Practice Habits: Stop Wasting Time

This is so important that we need to scold ourselves in bold letters with three exclamation points… STOP WASTING TIME!!!

And so vitally important that I’m going to say it again: STOP. WASTING. TIME!

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Common Time Wasters

Four common and habitual ways that we waste time at the piano…

1. Studying and practicing pieces we don’t love to play… and that we have no intentions of keeping in our repertoire.
2. Mindlessly “practicing” things we already know how to play… typically by always starting at the very beginning of piece, when the thing we really need to work on is on the middle of page 3.
3. Automatically going back to the beginning of a piece when we make a mistake.
4. Studying and practicing stuff that does not help us perform better. Specifically, wasting precious time doing contrived mechanical exercises. (Hint: If you want to get good at Bach, study Bach. If you want to play Jazz, study Jazz. There you will discover the musical patterns and technical problems that are particular to the music that you want to play.)

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The Big Takeaway

STOP.
WASTING.
TIME!

Gentle Reminder: The quality of your performance is absolutely determined by the quality of your study and practice habits. In other words, the gift is not talent. The gift is love. If you love what your are doing, the discipline will follow!

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learn more… Practice Habits

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