On Practicing – Form vs. Time
Once I achieve one of my current goals, I will tackle this one:
“I will be practicing violin for 10 measures every day, in two months.”
I was tempted to ignore my own advice, and change it to “practicing for 45 minutes each day”. Fortunately, in looking for violin practice tips, I came across the following:
Length of Practice Session
How long you practice every day is irrelevant. How much you accomplish when you practice is what counts. It’s great to follow a scheduled practice time, but if your daily practice ritual consists of playing straight through pieces over and over while you daydream, you might be better off not practicing at all. It’s easy to reinforce mistakes when you don’t concentrate while playing or when you practice without purpose or focus. Strive for quality practice, not quantity mediocre results.
– Dr. Robin K. Deverich (violinonline.com)
That is excellent advice, and is not confined to playing the violin. In exercise, it is better to do 5 reps with proper form, than 10 half-assed ones. Even in goals where it is absolutely essential that they be time-based, such as improving your personal best ‘100m dash’ time, you should try to keep quality and form in mind.
Keeping form in mind is difficult, for the same reason that going to the gym is difficult. It involves putting your immediate satisfaction on hold, for greater satisfaction in the long term.
Practicing a certain amount of time each day gives you a sense of accomplishment, and allows you to make great strides in the first few weeks.
But mastery can’t be built on a foundation of incompetence. I will need to master each step to move on to the next.
With HabitShaper, I can leave my goal in its present form. Two months after I start, I will be practicing 10 measures every day. HS will recommend a starting point of 1 measure a day, which I can easily meet.
From then on, it’s just a little more each day.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment