Why You Don’t Want to Practice (and what to do about it)
How to Get Good? 🤷🏻♂️
As many will undoubtedly know, learning to play the piano requires consistent practice over a long period of time. Learning any skill is a mixture of two types of learning, learning the information and learning the physical motor skills.
We will have all experienced learning information before, this is typically how we learn at school! The teacher tells you some stuff and then you remember the stuff. A good student does this by revising and doing exercises that use the new information. A bad student (like myself) will wait until the day before and quickly re-read through everything, knowing that my brain is like a sieve slowly losing facts minute-by-minute prior to the exam!
Motor skills are a physical skill - such as driving. For those that have been driving for many years, it’s probably hard to remember what it was like not to be able to drive. It’s a skill that you don’t really have to think about. You sit in your car and your arms and feet just kind of “do the thing”. However, there will have once been a time where these movements felt completely unnatural and practice was needed in order for it to become second nature.
The problem is that with both of these examples, there is an inbuilt motivation. For school exams, we had the incentive of “not failing”, ruining our life prospects and becoming completely unlovable. Whereas with driving, we had the incentive of looking cool, having freedom and being able to visit the McDonalds drive thru as many times as we like!
But what happens when you are just learning something for yourself and there’s no reason to learn other than for your own satisfaction? This is why many students don’t manage to commit to learning the piano for the long term. So how can you keep yourself wanting to practice?
2. Small Promises 🙏🏻
The idea of sitting at the piano for a long time is not always a palatable thought. Doing something that you want to do is not a challenge, but doing something you don’t want to do is very difficult. If you are feeling resistance about practicing then that tells you that you don’t really want to do it. One of the biggest reasons that most people don’t want to practice is because it feels like too much of a commitment in that moment.
This is why I always suggest doing the absolute minimum to keep the dream alive. When practicing the piano is a habit, then you will no longer feel any resistance…it becomes a part of your day and a part of your identity. But before you reach that level of commitment, you just need to focus on building the habit of regularly practicing. It’s like the inverse of quitting smoking - you haven’t yet built the habit..so you’ve got to commit gradually rather than commiting “cold turkey”.
Think of sitting at the piano as depositing $1 into the bank. Over time those $1’s add up to something much bigger. Some days you may feel motivated to deposit more, but if you can just deposit the minimum required to progress every single day, then you will eventually get there! Your motivation will fluctuate (particularly when you first start) and the days where you don’t feel any resistance will pick up the slack for the ones where you do!
This might be practicing just 1 bar of a piece of music, practicing a single scale a couple of times or playing 1 sight reading exercise. Doing any of these will help you progress with very little time commitment.
3. Output Goals 🎯
Motivation comes as a byproduct of feeling a sense of progression. Progression comes from having something to work towards and something that holds you accountable day-to-day. This is why apps like Duolingo use a tree (a clear path to success) and streaks (something to lose if you aren’t consistent).
The problem is that for learning an instrument, these concepts need to be self-imposed.
In order to create a sense of progression you need something to aim for, a destination that you are working towards. These often come in the form of grades, but it doesn’t need to be! Have you ever seen those videos where someone learns the piano to surprise their wife at their wedding? I have no doubt that in this situation that person is highly motivated to stay consistent and keep learning. Picking a piece/s and an arbitrary date actually does a good job at replicating this phenomenon. If you aim to play a (reasonably challenging) Christmas tune to your family on Christmas Day and keep it a secret…you’ll find it much easier to not skip your practice session.
In a similar way to Duolingo, creating a streak is also a great option for the piano. It gives you something to lose! I always suggest for beginners that they try to commit to practicing daily for 90 days (if possible). The reason for this is because it takes this long for something to become a habit. If you can create a calendar that you tick off each practice…then you have something to lose if you skip a session and this will motivate you!
4. Learn The Why
Interestingly, when I began learning the piano I was annoyingly inquisitive. I was the type of child that asked “why?” to everything..and unfortunately I was often told “because I said so” rather than “because *insert knowledge here*”. Unbeknownst to the teacher I had at the time, I actually found it very difficult to practice something without really knowing what the point of it was.
This is why I think it’s incredibly important to understand exactly why you are practicing what you are practicing and how that will help you achieve your goals. Every scale, technique and bar of a piece should be learning knowing why you are learning it and how that’s going to make you a better player. If you sit down to practice and just go through the motion of learning a scale without any reason…you aren’t going to want to practice it.
Whereas if you seek out the answers to your questions so that you fully understand, then you will see exactly how your practice is going to help you and this will keep you motivate to practice!
Matthew Cawood
(This is from my “Monday Music Tips“ weekly email newsletter. Join my mailing list to be emailed with future posts.)