How to Set a Practice Schedule that Will Stick - PHH 127

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Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I'm Ann Sullivan, a harpist on a mission to empower every harpist to experience more harp happiness. Over my decades long harp journey, I've had lots of successes and more than a few failures. And I know firsthand what it's like to feel that playing the harp the way you want may not be possible for you. Now, I play and teach all over the world, and I know what most harpists are never taught the secrets to gaining the skills and confidence you need to play the harp with beauty, freedom and joy. That's what the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast is all about. Showing you simple steps to help you play the music you want the way you want. If you're an experienced harpist looking for that next level, or a harp newbie anxious to avoid the pitfalls, or a harpist who just wants more fulfillment and a little encouragement, you're in the right place, my friend. So let's get started. Welcome to the show. Do you feel like you're failing yourself in your practice? I mean, maybe you feel your practice isn't as consistent or as focused as it should be? Perhaps even when you have time to practice, you're finding it really difficult to get started. You might find yourself sitting down to practice and using all your time deciding what you should be doing. You end up feeling confused, frustrated and tired instead of energized and excited about playing the harp. And then you skip a day of practice and then another day. Then you really mean to get back to it. But something urgent crops up that absolutely requires your attention. Then you start to dread getting back to practice because you know it's going to sound terrible. Even worse, you feel guilty for having let it slip. Does this sound like you? Maybe some of the time. Well, don't think I have some magical power to get inside your head. I can tell your story so well because it's been my own experience too. I don't feel good about my harp playing or about myself when I skip my practice. Those days of missed practice play havoc with my state of mind as well as with my music. It's not that I don't want to practice. I do. I even like practicing. And at this point, I do practice nearly every day. Maybe not as much as I'd like, but enough. But it's been a struggle to develop the systems and habits that allow me to practice, even when my schedule is full to bursting. Now, you may be one of those people who are good about maintaining the boundaries in your life, and you're in control of your schedule. And if that's you, let me say that I would love to be like you, but I'm not that disciplined. I set my schedule for the day and then I watch it change as the day goes on. To be honest, you know that all you have to do is to set a practice schedule and then stick to it. But it just isn't that easy. Well, at least not for me. But I still manage to practice. And if you're trying to set a practice schedule then that you can stick to, or you're just looking for some ways to make your practice habit stronger, then I can help. On today's episode, we will talk about how to create a sustainable and flexible practice habit that works for you. We'll talk about how to find your focus from the first minute of your practice session so you can use every practice minute well. And we'll talk about how to make your practice habit stick. It's one thing to design a habit, it's another thing to actually live it. In the Show Notes for today's episode, there are a couple things you're going to want to check out. One is a link to a blog post I did quite a while ago called three Times When Not Practicing is Not an Option. And with all that we're going to be talking about today, that blog post is going to add just a little bit of extra information with a slightly different slant for you. So I encourage you to head over to the Show Notes and check that out. Remember, to find the Show Notes, all you need to do is scroll down on whatever podcast app you're using. And that podcast app should show you the show notes with a link to all the relevant materials. But if you don't see that in your podcast player, then hop on over to harpmastery.com, go to the podcast tab and look for episode 127, which is today's episode. And when you get to that page, you can scroll down and you'll see all those links for you there. So, pretty easy to find. I just wanted to be sure you knew how to do it so you can check out the blog post. Also, you can check out the link to register for our new Theory Essentials Intensive. It's called Theory Essentials, the Harpist's no Nonsense Guide to Practical Music Theory. The Intensive itself is going to be kicking off one week from today. It starts on October 30th, and the idea is this. It's about taking the essential parts of music theory what we as harpists all need to know not the stuff that's just good to know or nice to know or fun to know, but the stuff that we really need to know. And taking it over to the harp, making it practical, making that connection between what you know and what you do. After all, you know, when music theory is just about ideas or concepts and stuff, it doesn't necessarily make it useful. I keep remembering when in the Sound of Music, Maria starts teaching the children, doe a deer, right? And she teaches them all those syllables. Do, re, mi, fa, sola, ti, do. And then Gretel says, but it doesn't mean anything. And I think sometimes we feel that way about music theory too. It's, you know, okay, that's really great, but what am I going to do with this information? And that's why I'm so excited about this course, because that's the connection it's going to make for you. Our certified coach, Naomi Hofmeier is teaching the course. She and I have been working together on this for over a year and we're going to give you a five day intensive from Monday, October 30th to the following Friday. That's it. Just five days. And talk not only about what you need to know, but