Dear Friends,
I just got back from the MTNA National Conference in Chicago. It's always so inspiring to attend: I heard many interesting sessions, met many new people, and saw many people who are dear to me, including a whole group of my former students from Butler University! I also heard a stunning piano recital by Angela Hewitt, who was the featured conference artist. (Click here to see some of my pictures from the conference.)
Anyway, today I'm thinking about procrastination, and the benefits of scheduling your practice time rather than waiting for inspiration to strike.
What started me down this path was a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine. She's a professional pianist but lives in an expensive major city, and she is unable to live in the same apartment as her piano. She has rented a room for her piano just a three-minute walk from her apartment, where she goes to practice. However, there are other people who live in that apartment, and ever since Covid, one of them works from home.
So now my friend has to coordinate her practice time with her neighbor who's working from home, to make sure she’s not practicing when the person has online meetings or other events where there can’t be noise in the background.
Yet my friend is a professional pianist: she has to practice for engagements and performances. She doesn't have the luxury of wasting a single minute of her practice time.
Also, a related story: I have fond memories of my studies both at the Hannover Musikhochschule and the Köln Musikhochschule in Germany. However, practice time was like gold dust: rooms were in high demand, and you had to sign up to reserve your practice time. When the time came for you to have an hour or two to practice, you had to use it, whether you felt like it or not.
And most recently, I was visiting my parents over the holidays, and I had access to a piano to practice on only during the morning hours before 9 am.
What do these three stories have in common? Scarcity breeds urgency. You're much less likely to procrastinate when you've got limited practice time. My friend schedules around her neighbor's meetings. In Germany, I signed up for a room and went back to practice, whether I felt like it or not. At my parents' place, I knew I had to finish my practicing by 9 am.
When you know exactly when you're going to practice and how long you have, it has the effect of focusing the mind. You sit down and get right to work, because the clock is ticking.
Many of us are not in a situation where we have limited access to a piano. Here in Indianapolis, I have a piano at home and two pianos in my teaching studio at Butler University. With three pianos I could play on any time of day or night, that is downright luxurious!
But here's the thing: when I can always practice later, it's easy to skip practicing now. It’s easy to put it off and just never get around to it.
So, if you tend to procrastinate on your practicing, I'd like to invite you to try something different this week: sit down with your calendar and block out your practice sessions the way you'd schedule meetings or appointments.
Decide in advance when you'll practice and for how long. Treat the time as non-negotiable. The trick is to not only start on time, but also to finish and walk away from the piano at the predetermined time. It helps you stay focused when you know that you're not going to extend your session.
You might be surprised at how much more productive your practice sessions feel when you stop waiting until you feel like it to sit down and work, and instead schedule your practice times in advance.
Write back and let me know how this works for you! I love hearing from you and read every email, even if I can't always respond.
👋 Happy practicing,
Kate