Tips for Building a Practice Routine (and sticking to it)
Ugh, practicing, am I right???? Where do we find the time? How long should I be doing it? Can I just get really good at piano and skip the practicing?
As a piano teacher, a lot of my job is solving practicing issues and devising plans for my students to practice more productively. After all, I only see the majority of them for 30 minutes a week. A lot of their long term progress is going to depend on how effectively they can practice and how often they can get to the piano.
Are you struggling to make a habit of practicing the piano? I guarantee you that you can find the time you need to make progress at the piano. Whether you will is a matter of your lifestyle and priorities.
Now and then I get a stubborn young beginner student who just won’t practice. Let me tell you about this one girl, we’ll call her Jojo. Jojo was 8 years old, taking lessons with me for maybe a month before she just stopped practicing completely. She clearly loved coming to her lesson but just wasn’t grasping the concept of the work and time that goes into learning the skill, no matter how much we would talk about it in class. Every week I would go through her schedule with her and we would plan out which days to practice. The conversation went something like this:
“Jojo, let’s find 3 days during the week that you can commit to practicing at least 5-10 minutes. Tell me 3 days that you think you’ll have time.”
“OK, so on Mondays I can’t because I go to my Grandma’s. On Tuesdays I can’t because I have soccer, on Wednesdays I have to go to my sister’s dance class, then I have to eat dinner, do my homework, and go to bed. Oh, and don’t forget school! On Thursdays I can’t because…”
At this point in the conversation my eyes are rolling into the back of my head. First of all, Jojo, I didn’t ask for the days that you DON’T have time. Second of all, how does having soccer on Tuesdays automatically mean you have NO TIME!!! NOT EVEN FIVE MINUTES - to devote to practicing a song that’s literally 4 measures long? As you can see this situation is a bit frustrating for me as a teacher. What Jojo didn’t understand yet at age 8 is that everyone, at every stage of life, has stuff to do. No one “has” the time. We have to MAKE the time if we really want to learn a new skill. And yes, I guarantee you that Jojo did have 5 spare minutes per day she could have spent on the piano, but it wasn’t enough a priority for her for whatever reason. And that’s fine - piano is not a priority for everyone and it doesn’t have to be. But if you aren’t going to put in the time, you should accept that your progress will be super slow.
My guess is that you’re here because you want to make progress and make the time for piano. You want it to be somewhere on your list of priorities in life so you can actually get better.
SCHEDULING
First of all, schedule your practice just like you would schedule any other appointment. If you don’t have one already, I suggest that you get a journal, calendar, or planner where you can track and schedule when you’re going to practice, or maybe just plan out everything in your routine if you find that helpful. I’ve tried a lot of planners. I’m the type of person who buys a planner and uses it for a week, then forgets about it for the other 51 weeks of the year. The majority of planners don’t work well for me because I forget that I have them and then just feel guilty looking back at those blank pages at the end of the year. Strangely enough, I’m also a person who really benefits from journaling, planning, and writing things down. If you’re like me, I highly suggest using something like The Panda Planner (#notsponsored). I love The Panda Planner because I can plan out my whole day and it gets me to focus on the positive. Also, there are no dates so I don’t waste time feeling guilty if I don’t journal every single day.
OK, now get a second journal. This one is a blank notebook or you can use a template and put a bunch of copies in a binder. I’ve created a practice journal specifically for musicians that you can find on Amazon (or just scroll down). Write down what pieces/exercises/songs you’re going to practice for the day and what you want to accomplish. I also want you to write down a positive thought about how your practice session will go, and then leave room for some reflection after you practice. Mindset is huge when it comes to sticking with a new habit and it is important that you are positive and kind to yourself while you’re learning. Focus on why you enjoyed practicing even if it’s only something small in the beginning. The positive feelings and keeping track of your progress over time are what will keep you coming back day after day (oh heyyyy intrinsic motivation!).