what you need to do with that information. It's going to be a really powerful course, but it's going to be fun, it's going to be short and it's going to be practical. So I urge you to check it out and to join us. The course is so inexpensive, it's $47 for the entire course. And that's the workshops plus three, three workshops. Three 90 minute workshops, an open office hours call with Naomi, three robust workbooks to help guide you through all this material. Plus we got our theory forum where you can chat and ask questions. All that good stuff. All the workshops, if you can attend live, they are all recorded, they are all available and all the materials of the course will be available for you for a full 14 days after the course ends. So that's, you know, the middle of November, so there's plenty of time to absorb the information. We've got challenges in the forum to help you use the material as you go along. It's going to be a lot of fun and most importantly, it's going to be really, really helpful. So please do check out that link in the show notes and register for the Theory Essentials Intensive. If you don't find that link, you can find it over@heartmastery.com just go to upcoming events and you'll find the theory Intensive There. It's going to be fun. And I'd love for you to be one of the students that benefits from this course. So, phew, that's enough theory. We are going to get practical again today, but we're going to get practical with your practice. So let's find out how we can make that practice habit stick. Let's start here. I know that you would like to be able to practice. You like your practice, and you would love to be able to find a time every day when you could shut the world out, sit down at your harp, and have an uninterrupted block of time to focus just on playing the harp and making music. I know that's what you want, but I also know that real life has a way of getting in the way. There are so many things that sabotage our best intentions around our practice habit. And I think that before we can set a reasonable habit, one that we're going to try to stick to and actually have some degree of success with, we really need to look at those distractions in the face. We have to really take a moment to consider what it is that gets in the way. I remember teaching a student once who was talking about not being able to find time to practice. And as we talked, it became really clear that there was one particular thing that was getting in her way. And it had done it for so long, she wasn't even noticing it. And when I drew her attention to it, then she was able to find a way to get rid of that distraction. And her practice time went so much better. So that's why I think it's important to take a look at what might be getting in the way. So let's talk about some of the most common ones. I think the most common one, and one that's very hard to fight, is just mental distraction. When you have too much on your mind. And it's, you know, you may shut the door physically, but it's really hard to just sort of shut off those thoughts that are just getting in the way. So I think the best cure for a distracted mind is just to play your favorite piece. That can sometimes be the best way back. But there are some other things you can do, right? I mean, if you have a door to your harp room, great, close it. Or light a candle, make a cup of tea. Turn off your phone. Oh, yes. Not just silent, not just quiet. Turn it off so that you can't pick it up and look at it. This is one of the reasons I recommend having a separate metronome and a separate Tuner ones that aren't on your phone because then you're not tempted to just, you know, look at Facebook or check that email and those notifications aren't coming in, so, you know, turn your phone off. You've set aside this time for you and your harp. No one else is needs you now. Then if you want to really start, you know, getting rid of the mental distraction on a longer term basis, you can establish a pre practice routine for yourself. Maybe here's an idea to take to make a cup of tea and then bring it into your practice room. Tune your harp, warm up and start to practice. And don't let anything interrupt that portion of your pre practice routine. If you want to add playing your favorite piece in there, I'm good with that. But do that every day. What's wonderful about that is that just the idea of that routine will help you focus better and will create the anticipation of that habit. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Another big saboteur of practice would be just a lack of direction. Wondering what you should do today. You sit down at the heartbeat, go, I don't know, what am I going to do? Well, it's very helpful if you have a goal. It doesn't have to be a big goal, can be a little one. It could just be learning a particular piece. But make a pretty specific goal and a list of the steps that you intend to follow in order to reach it. So then just start your practice and my favorite thing, when you are done your practice, take that sticky note and write on it what you intend to do first tomorrow when you sit down. Then leave that on your stand, right? So you're going to see it first thing and so you will not have to spend any time wondering what you're going to do when you get to the harp tomorrow. Next on my list would be interruptions. You know, every time you sit down to practice, what happens every time you sit down? The phone rings or the kids ask for something or the dog needs walking. All right, well, you can do your best to help avoid those interruptions. Turn your phone off, shut the door, walk the dog. By the way, you could build in time for walking the dog before you start practicing, right? But I think importantly here, ask for your family's help and cooperation. Anybody, except for maybe the dog, anybody who lives with you can help you hold on to your practice routine. They can get the idea that, you know what, when I'm practicing, this is the little bit of time that I need for me. So you know, if you need me.

