Use Your Practice Time Wisely - Even If You Can Never Stick To a Plan - PHH 042

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started. Welcome to the show.

Sometimes planning is counterproductive. Now, I know this sounds strange coming from me because as you know, I am a huge advocate of having a plan and working the plan when it comes to your practice. That's truly the secret, I believe, of being able to play the music you want and to creating Harp happiness over the long haul. There's power in a well conceived and consistently executed plan, particularly when it comes to your practice. But planning doesn't come naturally for everyone. And so I'm going to tell you today that the good news is that planning isn't the only path to progress.

Now, in my house, my husband is the true planner. For example, while I was working on this podcast, he was browsing the web planning, planning out activities to schedule for a trip we have coming up. Now, I like to do my research on these things too, but he likes to have everything planned out day by day, as soon as possible. I prefer to get where we're going, get the feel of the place before I make my final decisions. I want to really, you know, get my bearings, to sort of smell the air. Every place has a its distinct energy and atmosphere, and I really want to know what that's like. But before I commit myself to an itinerary, my favorite moments on any trip are the serendipitous ones, like the places that you find by accident or the locals that you get into conversation with in a sidewalk cafe or pub. Fortunately, my husband loves those moments too, and we manage to make our vacations a nice blend of things we plan and things we stumble on. But of course, you don't want to go stumbling through your heart practice, and neither do I. But our practice time should be productive and creative it should be about making progress and making music. So if you're the kind of person who resists planning their practice, or who thinks they should plan their practice but can't seem to stick to a plan, then this podcast will give you the permission you've needed to go with a practice style that feels more intuitive and natural for you. Or if you just need a change in your practice routine or something to get you through a low energy day, you're going to love this one too. Or if you find yourself up against the clock, you've got a busy day, you don't have enough time to do the kind of practice you'd like. Well, I have some shortcut practice strategies that'll help you keep your momentum going and put those nasty guilt twinges right where they belong. In the trash.

So this show is for all you free spirits, creative types, busy people, or for any of us with a touch of spring fever. I think it's time for a change of pace.

Now, in case you're feeling that lack of progress I was just talking about, I want to take just a moment to remind you about my upcoming webinar. In fact, it's so upcoming, it's tomorrow. Tuesday, March 8th at 7:30pm Eastern Time. Now this is a webinar all about progress. And even if you don't want to be, you know, the the world's next, you know, greatest harpist, you probably still want to improve to to find more satisfaction in your harp playing. I mean, for most harpists, the stepping stones to their next level right to making that progress just aren't very clear. For instance, have you ever found yourself choosing the same kind of piece over and over again? Not just because you like it, but because it's the only kind of piece you seem to be able to finish? Or maybe you've been playing for a while and seeing other harpists who started more recently making bigger strides and playing the music you only wish you could play. Or maybe it just feels like your practice time is the same old same old and you're getting tired of waiting for the results to manifest themselves.

Well, what really pains me is to see harpists give up on their dreams and settle for where they are. They think, you know, they've found their level and figure. They just have to accept that as being the limit. I think that that's wrong.

That's why I designed this webinar that's coming up tomorrow to help you and other harpists like you understand what you need to do to move to that next level of harp happiness, to play more of the music you really want to play and to struggle less to play it. So this is a totally free webinar. I'll be sharing all those keys to leveling up that I've shared with my students over all my years of teaching. We'll talk about the progression of essential skills that show you where your next steps are, and we'll figure out how to know what you ought to be working on right now to get to that next level so that by the time we're through with the webinar, you will know everything. Why you think that you, you know, what you know about the skills that you need to move up might be completely wrong. At least you'll know what you need to do right now, what your next steps are going to be. It's not about organizing your practice or doing more practice. It's about the skills that you need to get to where you want to go to be able to play that next piece on your list. So if you haven't already registered for the webinar, please do that right away because the webinar's tomorrow. And if you register for the webinar, even if you can't be there live, although of course, I highly recommend that, because you get to ask questions, right? But if you can't be there live, that's okay. If you register, we'll still be able to send you the replay so that you can watch it and get the same benefit even if you can't join us live. So you will find the link to join the webinar to register for the webinar in the show notes for this podcast, or you can go right to harpmastery.com and you will find it under Upcoming Events. So hop on over there and register, and we'll get you all set for the webinar. It's called Check, Check. What's your level? And that's what we'll be talking about, how you can check where you are and see what you need to do to get to where you want to go, which is what we're all about here, right? So we're going to start our discussion right now on sort of destructuring your practice. So we're going to start with a discussion of the Eisenhower matrix. My guess is that you've seen this matrix, but maybe you didn't know it was the Eisenhower matrix. And it is the invention of, of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. And of course before that, he had served as a general in the United States army, becoming one of only five five star generals. He had been supreme commander of the Allied Forces during World War II. This was a man who was used to managing a lot of responsibilities, to dealing with a lot of tasks, a lot of projects and a lot of people. You can imagine the sort of personal organizational skills he had to have to negotiate all these different responsibilities. So this matrix was his way of keeping track of that. And I'm guessing you've seen it. The matrix looks like a square divided into four squares, two on the top and two on the bottom.