When intrinsic motivation doesn’t work, try giving yourself a reward when you hit your practice goals. When I was in college studying piano performance, I was supposed to be practicing 3 hours a day. That was really hard for me initially. I’ve never been the type of pianist who wants practicing to be my entire life, and 3 hours felt like a big chunk out of my day especially on top of a heavy workload from all of my other classes. I knew it would help me a lot, but that wasn’t enough. What ended up working super well for me was giving myself a sticker in my practice journal for every hour that I practiced. I bought a bunch of really awesome stickers that were ONLY for my practice journal. I deeply desired for every page of that journal to be filled with beautiful, magical stickers, so I ended up hitting that 3-hour goal just about every day. That was a simple solution for me, and I’m still shocked it worked, looking back. Maybe for you, your reward is a piece of chocolate, or getting to watch your favorite show at the end of the night. Find a simple pleasure that you can use as your compensation for a job well done.
This works well for children trying to build a good habit of piano practice as well. I once had another student who basically never practiced, and I was trying to get his parent to agree to set up some type of motivation system to get him to the piano. The parent refused because he believed the motivation to practice should come from within. The big problem was that the child couldn’t feel how rewarding a productive practice session was because he WASN’T PRACTICING! It’s not bribery to give your child compensation to build good habits (oh heyyyy extrinsic motivation!). As an adult, imagine you’re starting a new job. On the first day of work, you find out that your salary is $0. Are you going to be motivated to get really good at that job and put in a lot of time learning the skills required? I would say the majority of people would answer “no.”
WHEN TO PRACTICE
Now let’s address when to schedule practice. Take a look at your every day routine and find something that you MUST do every day. Maybe it’s eating dinner, brushing your teeth, walking your dog. If you’re in school, maybe you have a set time that you do your homework. Grouping your practice with a mandatory daily activity like this will make sure you don’t procrastinate because you’re going to do it every single day along with that other activity. If you have a routine you follow in the morning or before bed, for example, you can add practicing on to that. There’s an entire section of self-help books dedicated to habits that I suggest you check out if you’re struggling in this area. I highly recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear for those who have trouble building new habits.
MAKING THE TIME
Now you have committed to a daily practice time. You might have made it this far and be thinking, “where is this time coming from?” If you seriously don’t feel that you have 10-15 minutes per day that you can commit to this, take a look at your priorities. Is there anything you can bump down on that list or delegate so that you can have this short amount of time to yourself to work on a skill that you care about? Can you wake up 10 minutes earlier? Can you ask your kid to wash the dishes? Can you stop watching 5 hours a day of 90-Day Fiance (speaking from personal experience)?
SET A TIMER
Setting a timer can help in a few different ways. First, if you’re like me and your brain tells you that practicing is hard and boring, set your timer for 15 minutes. You can allow yourself to stop when the timer goes off, or if you’re having fun, you can reset and go for another 15. This works great for me because I’m almost always enjoying myself once I sit down and start playing, but that promise of being able to stop is what gets me to the piano. If you’re instead the type of person who happily sits down to play, works through all of your material without structure, then realizes you’ve “practiced” everything in 10 minutes, you may benefit from setting your timer for a set amount - maybe starting with 30 minutes and gradually increasing - to push yourself to organize your practice better and work more thoroughly on each concept. If you feel you’re still mastering everything within only 10 minutes or so, talk to your teacher about either increasing your workload, difficulty level, or finding ways to improve the material you’re already working on. If you’re a beginner, it’s likely that there are still a lot of things you can improve with your existing assignments that you may not be aware of.
START AND END WITH JOY
Most of us who have been playing piano for a while have had an absolutely horrendous practice session during which you play so badly that you question whether or not you have ever even seen a piano before in your life. These types of sessions don’t exactly make you feel great about coming back the next day to try again. When building your practice plan, start with something you LOVE to play that makes you happy, and end with something you’re absolutely amazing at playing. The start and end of your session will be the most memorable, and associating with positive feelings will leave you wanting more.