Let it wait, please. You know, unless the house is burning down or, you know, as my mother used to say, you're bleeding down to your ankle, then, you know, let it wait. You can ask. It's good for them. Okay, maybe you are just feeling like you have so much to do, you're feeling overwhelmed. Maybe what you're feeling overwhelmed about is that you've got so much music that you want to learn and you don't know where to start. Well, choose one thing to practice, just one thing. And when you're done practicing that or you feel like you're done with it for the day, choose the next one. And then rotate your pile. When you've, you know, done that thing that's on the top of your pile, put it in the back, and then you can just work on the next thing that comes up. Now, if there's a piece that you want to work on every day, you know, you can put it aside and then put it back on the front of the pile. But this is one way to get through all the music you want to get through. You might not do it all in one practice session, but the rotation will help you keep making progress on everything, help you keep those balls in the air.

But the biggest issue that I see and that I have experienced around practice time is this, that your practice, when it's not planned in advance, won't happen. It needs to be planned in advance. It needs to be written down. It needs to be on your calendar, because just doing your practice by the seat of the pants kind of. Oh, I've got a minute here. You know, that doesn't work. Trying to put it in the margins of your day. I've got the whole rest of my day planned, and now I'm just going to practice in between stuff that doesn't work so well.

At a recent retreat, I showed the retreaters how I put my practice times in my Google Calendar. I keep a Google Calendar. It's on my computer, it's on my phone, and I've actually created an upgrade. Ideal week schedule. Now, this is a schedule that I don't always. I'm not always able to keep to it, right. Things happen. So. But if I had my druthers, this is the way my week would look. And it's got my practice times in and it's got my special, you know, creating the podcast times in and all those things. And I've given that calendar a particular color.

Now it shows up along with my regular calendar and my Google Calendar. And I can see both things and I can see where my schedule, my real calendar is in conflict with my ideal calendar. But what this allows me to do is I can take those things that I really want to get done, like practice, and I can slide that block around so that when I'm, you know, on a Sunday night, when I'm looking at the week ahead, I can say, wow, okay, Monday morning, my practice time isn't going to work at that hour. But you know what, instead of doing it at 9 o', clock, I could do it at 2 o' clock and I just drag that block down to 2 o' clock and my practice time still fits in. Now, trying to do it the same morning that you're planning to practice is a little bit trickier because it's going to get lost. It's going to get lost in the margins. But the things that I have found helpful about keeping the ideal calendar are these. First of all, it's in front of me all the time, and it reminds me that I'm trying to hold onto that block of time for my practice so I'm less likely to schedule over it. And then the second thing is that I can move it around and say, okay, well, today it's not going to work at 9, it's going to have to work at 2 or whatever it is. And I can move it around and I still know that it's going to be done. So that is one of my special secret tools. But when you can plan your practice in advance, it's much more likely to get done. Okay, now we've talked about what could get in your way and prevent you from practicing. You've got your practice time, you've got your block of time. You're ready to sit down. Now, what do you do? What should your practice habit look like? Who? Big question right there. I've had numbers of harpists ask me about what an ideal practice routine should look like. What should I be doing? And the fact is that when it comes to practice, nobody should be designing it but you. There is no perfect plan. Now, in general, a practice routine will include three basic ingredients. It will include working on your technique and developing it and pushing it and refining it and refreshing it. You know, those kinds of things. It will include the obvious learning pieces. That's a big part of what we want to do in our practice. And it will include playing pieces, playing them through, playing review pieces, sight reading new pieces. But that's, you know, playing them is different from practicing them, from learning them. So those three Things will help develop your fingers, will help develop all your musicianship skills, and will give you music that you can play. So those are the three basic ingredients. But there's