Tasks or projects or whatever you like would go into one of those four squares based on their relative level of urgency and their level of importance. It was a way to classify what was really there to sort out the necessary from the time wasters. So that tasks could be in that upper left quadrant, they could be urgent and important. That would be the upper left quadrant. The upper right quadrant was dedicated to important tasks that weren't urgent.

The bottom left quarter would be urgent tasks that weren't necessarily important.

And then the bottom right corner, tasks that were neither urgent nor important.

Now you can see how that would really help a person organize a lot of tasks, right? Things that were urgent and important were things you needed to do. Things that are important but not necessarily urgent. You get to plan when you're going to do them. Things in that bottom left quadrant.

That are urgent but not important, you probably want to have someone else do because they're not important enough for you. The big five star general right. To to have your time spent on them, you need to do things that are urgent and important. And the things in that bottom right corner that aren't urgent or important, well, they just need to be eliminated. Absolutely. Right now when you're thinking about this in terms of practice or harp playing, it might seem like it's not quite so applicable. Now we do have things that are urgent, right? Things like preparing music for an upcoming performance or for a rehearsal or an ensemble rehearsal or preparing for a lesson. If your lesson's tomorrow, maybe you better practice today. That could be urgent. And we do understand that things are important, right? Like music you need to learn for a lesson or a performance, but that lesson or performance isn't tomorrow, it's still in the future. Or skills that you know you need to develop to move your heart playing forward. Not urgent, but definitely important.

And of course we really don't need examples of things that aren't important or aren't urgent, right? That could be Anything from ordering new strings, which might be important but hopefully not urgent, could be urgent depending, right? It could be alphabetizing your music, right. Possibly important, but definitely not urgent, to dusting the harp, which is probably not either urgent or important.

Where we need to be mindful really is in the in between those not quite so crystal clear areas, the ones where you need to decide, like how important is reviewing your music? I mean, for me personally, review is how I maintain a repertoire. And having pieces that are ready to play is absolutely crucial for me. In fact, as a professional harpist, it's a non negotiable how many pieces I have ready at any given time or what those pieces are or how often I review them. Now those are choices I get to make. And you get to make those kinds of choices for yourself too. And you can use a very simple guideline besides the matrix, which we're going to be redrawing here in just a second, along practice lines. This most simple guideline is necessity. It's not what anyone else considers necessary for your playing. I mean, you don't need a list of requirements for becoming a better harpist. I'm talking about the inner necessity, that inner impulse that is pushing you to do something like play the harp because you want to, because it feeds you, because you feel called to do it, or maybe not, right? We all want different things from our heart playing, whether it's playing certain pieces or playing at a more advanced level, or playing music for ourselves to soothe our soul. And at any given time we get to choose one of those or, you know, a different one from the day before. It doesn't matter, right? But at any given time we can choose one of those over the others. Necessity just means what we must do either for ourselves or for others. And necessity is how we are going to redraw that Eisenhower matrix for our heart practice. What's our goal here? It's to discover what we can do in our practice time that will feel like our practice time is a reward, like our efforts are giving, giving us energy instead of sapping our energy.

We expect, or at least we hope that our practice time will move us forward, will help us improve. As harpists, we want our practice time to lift our spirits, to elevate our mood. So when it either moves us forward or elevates our mood, we count it as a win if it does both of them. Wow, it's a banner day. If our practice doesn't do either of those things, it's a waste of our time. So to use our practice time Wisely, we want to make sure that it at least elevates our spirit and our mood. A helpful bonus is if it moves us forward. So that's what our new harp happiness matrix is going to measure. Not urgency and importance, but it's going to measure elevate, as in elevate our mood or our playing and improve, as in improve our playing. Right. So we want to do both of those things in our practice, but obviously we get to choose exactly in which proportion we do that. So these are our new elevate and improve, so that we're not measuring urgency or importance, but we're measuring harp happiness potential. Right. Practice could be elevating or it could be enervating. Right. Giving us energy. Elevating our energy or enervating us? Sapping our energy.

