New Habits Part 1: Practicing at Home and Shoes

Can I be honest for a second? Despite being a solid, highly-trained percussionist, I still have struggled to figure out how to consistently practice at home. 

When in school I could practice in the university practice rooms for hours upon hours. At home though? I have struggled to build a consistent practice routine. This is a problem when you graduate school and cannot access practice rooms full of university equipment anymore.

So now that I have no other practice space, it's time to finally confront the issue of practicing at home head-on. I have worked this summer to improve my habits of practice. 

My home studio is quite good. It's on the smaller side (it's a converted bedroom from a two-bedroom apartment that I share with my wife and cat), but it houses plenty of equipment. My marimba, vibraphone, and electronic piano sit in the main floor area of the studio. Just off the studio is a closet with all of my other percussion equipment, such as a full drumset (packed up but easily set up in the center of the room), concert snare drum, cajon, and much more. I say this to say that I am very lucky to have the situation I am in, and this blog post will not cover creative solutions for lack of equipment…yet… (I did have to deal with that issue earlier in my career and will likely post about it down the road). 

I have a time limit on my practice since it is an apartment. Well…barely. Our upstairs neighbor is quite reasonable and is fine with my wife (who is a mezzo) and I practicing anytime between 10 AM and 8 PM. 

Now that the scene is set, we can discuss what the real problem is. I have the equipment and a reasonable window of time that will allow me to practice. Why is it still difficult? What is a solution? I have tried the willpower approach, forcing myself into the studio to get my daily grind in. However, the habit never really feels like it sticks the way that it did when I was practicing at school. Why is that? 

A brief look into my problem solving process: I like to break down issues into parts to be tackled individually. So let’s begin with a list of the differences between my practice at school and my practice at home.

  1.  I have to physically travel there (driving or walking) and once I am there it takes effort to make the return trip.

  2. The room at home is dark and really non-inviting to work in. Frost (the program I most recently attended) practice rooms usually had a good window and bright-but-even lighting that felt good to practice in.

  3. The space is distinct and is separate from my living/fun space.

  4. Home is full of distractions. School was too but at least the Playstation wasn’t literally feet away from me. 

  5. When I am home, unless I enter the music room, it is closed and I do not see any triggers to even think about percussion. When I go to class at school, being on campus is its own trigger to think about practicing.

  6. (Connected to the previous point) Practicing at school was usually paired with something I would DEFINITELY do, in that I would practice right after my classes or ensemble rehearsals. 

  7. Practice room scarcity at Frost (due to that studio constantly practicing) created an implicit pressure to practice efficiently and use the time you signed out.

  8. (Related) Oh! And the percussionists in school with me practiced a lot. Something about being surrounded by a bunch of hard working practicers seems to motivate me to practice more too. 

  9. In school, I had clear deadlines for projects.

I am sure there are even more differences, but this is a good place to start. My hypothesis is that if I make the list (and severity) of this set of differences smaller, I can make it EASIER for me to practice in the space at home (less willpower necessary).

Let’s begin with some changes that I have already done (almost accidentally):

Numbers 8 and 9 are interesting issues. The social pressures of a percussion studio are difficult to simulate and making arbitrary goals for oneself can help some people, but my brain knows that I just made it up and I can’t stick to it. If nothing happens as a “punishment” for missing the deadline, it just isn’t effective to me. However, one thing that helped me was creating plans for a few collaborations with some colleagues. Of course Dan (my duo partner) and I have some projects planned, but I have also made a few more newer collaborations to give me hard deadlines. I need to learn certain pieces by certain dates. Thankfully, I kinda fell into this solution by just having friends who want to play music together. So I have a hard deadline. Then, for social pressures, I just make sure I am constantly checking in with my colleagues for my weekly dose of “implicit social pressure” to practice. All of the groups I currently play with have regular check-in meetings to discuss musical ideas and how our work is going. It's working fine so far and I will consider numbers 8 and 9 covered (even if it wasn’t intentional).

 

What about changes that are conscious? 

Well…for me, it all started with wearing shoes…I know that is weird but hear me out.

You see, I was thinking about problem number 1 when I had a weird idea. If I could make the home studio FEEL like a different place that requires more than opening a door to leave (and therefore stop practicing), then I could use less willpower to stay and practice. After chewing on it for a bit, I realized two simple things:

  1. That part of why practicing at school was easier was because it took effort to leave. 

  2. My attire was a subtle difference that also made the home studio and the school studios feel different.

When I am at home relaxing, I am almost always barefoot, in gym shorts and a t-shirt (year-round because I live in Miami). However, when I practiced at school, I would usually dress a bit more professionally (especially on days where I had rehearsals). I would (on most days) wear a button-up shirt, some sort of long pants, and of course I would wear shoes. Sometimes this would shift to sweatpants and a hoodie if I didn’t have many interactions with others planned, but the long pants and shoes were commonly part of my “at school” wardrobe  

So, I decided I wanted to start “dressing-up” to practice. It worked! Mostly…

Once I was in the room practicing, I would have focus I didn’t normally have when practicing at home. If I need to change to get back to my “normal/comfy” home outfit, that is an additional psychological barrier keeping me in the practice room doing work. However, I had accidentally created a new problem.

Now I had some friction that made it so that the first hump of actually going to practice required slightly more willpower than before. The solution? Move my practicing clothes to the studio. I have a pair of shoes and long pants that I keep in the studio now. I usually drop the outfit off on the way to the shower in the morning. As for the shoes, I actually have a pair of shoes that live in the studio now. When I come in to practice, long pants and shoes are put on. If I am feeling like the day is a little more difficult, I also sport a button-up like I wore in school. Sure, this created more laundry to do, but my practice was far more focused and I felt like I was putting in less effort to continue practicing.

I didn’t really understand why this worked until I was reading an anecdote from James Clear’s Atomic Habits, where he talks about someone who worked out everyday at a gym. Every day this person would hop in the cab (they lived in New York City if I remember correctly) and tell the cab driver to go to that gym. 

In this case working out for 30 minutes to an hour isn’t the habit being established, the 1 minute action of hailing the taxi and telling the cab driver where to go is. In my case, practicing for whatever amount of time I practice that day (usually between 2 and 9 hours) is no longer the habit I am establishing and having to exert willpower towards. Instead, now I just need the willpower to put on pants and shoes. 99% of the time, I have that. 

This simple change was a big one, but it also created a bit of a domino effect into other habits that have significantly changed my practicing. But this post is already too long as is, so I will talk about the dominos that fell next week. 

-Dr. Colin Williams

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New Habits Part 2: Dominos

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The Habit of Perfectionism and artistic Hoarding