Here’s an obvious statement, with a not-so-obvious ramification.
Time is cumulative.
As a society, we’re trained to think of time in specific blocks. We take an hour for lunch. We work from 9-5 (if you’re lucky). Television shows are either a ½ hour or an hour.
So we’re trained to think that if we don’t do anything for the full hour that nothing is getting done.
Here’s an experiment.
Can you do a 100 push ups in a sitting?
If not, can you do 10?
If you could do 10 consecutive push ups with perfect form how long would that take? Maybe 30 seconds? Now let’s say you did that 10 times a day. That’s 300 seconds (aka 5 minutes). But you can’t do anything with 5 minutes of exercise a day, right?
Wrong.
Try it every day for 5 weeks. Try adding 1 push up per set every week (and more if you can). That pushes you up to 15 per set or 150 a day. By sheer increase in number you’ll notice that you’re getting stronger. You’ll probably notice physical changes as well.
Guess what happens when you apply this to practicing a difficult passage with a metronome?
Reclaim those shorter time increments in your day by reprogramming your brain for what they mean! Those minutes add up over the course of the days, weeks and months ahead.
You can get a lot done in a lunch hour and those hours add up. Set a timer and work on things for 20 minute increments. But when you work on them, really work on them. Don’t half-ass them. If you do this multiple times a day, you will get a lot more done than you might think.
If you have a strong understanding for why you are doing something, you will do whatever you have to to overcome any obstacles associated with how.
I hope this helps! More posts soon (and more podcasts as soon as I can stop running my air conditioner long enough to record one!) Thanks for reading.
-SC
PS: If you play guitar you may be interested in a book I just released yesterday!
GuitArchitecture.org 