So those are two words I want you to keep in mind. Elevate and enervate.

And then here are two more words. It could give us leverage in our playing. Right? Our practice could sharpen our skills, get us to the next level. That's giving us leverage. Or it could actually cause our harp playing to languish, to stay stuck where it is, or even worse, to sort of lose some of the progress that we've made. So here are four words, and we're going to use these to create our matrix. Is it exactly what Eisenhower did? No. Is it going to help you guide your practice? I think it really could, and it's going to be fun. So what I'd love you to do is to get yourself a piece of paper and something to write with. Now, if you're driving or if you're on the treadmill or something, you know, you can listen to this now and then you can listen to it again later when you can actually write it down. So if you have gotten that piece of paper and that pen or pencil, by the way, I love to use purple pens. Purple pens are my absolute favorite. So if you ever get a communication from me where I've had to write and you can read my scribble, you'll find it's probably in purple pen. Any case. Okay, so you've got your, your pen or pencil and your paper, and what I'd like you to do is to draw this matrix. So draw four squares. Just be sure to leave room on top of your matrix so that we can take some notes there and on the left hand side of your matrix, so we can make some notes there as well. But you want four squares there now across the top of the matrix, over that first column on the Left, right at the top. I want you to write the word elevate.

In this column. We're going to be elevating something, elevating your mood, your spirits. We might be elevating your technique or elevating your musicianship or your repertoire. We certainly want to elevate your harp happiness. So those are all things we might elevate. And you just make that little list right at the top. Then beside elevate. So this would be over the top of the right hand column in your matrix, you're going to write enervate. This is sapping your energy. And things that SAP your energy could be everything from things you just find mildly annoying about practice or dull, like maybe repetition or scales. I mean, these are things that are necessary, but they're just not particularly your cup of tea, whatever your cup of tea is.

But these things could range all the way from this, you know, mildly annoying and boring to absolutely pointless and mind numbing. And you probably know what those are for you.

So those are over top of your matrix. Then on the left hand side.

By the first row, the top row on that left, I want you to write the word leverage. We're going to leverage anything. This is anything that helps you and your heart playing grow. Think of the words improving or making progress. That's what leveraging is about, leveraging your practice time to make progress.

And then underneath that, next to the bottom row, you're going to write that word languish. This is anything that would keep that status quo going, you know, just kind of going around the same old, same old sort of stuff. Or it could actually be something that stalls your progress, like not practicing for a week or a month or a year, whatever it is. So we've got four words. And across the top we've got elevate. And then enervate. And down the left hand side, leverage and languish. All right, you've got that. So think about what might go in those squares for you. And everybody's a little bit different here. But as you're looking at that, obviously you want to stay in that top left square, because that's the intersection of elevate and leverage. So this is not only things that elevate your mood and your general harp happiness level, but they move you forward too. Working on, maybe working on your technique in a way that you enjoy. So this is where elevate meets leverage. This is where progress is really going to live in that particular square. So that's where your harp happiness is going to be as well. Okay, now, it would be lovely if you could always stay in that quadrant, but the fact is that sometimes we need to do things in the square to the right too. And that's where enervate, that sort of annoying thing runs into leverage. Right, that leveraged but enervating quadrant. This could be if you have music you have to learn but you're not really excited about, or it could be technique work that you know you really need to do because it's going to be really good for you and it's going to allow you to play that special piece, but the technique work itself you kind of find boring.

So while you are probably going to dip into quadrant two for some of your practice, we want a lot of it to be in quadrant one. Doesn't that sound great? It does, doesn't it? Just to think about your practice as elevating you.

Okay, so obviously the bottom left corner, this is where elevate meets languish. Right now, your same old practice or warm up routine might feel pretty comfortable, in which case it's sort of, sort of elevating you because it feels good. But it might not actually be elevating your skill level. It might not actually be moving you forward. You might just be doing the same routine without actually thinking about how it's going to move your skills forward.

Actually, anytime during your practice that you find yourself sort of zoning out, you're in this particular quadrant, you might feel sort of good because it's sort of elevating, but at the same time, you're not really focusing on your work. And that's a languish kind of a skill. Or it's not a skill really, isn't it? It's a languish moment because you're not really doing the work. You're just kind of showing up.