no one perfect plan. And good news for those of you who don't like to be held down to a particular plan. Your plan can be different every day. You can use different exercises to work on your technique. You can start with your technique. You could put it at the end after you've worked on the pieces that you want to work on. Can put it in the middle as sort of a little break in between pieces that you're working on. You could break it up so that you're doing technique work at several different points in your practice session. You could start with pieces to play through. You could play through pieces at the end of your practice as a reward. There are an infinite number of ways to plan your practice, and different circumstances will also affect this. Right? Do you have something specific you're practicing for that's going to affect what your practice routine looks like? But I would encourage you to vary your practice routine. Don't make it the same every day. The variety that you put in your practice will help sustain your interest and help sustain your motivation. And it will foster faster progress and more growth. It's mixing things up that helps you learn and develop more as a musician and a harpist. It will help you learn your pieces better. I know we tend to think that if we just do it the same all the time, it will be really reliable. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for the development of skills that enable us to play as well as working on the things that we want to play. So add variety into your practice routine. It's really good for you. That's the best advice I can tell you about what your practice routine should look like. The rest is up to you. But what I want to help you with right now is how to make that practice sticky. And we're going to cover it in just two steps. One is to create that sustainable habit, and the next one is to help you keep it. When it comes to creating a practice habit, it needs to be sustainable, not aspirational. Okay. It can't be something that sounds like a really good idea. It actually has to be something that you think might work. So when you're thinking about your practice habit, you need to really be real with yourself. It would be lovely to do two hours of practice a day. I personally would love to do three hours of practice a day, but it just doesn't work. I can do an hour and I generally try to schedule an hour and a half. I would love to do more, but it doesn't really work most days. Every once in a while I can, and it feels fun. But create a habit that works for you. Don't schedule an hour if you know you're only going to have enough time and energy for a half an hour. When we start working with a new student in our coaching program, or when I start with a new student in the Gold Circle program, one of the questions I ask them right up front is, is how much time do you have every day to practice? And then we work a little bit to really tease out the right answer because we can only set goals, we can only help them achieve what they want to achieve if we know what our time frame is. And the time frame has to be an absolutely realistic time frame. I can't give them an assignment that would take them an hour's worth of practice to do every day if they really only have a half an hour. So that's why this is so important. So be absolutely honest with yourself and then make daily practice a promise that you can actually keep. If you've gotten it down to a reasonable chunk of time, then you're going to have to promise yourself that you're going to stick to it. So here are a couple of things about that focus. When you sit down, you want to get have that pre practice routine in place so that when you sit down to practice, you are ready, your phone's off, the door's shut, whatever it is, and you know what you're going to play and you're ready to go.

So find that way to turn off the outside world. Get in the practice game quickly. That will help you keep your practice promise to yourself because you'll be able to come right to the harp and get right into it. And then here's another little tip. It can be very difficult to practice when you're just not in the mood. You know, you've got stuff that you're worried about, stuff on your mind, you've got a busy day, you're tired, but you promised yourself you would practice. So here are a few quick tips for how to get your practice started when you're not in the mood. First of all, start with a piece of music that you love. Whatever piece of music that you love, get in there and play it. It'll get you playing, it'll get you started. Even if it's not one that you're planning to practice regularly. That's okay, just get in there and play something. Or if this suits your personality better, start with a really powerful technical exercise that you can focus on, one that's going to take quite a bit of concentration.

If this is your sort of thing, this is going to help you shed the things that are weighing on your brain and help you focus on something to do with your heart playing. And it's a great way to start. Or, and this works for most people, start with the part of your practice that demands the most focus. It's likely a really hard spot in one of your pieces and this is a great time to say, okay, I'm really gonna tear this one apart. Especially if you have just a little bit of frustration that you wanna work out, right? You come to the harp and you're like, I don't wanna practice. Well, start with that tricky spot, that one that you know you wanna get in there. You wanna drill pants separately, you wanna work with the metronome, you wanna take it apart, put it back together. That's a great way to use that kind of energy and it will help you get practice done even when you're not in the mood. So there are a few tips right there for creating a sustainable habit. Make it one that really, truly fits your schedule. Promise yourself that you're going to keep this habit. Have that pre practice routine ready so you can focus as soon as you sit down. And then we've got those sort of bonus tips about practicing when you're not in the mood. Okay, so far all this sounds good, but how do you really make it sticky? There's the rub. There are a lot of books that are written on habits, on developing habits, creating habits, keeping habits, and you'll be able to find one that you want. But the thing is, there's been so much, so much research done on this that we can use this information to help us with heart practice. So one of the things that is really powerful is to use a trigger for your practice. This is also called a cue, it's also called a hook. In general, it just means that you want to schedule your practice after something that you already do every day. Think through a typical day for a second. What is it that you always do? Well, maybe you make your coffee in the morning, maybe it's brushing your teeth, maybe you take a walk every day. Maybe you read your email every day. Do the dishes after dinner every day. Something that you always do every day. You have a lot of them. I have a lot of them. We all do, right? So what daily Habit that you already have is a good one to hook your practice onto. For instance, if you're a morning person, maybe right after you've made the coffee in the morning and you've started your first cup of coffee, maybe that's a great time to practice. Or maybe right after you do the dinner dishes at night, or maybe you take a walk and then you come back and you're all energized and on your walk you feel really good. You walked around the neighborhood, neighborhood, you've said hello to some neighbors, you come back and that's a great time to have your mind is cleared, you're focused, you're ready to practice whatever it is. Find that trigger that cue that hook, whatever it is that you can chain your practice habit onto something you already do. Building that habit chain is very powerful and it will help you keep your practice habit. Make it, what we say, sticky.

And the second step here is the fun one. You want to reward yourself for doing it. Now that doesn't mean that you get to, you know, have a blueberry muffin every time you practice or something. That's not what it means. Practice is hard. It's hard to think about the reward of practice. I mean, when we think about the reward of brushing our teeth, there's the long term reward of, you know, not having the dentist yell at you next time you go. But there's the short term reward too, that your mouth feels clean and fresh and you feel, you know, just ready for the day. Practice has lots of long term rewards, right? Eventually that piece gets better. But those short term rewards can be pretty elusive, just like dieting or exercising or something. Those results take a while to show up, so we have to be a little bit artificial and create a really easy win. So here are a couple of ideas. You could decide on one daily to do item that you could check off on your practice. It could be, I'm going to do a different exercise each day this week. You know, I'm going to do exercise three, then exercise four, then five in an exercise book or an etude book. It could be that you're going to sight read something every day. It could be a weekly goal. But decide on one item that you're actually going to be able to check off, right? It could be a maintenance item like playing a review piece. It could be playing a fun piece. It, you know, anything. But that's something that when you've done it, you get to check the box. And if you have a little list, a calendar, a practice plan where you can actually, with pen on paper, check that box, that's even better. But when you have an objective for that day's practice and you can check that box, there's a reward right there and it's a powerful one. Now, helpful objectives. I just went through a bunch of them, right? Like working through an exercise a day or a different etude every day, or playing a review piece every day, or learning a new measure, memorizing something, working on your sight, reading something that you want to do every day, or when you're learning a piece, I'm going to do this on the first day of the week, this on the second day of the week, this on the third day, and it's going to add up to this much by the end of the week. Those are really great objectives. Be careful when you're deciding on your objective for the day that you're. That's going to be your check the box reward. Don't set very vague ones like, oh, well, I want this to be