Morning Practice

(My purpose for writing this blog is to share life tips that have helped me. Many have written about similar ideas and concepts in many great books, which I also hope to share in the future. But I’ll be writing about what has actually worked and helped ME personally in my life. If my sharing can help one person, one student to thrive and reach their fullest potential, I will be truly satisfied and grateful.)

Regardless of what you do or where you are in life, we all seem to feel that we are busy. We hear others say it too. It seems we never have enough time to do all we need to do. I completely resonate with this feeling. I don’t recall a time during my life when I didn’t feel busy. I was busy as a child trying to keep up with piano practice and schoolwork. I was even busier in college, going to classes, practicing, and work study, not to mention trying to experience freedom away from home for the first time. Did it get any better in my mid 20s? I got married, and my to-do list got even longer. I was trying to finish my doctorate degree, apply for teaching jobs, and perform – all at the same time. On top of that, I officially entered adulthood. I was no longer under my parents’ roof. I had to shop for groceries, do my own laundry, clean the house, etc., In my 30s? I became a mom. I don’t need to elaborate how crazy my life became after that.

And as a teacher, what I hear most from my students is the same thing - that they are incredibly busy and that it’s so difficult to find time to practice.

In this blog, I wanted to share one important habit that I have practiced since I was a child, that helped me immensely to achieve my goals despite the incredible busyness of life, which only seems to increase in each season. That habit is carving out a small space, a little time in the morning. It is quite simple. Start the day a little earlier. How much earlier you get up totally depends on you. What matters is not the specific time that you get up. What matters is that you are intentionally creating a little extra margin and space by waking up a bit earlier. That little bit of extra space can help us achieve goals that we thought were impossible and not even worth trying to accomplish.

Here are a few tips. First, start with one small step. Believe that many tiny steps will get us to our destination, even one that we always thought was completely out of reach. Get up 15 minutes earlier than usual. I am talking about actually getting out of the bed. Just 15 min., not 20 or 30 min. If 15 min seems so daunting, then start with 10 min. And we will use that extra 10-15 min to practice. A student may complain – how much work can anyone get done in such a short time? She or he may say they don’t even know where to begin, or what to do during that time. I would say – pick one thing. One measure. One scale or one passage. No matter how short the practice session is, have a clear goal. Is it to work on fingering? Is it to make that one particular scale more articulate and even? Is it to learn one more measure of that new piece that your teacher just assigned to you? Or is it to just learn one phrase in the right hand? You get the picture.

And guess what, that 10 min you spend every morning will be 70 minutes of extra work in a week (if you do it every day). In a month that is 280 minutes – almost 5 hours of extra work! And that is a lot of time.

If you cannot practice early because it will annoy your neighbor, then spend 10 min reading about the composer whose works you are practicing. You will learn something about that composer or that piece that you didn’t know 10 min ago, which makes you more knowledgeable than you were 10 min ago. Or 10 min of stretching or even meditating or praying. And if doing this every day for a week seems too much at first, then start at once a week, twice a week or three times a week. But the key is that you start today. Not when you are less busy or less tired.

The truth is that you will always be busy and always tired. As a matter of a fact, the busier you are, the more you need to take advantage of the gift that a quiet morning can offer. And this doesn’t just apply in the morning. Some of you may have a completely different work schedule or you could be a mom to a newborn baby, as I once was. But to be honest - how much time do we (me included) unnecessarily devote to our smartphones? Why do we do that? It’s because we don’t put much value on the leftover time given to us throughout the day. I am not saying browsing your phone is always bad and that we should use all our time for work only. Giving yourself a break is an important part of work too. But break the habit of taking out our phone and scrolling mindlessly at every opportunity. Give yourself a designated time to rest, to browse and to have a break, instead of breaking out the phone at any spare moment you have during the day.

As you can see, using our mornings and left-over time is a principle that applies to more than just your piano practice. It can help you to cultivate your health, knowledge of your work, relationships, spiritual life or just in anything that you want to enhance.

In a future post, I will share about the morning routines that I implemented as a child, in my teen years preparing auditions for college, in my days at Juilliard until my early 20s, my life as a doctoral student and a newlywed and of course my life after I became a mom trying to balance between my work and motherhood. I’ll share how my routines specifically helped my life to become more orderly, organized and less chaotic and ultimately helped me achieve my goals at each point in my life. I will also share tips on how to make this habit more consistent, doable, fun and even energizing!

Believe it or not, having solitude in the quiet morning before anyone gets up have been a vital force for my life for almost four decades (with the exception of the first year after my son was born – when for some reason my darling boy was most energetic and happily played with me between 1am and 4 am😅). It is my sincere hope that some of you can join with me in this journey, finding jewels in our lost or neglected time, whether that’s in the morning or throughout the day.🧡