Now in that bottom right hand corner. Ooh, we're enervating. Where sapping your energy meets nothing good for your heart playing. There's probably one thing, one big thing that belongs in that quadrant, the only thing that you really don't want to do, and that would be to not practice or to not play the harp consistently regularly. Right? And you know that when you go for too long without playing the harp, it's harder to get back to it. That's the danger quadrant. You don't want to be there. So let's not spend any time there, shall we? Let's figure out how we can use our practice time to stay in those top two quadrants.

If I asked you to come up with a list of Ways that your practice could elevate you and create leverage. I'll bet you could think of a hundred things that would fit the bill, right? Pieces that you want to play or learn or.

Pieces that would develop your skills or exercises even, that would develop your skills. So you could play those pieces that you want to. There's elevate and leverage right there. Right? You could come up with a list of a lot of those things in a moment, I'll bet you. Which is great. But that by itself isn't going to help you focus your practice time on a daily basis. Which brings us back to necessity. What do you need to do in your heart? Practice time? What do you need to do for you? Those are those Quadrant one things. And what do you need to do for someone else? Those are those Quadrant two things. Right? We're talking about things that are absolutely elevating you and working on your skills. They're Quadrant one things. Those Quadrant two things not quite as interesting to you, but definitely things you need to do. So there are some obligations that come in that Quadrant two.

Think about it this way. Think about that pile of music that you have on your music stand or next to your harp. And in your mind, if you can't do this for real, picture yourself going over to that pile and sorting it very quickly into Quadrant one music or Quadrant two music.

If it's not in Quadrant one or Quadrant two, put it away. We don't want to spend time on music that would be Quadrant three or Quadrant four. Right? We're trying to stay in the leverage quadrants.

Even if we have to dip into the slightly annoying stuff to do it, we want to stay in the, you know, in that Quadrant one. And my guess is that in that pile of music, most of what you have in that pile is actually Quadrant one music. That would be that you want to play, that you're excited about doing, and that would help move your skills forward. At the same time, that would help you be a better harpist, either because you'd be playing more music or you'd have something to play that you really enjoy, or because you know that it's a stretch and it's going to take you to that next level.

Right? So create that pile. Quadrant one music. Quadrant two music. Oh, you might have some exercises or some technical stuff in Quadrant two, you might have some ensemble music. You have to practice that. Maybe you're not so excited about spending time on the ensemble part itself, because it's maybe not as much fun practicing a part, but, you know, you have to do it. And it's, you know, something that's still important to you to do. That's a quadrant two thing. Quadrant three and four things we're going to put totally away.

So you've ditched everything that wasn't necessary by putting the quadrant three and quadrant four music away. That should already feel really, really good, actually. It's kind of magical, right? It's sort of like only having to eat food that you love and at the same time not having to worry about gaining weight, right? Because all the food you love is actually good for you, too. That's what you just did with your music. You took away everything that you didn't like to do that wasn't even good for you, and you put it away. And so now you're left with all the fun stuff. Okay, we sorted your music. So now what do you do? Well, if you can't stick to one practice plan, but you still want to make progress, I mean, maybe you're one of those people, right, who's like, ugh, I hate planning my practice. I hate doing the same thing every day. I like to just come and sort of make up my practice as I go along.

Well, here's what you can do. Look at your quadrant one pile and your quadrant two pile. Then take no more than three things from quadrant one and two things from quadrant two. Start your practice with a quadrant one thing, then do a quadrant two thing, and then end with a quadrant one thing. You've got a little sandwich, right, Quadrant one, which is our best stuff, Quadrant two, our worthwhile stuff, and then ending with quadrant one, our favorite stuff. Again, add more if you have time. Always alternating quadrants and ending with a quadrant one. Easy peasy, right? So this works if you want to, you know, if you want to sort of plan it a little bit ahead. You make your stack of quadrant one and quadrant two stuff and decide what you're going to do from those quadrants each day for a week. Or if you're even more of a free spirit, if you have that pile there, all you need to do is come to the harp, choose a quadrant one, play it, work on it, whatever, do a quadrant two, do another quadrant one, and you've planned your practice instantly and you've done things that were completely worthwhile. Right Quadrant and quadrant one and quadrant two things, they don't just have to be pieces of music. I mean, if you want to work on sight reading or if you want to work on improvisation, those count, too. Or if you feel like you need to work on one of those, that moves them maybe over to Quadrant two. Maybe they're not quite as much fun for you at this point, but you still really want to do them. They're necessary for you and for your harp happiness. So, you know, it doesn't have to be a piece of music. It could be one of those kinds of things.

