Create Atmosphere

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Get the right set-up for you. Whether you prefer to concentrate in a quiet practice room or somewhere with more stimulation, try be consistent with your choice. This will help you enter the right mindset when you begin to practice.

Warm Up

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Like a physical workout, a warm-up is essential. Take it as an opportunity to prepare your body and mind for work and take stock of how you're feeling, how you're breathing, the tension your body is holding and why you are doing that particular exercise.

Have a Goal

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Playing through all your old music isn’t the same as practicing. Start with the end in mind: by having a goal for each practice session before you start playing, you will find you progress much more quickly and effectively. Then, break each goal down into smaller, focused objectives. You'll feel a great sense of accomplishment as you complete each goal.

Be Realistic

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It’s about quality, not quantity. If you aim to practice smarter, not longer, you will find yourself with a lot more willpower to draw upon. By setting small and realistic goals, you will find you overcome tricky areas much easier, and you'll be less likely to beat yourself up for not completing absolutely everything you had planned.

Identify and Overcome the Problems

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Don’t just play a piece or passage over and over again, and definitely don’t just power through a problem area and ignore it. Identify where you are stumbling out of time or continuously using the wrong fingering, work out why it's going wrong, then decide how you are going to fix it.

Record Yourself

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By recording your practice sessions you can listen back and perhaps spot some things you may want to consider doing differently that you miss in the moment of practicing or performing. Even consider filming yourself as well as recording yourself, you may notice tension that you were unaware of.

Be in the Right Frame of Mind

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We’re all human, and sometimes we're simply just not in the mood to practice – and there's no point in practicing and creating new mistakes rather than overcoming them. So unless you’re under a huge amount of time pressure, it’s OK to take a day off or simply keep your fingers moving by spending 10-20 minutes playing something you know well and really enjoy. Ultimately, we all play because we enjoy the feeling and sound of our instrument, and it can be easy to get frustrated with the pressure and forget to have fun.

Reward Yourself

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At the end of each practice session, remind yourself how amazing you are to be playing an instrument and treat yourself afterwards!