Optimising Your Practice to Achieve More in Less Time
1. It’s Not Your Fault 🫤
Many years ago, as I headed off to study the piano at music college, I was excited and incredibly determined to be the best pianist that the college has ever seen (very dramatic - I know)…I arrived and found myself surrounded by pianists from around the world whom had studied under some of the best and most esteemed piano teachers around. Even though I had also put in a lot of practice up until this point, it immediately hit me that I was now just a small fish in a big pond!
So in my first year of study I set a goal, and that goal was to practice 8 hours a day, everyday. I would set my alarm for 5:30am each morning and head to the practice rooms that would open at 6:00am. This way I was able to practice for 4 hours before any of the other pianists had managed to finish their breakfast. I was then able to go to lectures, attend ensemble practice and then practice for 2 hour in the afternoon followed by another 2 hour session in the evening!
After many months of practicing like this, I slowly began to realised 2 things….
Firstly, there is no such thing as “the best” and this was an entirely ridiculous goal to strive towards! Although I had played in several piano competitions at this point in which musicians are “competing“ against one another…the more I learnt, the more I noticed that everyone was able to play pieces in their own equally “correct” and justifiable ways!
The second thing that I realised was that each of the other pianists that were only practicing for 2 hours each day were improving just as much as I was! So why was it that I could be practicing for 6 more hours than the others every single day…but not seeing 4 times the results?
2. Before You Sit Down 🪑
Well, over time I came to realise that all practice is not equal. Just because I was going into a practice room for 4 hours each morning, didn’t mean that what I was doing in those 4 hours was moving me any closer towards my goals! The truth is, my practice was just incredibly inefficient. I would spend much of the sessions procrastinating, playing sections of the music that I could already play and switching to a different piece whenever I felt a slight bit of mental resistance or challenge.
Once I had noticed this, in an effort to try and fix my problem, I asked myself “what if I was only allowed to practice for 2 hours a day? Would it be possible to do the same amount of work? If so, what would I need to do?”
And so, I devised a practice plan. (I actually self published the template as a book so I could buy it and write in it each practice session - yes, I was that much of a loser!)
The plan was very simple and had 4 columns.
(The full template is available to download for free on my website: www.matthewcawood.com/store)
10 minutes before each session I would fill out each of these columns for each of the various pieces and parts of the pieces that needed working on (I would also use a row for scales). I allocated 5, 10 or 15 minutes to each, depending on what the problem was. If it wasn’t fixed by the end of the time…I would add it again to the next practice session!
I immediately noticed a massive difference in the quality of my practice. What was taking me several hours to do with my previous method (or lack of method), I was now getting done very quickly! As well as this, because I allocated limited time to spend on each problem, I found that I didn’t have time to procrastinate!
3. Following The Plan 📝
So how can you apply this to your practice? Most recreational piano players aren’t getting up at 5:30am to practice and most players don’t have any aspirations of being “the best”! However, there are a few key takeaways that you can implement to make your practice much more efficient and mean that you are spending much less time achieving the same results.
Firstly, plan what you are going to practice before you actually play any key on the piano.
It’s very common for players to sit down at the piano and just start playing something. But if you do this, then you are potentially not working on the things that need the most attention. So, if you are learning pieces, try jotting down 2-3 different problems in the piece before you start. If you are working on multiple pieces at the same time, then try it for each piece.
Secondly, give yourself some time constraints!
I big reason for not staying on task when we play the piano is because we think “I’l learn that later”, and then later never comes or we assume that it will fix itself if we play the piece enough. If you allocate limited time to fixing a problem and a maximum amount of time you are going to be practicing for…then this will create a sense of urgency about getting your problems solved!
Thirdly, separate practice from playing.
I know that giving yourself time limits and writing down things you need to do can make learning the piano sound very regimented and it can maybe sound like it takes away some of the fun? However, it doesn’t need to be. If you dedicate some time to be disciplined and move your playing forward and other times to just sit down and play for fun…then you can get the best of both worlds!
Lastly, dedicate time in each practice session for scales and sight reading.
When I was using my practice plan template to practice, I would very often use one of the rows for scales and one of the rows for sight reading. Spending 5-10 minutes each practice on scales and 5-10 minutes trying to read pieces you have never seen before will improve your theory knowledge, technique and reading ability very quickly! If you can make it a habit, then it will just become something that you do, rather than something that becomes a weakness later on!
4. Optimising The Plan 😮
This was not all I did though! Having spent the time following my plan and practicing each day, I then went off to meet some friends for breakfast (a violinist and another pianist - both were also early morning practicers). During this time I would once again pull out my self published practice book and “evaluate” how well I stuck to the plan! (I realise this sounds very keen!)
This section had 5 rows and 3 columns!
(The full template is available to download for free on my website: www.matthewcawood.com/store)
There is a saying that goes “what gets measured, gets improved.” So I wanted to find a way to quantify how well the practice session went, and work out a kind of points system.
So I came up with 5 key areas that I considered good measures for a successful practice session; focus, improvement, time management, plan implementation and plan effectiveness! I would then give each of these a score out of 10, which gave me a total score each practice out of 50. I could then multiply this by 2 to give me a “success percentage”.
For me, this was key to getting the most out of my practice because now I could compete against my past self rather than others! Each time I practiced I was trying to beat the score I got on the last session. This meant that the plans consistently got better and more suitably challenging, my ability to focus improved and my ability to judge how long certain tasks would take improved.
Once again, you don’t need to be as regimented as I was, but from my methods we can learn several things about practice.
If you just take a moment after each practice session to ask yourself “did I get done what I planned to get done?” and if not then “why not?”. These kind of questions along with a loose plan with time constraints can really start to shift how you are spending time at the piano and can help you see drastic improvements with much less practice.
This is one of my actual practice sessions from back then:
If you do want to try out the plan that I used, you can download it for free on my website and use it for each practice session: www.matthewcawood.com/store
Matthew Cawood
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