This is the second article on applying Atomic Habits by James Clear to practicing. In this first article we talked why you need systems instead of goals, and that systems are made up of habits. In this article we’ll talk about exactly how to create a good habit. According to James Clear, there are 4 steps to creating a good habit:
1) Make it obvious 2) Make it attractive 3) Make it easy 4) Make it satisfying He calls these “The Four Laws of Behavior Change.” So, how do we apply these to practicing? Let’s look at each one. 1) Make it obvious This means you want to make it obvious when and how you’ll accomplish your practicing. You shouldn’t have to wonder if you’ll practice, or when you’ll practice. You want it to be as automatic as possible. An easy way to do this is to make a plan for when and where you’ll practice each day. For example, “I will practice for 10 minutes after school in my living room.” On weekends, you can adjust it to, “I will practice for 30 minutes after breakfast in my living room.” Having a plan makes it obvious when you’ll practice. 2) Make it attractive. This is a way you can make yourself really want to practice. Sometimes, you might just be excited to practice because you really enjoy the piece you’re working, or you’re feeling particularly motivated that day. But other days, you might not really feel like practicing. You might feel tired or like you’d rather watch TV. Those are the days when these strategies are the most important. A strategy for making a habit attractive is to do something you want to do, or like doing, after your new habit. So, for example, after you practice you could watch your favorite TV show, or eat a snack, or play with your dog, or go outside for a walk. This way, you’re reinforcing your practice habit with something enjoyable. This is especially effective on the days when practicing doesn’t feel particularly enjoyable. 3) Make it Easy This rule means you want it to be as easy as possible to start practicing. One idea that James Clear talks about is the two-minute rule. This means, when you’re trying to start a new habit, the most important thing is just to start it! So, for the first two weeks of building your new practice habit, all you have to do is practice for two-minutes. That’s it! This will make it easier to start practicing because it’s easy to make time to practice for two minutes. Yes, you probably will only be able to play a few scales, or go over one piece, but that’s OK. At first, the most important thing is to build the habit of sitting down to practice. Once that feels automatic, probably after about two weeks, you can start adding time to your practice. Here are a few other things I do to make practicing easy: · Leave my bassoon out on a stand. This might not always be possible if you have to take your bassoon back and forth from school. However, you could try it on the weekend. Put your bassoon together Saturday morning and leave it out through the weekend so it’s easier to grab and start practicing when it’s time. · Leave your music stand out with your music on it, in the order you want to practice. For example, have your scale sheets on top, then your solo, and then your etude book. · Keep everything you need to practice in your bassoon case or in your practice area. Let’s be real, bassoon requires a lot of accessories. Keep your metronome, tuner, reeds, water cup, music, and pencil all in the area where you’ll practice. 4) Make it satisfying Ultimately, we want practice to feel satisfying. A great way to do this is to have a habit tracker. There’s a lot a different ways to track your habits, but essentially you just mark each day that you practice. This is surprisingly effective and motivating! You can put a sticker on the calendar for every day you practice or create a specific journal for tracking your practice. There also are many apps that help track habits. One of my favorite apps is the Forest app, where you set a timer for X amount of time, and as long as you don’t look at your phone during that time, it plants a tree in your virtual forest. It’s oddly satisfying to plant a tree every day, and at the end of the week you can see how many tress you planted. The point is to keep track of your practice. Once you have a streak going, you might find you want to practice every day in order to not break the chain. This provides clear evidence of your progress. Here is a link to the Forest App: Google:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cc.forestapp&hl=en_US Apple:https://apps.apple.com/us/app/forest-stay-focused/id866450515 Using these four strategies (make it obvious, attractive, easy, and satisfying) will help build your practice habit, or really any habit you’d like to work on! I’ve started using these strategies to meditate, run, and do yoga regularly. Happy Practicing!
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AuthorLaura Lanier is the creator of bassoonsolos.com Archives
June 2020
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