The up-and-down nature of motivation is natural when you are learning something new, but it poses a significant challenge when you rely on it as the foundation for your practice routine. Consistency beats motivation when it comes to piano practice. You shouldn’t have to feel motivated in order to practice. Your practice routine should be simple enough to avoid needing to be motivated in order to do it. A good habit starts with eliminating decisions. What will you practice? What fingerings will you use? What tempo will you play at? If you don’t answer these questions before you sit down at the piano, you’ll spend the first 5 minutes deciding what to play.
Instead, commit to playing a single warm-up exercise, a single section of music, and to practicing a single aspect of piano playing every day. For example, you might decide to play a simple finger exercise for 5 minutes to loosen up your fingers, practice a single short passage for timing, and focus on improving your pedaling. Practice is much more productive if you know exactly what you want to achieve before you sit down to play. Instead of asking yourself, “Do I feel like practicing today?” ask yourself, “Can I just play for 10 minutes today?” The second question is easier to answer. Don’t wait until you have a big chunk of time to practice. While it is wonderful to have 30 minutes or an hour to dedicate to practice, you don’t need that much time to make progress.
In fact, it is better to practice for a short amount of time with a specific goal in mind than it is to practice for a longer amount of time without a goal. Instead of trying to practice for 30 minutes, commit to practicing for 10-15 minutes a day. Avoid only playing music you already know. While it is fun to play familiar music, you won’t make as much progress if you don’t challenge yourself to learn something new. Instead of only playing music you already know, try to incorporate a small challenge into every practice session. For example, you might try learning a single new measure of music each day, or you might try improving a single difficult passage.
Try to anchor your practice routine to a regular activity. Instead of practicing at different times every day, try to practice at the same time every day. For example, you might practice right after you eat breakfast, right before you eat dinner, or right after you change into your pajamas. Anytime works, as long as it is consistent. Start your practice time with a consistent activity. This could be as simple as placing your right hand in a 5-finger position and playing the notes slowly and evenly. The activity itself is not important. What is important is that you do the same thing every time you practice. A practice routine can be as simple as 15 minutes a day. Here is an example of what you might do during that 15 minutes: Warm up with a simple exercise (5 minutes).
Practice a short section of music (5 minutes). Connect the short section back to the music around it (5 minutes). The most important thing is to quit while you are still having fun. If you are not enjoying yourself, you won’t stick with it. If you find yourself avoiding practice, don’t judge yourself or your avoidance. Instead, think about what is making it hard for you to practice and fix the problem. For example, if you are avoiding practice because you have to clear off a bunch of music books from the piano bench every time you want to practice, make it easy on yourself and get rid of the extra books. If avoiding practice because your music isn’t already opened to the right page, make it easy on yourself and open your music ahead of time.
If you are avoiding practice because the passage you wanted to practice is too hard to tackle at the end of a long day, make it easier on yourself and practice something shorter. If you are avoiding practice because the tempo is too fast, slow down the tempo. Make practice a habit by making it easy. Eventually, your daily routine will become a habit. You will sit down at the piano out of habit instead of out of a desire to practice. And eventually, that habit will allow you to make tremendous progress.