If you haven’t seen my September video yet, I highly recommend that you check it out. Among the videos I’ve made for this project so far, it’s one of my favorites, for two reasons:
1. It documents the first time in 2019 where I’ve practiced every single day for a whole month
2. I put a Star Wars crawl at the beginning and I am very proud of myself.
I initially thought I would write about what it was like to practice every day for a whole month. At first I thought, that seems silly, why would I do that? Then I thought, why do I think that’s a dumb idea? And I realized it’s because I feel ashamed that practicing every day for a whole month isn’t the norm for me. It’s the exception. This project is proving that to me, and I am ashamed. So far, this project has been eight months of talking and writing about what it has been like to not practice every day. Therefore, I do think it is important for me to say what it was like to actually practice every day:
-it was triumphant, tiring, annoying, interesting, and exciting;
-it made me feel more comfortable and confident with my instrument and my repertoire;
-it made me my roll my eyes at myself upon realizing for the millionth time that practicing every day actually does make you better at your instrument;
-it made me feel accomplished, like practicing had become habitual instead of something I desperately kept trying to add to my life out of a sense of shame and “shoulds.”
However, I think there’s a more important question I need to address.
Why did it take me nine months to get here?
I don’t quite know the answer. When I look back on that time, I remember feeling super motivated by my friend’s concert at the end of August (see the previous July/August post for the whole story), so maybe it was a motivation issue? But motivation has a short shelf life. It can get you going, but it’s not what keeps you moving when things start to get difficult. It’s not like I had never been motivated to practice on a daily basis before September 2019.
Maybe I saw that I had a streak going and didn’t want to break it? But wouldn’t that imply that I didn’t care about any other streak that I had going during the year? The truth is, I never want to break the chain, and I’m always sad when I do. So that’s not it either.
Maybe I was less busy? I look back on that time and remember that I had my usual gigs, and on top of that, I needed to prepare and record two pieces for my album (which will hopefully be released later this year!). So...I was pretty busy. That’s not it.
So what made this month different? While I don’t yet know why it took me so long to get here, I can tell you two things I didn’t have during any of the previous months that helped me keep my streak going.
First, I used a planner. I love planners. I love planners so much that I actually tend to overuse them. I want to use colorful pens and markers, and make sure everything I write in my planner looks beautiful...which is fun, but not sustainable for me. So my planner usage tends to drop off pretty quickly, especially when life gets busy and I don’t have time to doodle flowers and stars next to my painstakingly tried-to-make-it-perfect-cursive daily schedule.
So if this is how I normally use a planner, how did it help me so much in September? I used a specific planner called the Panda Planner, which has many cool features, but the most useful one for me was a panel in which I was supposed to prioritize my top 5 daily tasks and write them down in the order I needed to do them. I optimized this system for my own needs by always putting practicing as my Number One Priority task, even if it wasn’t possible for me to practice first thing each day. This way, I was communicating to myself that practicing was the most important thing I needed to do that day, as soon as I possibly could. I couldn’t move it to later in the day, or put it off until the next day, or just not do it for a week. That was the one thing I needed to figure out some way to do during the day, no matter what. I wrote in that planner almost every day in September, and I always wrote practicing in the Number One Priority spot. I am sure this helped me shift my mindset about practicing from “a thing I am supposed to do today” to “a thing I am definitely going to do today.”
Second, I had the idea at the end of August that I should take a one-minute video of my practicing every day in September. It was just a passing thought, and a way to add some variety to the videos in my project, but it turned out to be an incredibly effective way to keep myself accountable. When I felt tired, I reminded myself that if I didn’t practice, I wouldn’t have a video for that day, and then there would be a day missing from my September video, and that would make me sad. Also, having that goal of just one minute of footage helped me remember that even if I didn’t have time to practice for an hour, I could do twenty minutes, and those twenty minutes would not only be worth more than zero minutes, they would also ensure that I kept my commitment to capturing one minute of footage every day. Now when I watch the video I made from those 30 days of footage (edited down; don’t worry, I promise it’s not a half-hour long!), it makes me feel very satisfied to see all of those days accounted for, and to see them add up to something I am proud of.
So what is the takeaway? If I look closely at what helped me, I can see that my planner activity helped me identify practicing not only as a priority for myself, but as part of my identity. Writing it down made me a Person Who Practices, instead of a Person Who Thinks They Should Practice But Doesn’t. The daily video footage was a great accountability tool because I kept my goal low (only one minute of footage per day), it made it easier for me to view any amount of practicing time as valuable, as opposed to my usual mindset when tends to default to, “If I don’t have at least an hour, it’s not worth doing.”
Maybe keeping a planner or making daily one-minute videos isn’t something that would help you, and that’s okay! Find something that validates your identity as a Person Who Does (Blank) and not “I feel like I should be doing (blank) every day but I am not and therefore I am worthless.” Pair that with something that helps you stay accountable, either to yourself or another person, but make your goal something extremely reasonable - one minute instead of one hour, one line instead of one page, etc. Thinking this way encouraged me instead of discouraging me, and I know that is why I was able to finally reach my goal. You can too! I believe in you. Good luck!