better, or I'm going to get this faster, or I'm going to whatever it is. Those comparative words, better, faster, probably not the words you want, they're vague. They don't allow you to have a really concrete point of arrival. So if you're trying to speed something up, if the tempo you've been playing it is at 60, you say, okay, today I'm going to practice this at 66. And if you practice it at 66, it doesn't matter whether it's going well at 66 or not. Doesn't matter if it's better. You've just done what you set out to do. Do you see the difference? It's a very subtle difference, but it's an extremely important one. When you set those objectives properly, you allow yourself to achieve it. When you give yourself something concrete to do, then you have done it. If you try to say, well, I'm going to memorize this piece. Well, unless you're pretty far along already in your memorization process, memorizing the piece is a big task. You're not going to do that in a day. So I'm going to memorize the first two measures. Great. I'm going to memorize the first half page. If that's what you can do. You think in one practice session, terrific. But give yourself a realistic, a possible objective, something that you think you're actually going to be able to achieve in that one practice session. That's important. Make it specific and make it reasonable. So we've defined a reward. We've of course, chained or hooked your practice habit onto something else. Now, what's going to happen here is that if you keep on doing this, if you get to your practice and you have those rewards, what actually happens in your brain is something kind of amazing. It begins to anticipate the reward and it will lead you to the practice in order to obtain the reward. I know it's kind of like you're feeling like a monkey with a, you know, a lever to push. Well, yeah, exactly, but. But that's what happens here. When you get the reward often enough, you want to do the thing that gets you the reward. So that's why those objectives are so important. You're going to find it easier to sustain your practice habit when you have a clear pattern of achievement and rewards. And one of the tools that can be really helpful here is a streak tracker, right? Just get a piece of paper with a whole bunch of boxes and one box for every day during the week that you expect to practice. And put a lovely check mark or an X or something, or a sticker if you like, in the box every day you do it, that's a reward as well. And that will help you see the kind of practice habit that you're developing. I know it might seem like kind of a grade school technique, but trust me, it works. Okay, so there are some good ideas for making that practice habit stick. It starts with getting rid of the things that sabotage your habit, figuring out how you can get into your practice quickly. We talked about the pre practice routine. We talked about hooking that practice habit onto something you already do, making it a realistic, reasonable amount of time that you put in your schedule so it's there for you. And then we talked about all those different check the box techniques that will help you recognize your achievement and sort of celebrate your practice habit. A couple extra things before we bring this episode to a conclusion. Don't try to make your practice a priority. I think that loads it down with extra emotional weight. We don't need that. I don't want you to say, well, this is a priority because then it can make you feel guilty if you don't do it. And if you end up creating those bad or guilty feelings around it, then it's going to create more resistance. It's going to be harder to get back to your practice. This is all about creating those good feelings and those easy wins. So it makes it easier, easier to sustain your practice habit. Also, please remember that when it comes to practice, small steps equal big results, even with the practice habit itself. Don't take too big a bite. Don't schedule an hour if it's really, you know, if that's a big jump for you. If you're usually doing 15 minutes and you know, then stretch your time to half an hour. See if you can do that. Don't go for the hour right away. That will probably be too big a bite. So make your habit easily achievable in the beginning. You can always stretch it later once you get more adept at it. So that should be enough to get you started with a practice habit that is not only achievable and sustainable and helps you make progress, of course, but is actually fun, something you actually enjoy and look forward to every day. I certainly hope so. I invite you again to join us for the Theory Essentials Intensive, which is starting a week from today. It's going to be seminar so much fun and it's going to be so helpful and it's going to make those connections for you between the music theory that you know or that you think you ought to know and your playing. So you know, how many theory courses do you get to take that are at the Harp for Harpist, designed for harpists, taught by harpists to harpists. It's going to be a terrific course and I would love for you to join us. You'll find the link of course in the show notes or@harpmastery.com under upcoming events. Next week on the podcast, we'll be talking about the links between exercises, etudes and the pieces you play and how they all sort of interrelate and how you can really make the best use of those interrelationships and sort of that eternal triangle exercises, etudes and pieces, and we'll be working with those on the podcast next week. In the meantime, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.