Tendencies and Tactics

Every musician is his or her own trainer, coach, psychologist, teacher, etc. We are our own boss, and the worker too! It can help to take a step back and look at how you do things. Do you give yourself the optimal environment inside and out to do your best work, to enjoy your practice? We often blame ourselves for not doing our best, when we could be more compassionate, clear and creative in our work. In class, we take a moment to each write down examples of what our tendencies are in relation to the challenges we face as musicians. Then we write down tactics that we have to overcome the challenges. Every one is different, but by sharing the examples, we start to notice everyone has struggles, and some of our own ideas can be used by others!

These examples, though taken from actual papers, are fictionalized and changed for reasons of privacy.

Too much to do
“I am one of those people who think that can do 100 things in a day. It is indeed optimistic, and ambitious, but having the feeling every day that you are never done makes no sense.
I learned in class to take a moment every day to write both what I think I need to do, and what I want to do in the day. Then you can split these into tasks. A task is something that you can do in given amount of time with success.
Then I can begin with things that I can finish! Of course, sometimes it is a good idea to have a day, or part of a day that you don’t plan, to give room for improvisation.”

Quantity, not Quality
“I often just pay attention to the length of my practicing and not to the quality of it. I start by thinking: Oh-oh, I have to study now for three full hours. And I have the discipline to do that, but then I find that I have just studied because I need to fill up the time. Then I am studying with the wrong goal.
It would be better to think: ok, what am I going to learn today and how? If I want to reach a certain level of quality I need to focus maybe on a small piece as long as the concentration is there. When the concentration is gone, I will not be able to improve myself more. Then, I could take a break and afterwards keep going on with a fresh mindset and new energy.”

Impatient
“I am very impatient. If my head understands something, I want my body to be able to do it right away! It seems to take so long to learn things, and I get irritated with the process. The new warm-ups I learned in the class helped a lot. I have more rest in my mind and it is then possible for me to practice in a more directed way. I feel that practicing gives more results because I am busy in the right way. That again makes me more calm.”

Night Owl
“I am really a night owl. If I had my wish I would write music all night, or watch fun films and then go to bed at 4 in the morning. If you then also have to go to school, then this is difficult to combine! I get tired during the day, fall asleep in the afternoon, and sleep late on the weekends. I don’t fell so fit from all this. My solution was to turn off all my screens at 11:00 at night. Then I read a book and I fall asleep reading! I also found that it was better not to plan to do my homework at night, but during the day. When I put it off until evening, it kept me from sleeping.”

Stage Fright
“I get very nervous when I need to perform. I feel shaky and cannot concentrate on my playing. I decided a few weeks before an upcoming concert to prepare in a different way. I took more breaks, which helped me to notice when I had been practicing with a lot of tension. In my breaks I would stretch, look out the window or take a drink of water. In longer breaks I would go outside, instead of doing some other “important” thing, or checking my phone. A break was a break! I also practiced progressive relaxation lying on the floor. This helped me even more to notice when I was tense when practicing. During the concert, I still noticed that my arms were shaky a bit at the beginning, but I could direct my attention better and get through OK. I have confidence that I will be able to develop this further and maybe even enjoy performing some time in the future.”

Procrastination
“I think my worst habit is the tendency to delay, or sometimes not even do, things that should be done – in other words, procrastination. There always seems to be something more interesting to do than the assignment I should be doing or what I should be practicing. I found that I could overcome this if I started with looking for a small solution to a small problem in my playing. This sparks my curiosity and gets me going. If a new problem/habit shows up, then I find that I want to search for the cause. Sometimes there is an easy solution and I solve it right away. If not, I look slowly at multiple solutions, applying them in turn, until I find the right way to go about it. I need to keep in mind that there will always be problems along the way, but also that there is a solution to each problem. This makes me more confident, and the practicing more interesting, and I find that I then want to practice again. It is different than thinking about “practicing” as a big thing. That makes me just procrastinate more!”