document every day because I just don't have the time to figure out how to edit and post videos of practice sessions every day but I did start practicing every day. I average about 20 minutes of practice every day although on really busy days it may be a little as 5 minutes or on a good day may be an hour and a half. The first week was easy. I was motivated and wanted to see my improvement. The rest of the first month was difficult as I struggled to find a time to fit in a practice. But then I established a routine in my day and since then have managed to practice every day. I even took my instrument on a vacation and did short daily practice because I was afraid of breaking my practice streak. Finally I achieved my 100 days but I didn't want to give up. I didn't want to change my routine out of fear that I would lose the progress I was seeing in my playing and fear that I would fall into my old habit of practicing maybe 1 or 2 days a week. So I have continued to practice every day. I am now at the 255 day mark and have changed my goal to a 365 day challenge. I am seeing improvements in my playing and that has also been a motivator to continue. Because it has become so much a part of my routine, I don't even think about whether I should practice today or not, I just do it.
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AuthorDaniel Zarka Archives
March 2019
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