So that's all Quadrant one and Quadrant two without much of a plan. But you can see how the progress is still going to happen, right?

Here's another example. Maybe you just need a change in your practice routine. Maybe you just need something to get you through a low energy day. We've got your Quadrant one and Quadrant two piles. Just stick to Quadrant one for today. You want to mix something up, you want to find more energy for yourself. Just do stuff from Quadrant one, plow through as many of them as you feel like, or work on one of them in depth. They're going to elevate your mood. And because they're Quadrant one, they're also going to leverage your playing. You're working on things that are going to help achieve your personal harp goals without having to do any heavy lifting and planning and goal setting. If that's not your thing, easy peasy, just stick to Quadrant one. Here's another instance. Suppose, okay, you've got one of those really, really busy days. You're up against the clock, you have not very much practice time and you really want to dig in and do in depth practice, but you're just not going to have the time to do it. And so you're sort of almost tempted to skip your practice entirely because you don't have enough time to get stuff done. So we're going to skip those feelings entirely because you've got Quadrant one pieces and Quadrant two pieces. And if you start with Quadrant two, you're going to feel like you've done something virtuous because Quadrant two isn't quite so much fun. But Quadrant two is about things that are good for you. So choose one or two things from Quadrant two and do those first. If you only have time for one of them, that's fine, because it's going to give you that virtuous feeling from doing something that you know is good for you, something you know you should do. And it's absolutely going to free you from any feeling that you're, you know, skimping on your practice a little bit, right? And then just to finish, follow up with a Quadrant one thing as a little bit of a treat and you're done. And of course, whichever Quadrant two thing you choose, be sure that it fits in the time you've got. If you only have 15 minutes that day, if you're thinking, oh, or maybe you only have five minutes, well, just sit down and do one of those Quadrant two things for the time you have and tack on one extra minute and finish with a Quadrant one thing and boom, you're done. And you know you've still moved things forward, you've moved the needle. You've done stuff that is not only stuff you love, but stuff that's also good for you. And that's the point. That's the power of this matrix.

Now, it's quite possible that you've been doing this in your practice without ever thinking about it as a matrix, right? But I have found that when I start thinking about things this way, it makes it so much easier for me not to waste my time, for me to plan to do the stuff that I really have to do and want to do as opposed to anything else. And for me, with the amount of music that I generally have to keep preparing, not wasting time is really important.

Just from a time perspective. But not wasting my energy is also really important. And I know that's important for you, too. So finding where your Quadrant one and Quadrant two strong points are, what do you love that you can put in Quadrant one? And what do you know you really want to do, even if it's not quite as interesting, but is going to be really good for you, that you can put in Quadrant two?

That's where you're going to find the most fun and the most benefit in your practice. And that is a double win. I hope you're intrigued enough by the idea of this matrix to try using it, even if you only use it for a week or so. I think that you'll find it's very freeing. And it's so much fun to think that you're playing music and working on things that you really are excited about working on. It's just tons of fun and it's a great way to be sure that you're making progress without having to be quite so organized about it, if you're not that sort of consummate planning type. So I'd love to hear how the matrix works for you. So don't be shy about leaving a comment on this post so that you can so that we all know about your matrix success.

And on the other hand, you can always email me and let me know@podcastarpmastery.com and I'll be happy to have those comments too.

Next week right here on the podcast, we're going to be talking about Irish composers. Next week we will be celebrating St. Patrick's Day and we'll be talking about Irish music, but talking about some Irish composers you might not know. So we're not going to be talking so much about shamrocks and shillelies, but we are going to be talking about some amazing composers and I'll be playing some of their really beautiful music for you. So I hope you will enjoy that and don't miss that. It's going to be just lovely. I just love playing some of this music and I'm excited about sharing it with you. Also, remember today is just about the last day you can register for our Check Check what's yous Level Webinar where we talk about what those skills are that you need to keep moving forward. A great webinar, by the way, to go with the the Matrix that we were talking about today could double up on the power of the Matrix for you for sure. So I hope you enjoyed today's discussion. I certainly enjoyed sharing it with you, and I look forward to talking with right here on the podcast next Monday. Have a wonderful week and I'll talk to you then. 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.