Here’s a habit I would like to build: patience in the practice room, particularly when trying to learn a lot of music. Too often I get stressed out about what I need to learn, fall back upon blunt force repetition instead of deliberate practice.
I worked on the idea of articulating creating priorities in my practicing with my learning charts:
Yes! I know what is on my plate.
But, I still have those periods where I am stressed and I seem to get worse rather than better. I had a plan in my practicing and clear goals, but my needles weren't moving. I was missing data on what I worked on, how effective that time was, and how long certain types of learning challenges might take me.
I had dabbled in practice journaling and tracking for a number of years, ranging from a tiny Moleskine to a combo planner/notebook to a dedicated Rhodia pad (with Stabilo pen, of course):
These entries helped me figure out what to do next, but percussionists don’t need a Markov chain. I can remember what I want to do in my next practice session. What I needed was information I couldn’t easily keep in my brain: what kind of practice I had been massing, and how the various projects under development were progressing, what kind of methods were working?
Likewise, I still had to remember to write down what I did.
In 2011-2012, after frustration with my lack of progress on Khan Variations peaked, I used a google sheet and my phone to assiduously track every hour of practice for a year, articulating what worked, what worked and what didn’t as well as keeping track of minutes spent on developing technique vs learning repertoire. It worked, but was cumbersome. I was trying to AVOID using my phone in the practice room, and the process of adding to the doc was slow and buggy, adding minutes to each practice session.
Experiment on Yourself
I realized I was barking up the wrong tree. What I wanted wasn’t a practice journal. I wanted a lab notebook.
I wasn’t tracking my time, I was trying to figure out how long certain musical tasks (warming up, learning a span of music) took me to accomplish. Since then, I’ve learned that the most effective practice is interleaved—where a practice session includes a number of different kinds of material at the same time. So, if I was going to be jumping between different material, I needed a clear method to budget my time.
Once more unto the breach!
My requirements:
I needed to learn about myself, and in the process of learning about myself, become more efficient
I wanted to build the muscles of focus, the habits of work so important to creatives.
Here’s what I did:
Set a timer for a work period: 25-30 minutes is a good starting point.
Use this time to work on one specific goal, such as developing a specific technique, learning notes, or refining a discrete section within a piece.
At the end of the session, I measured what was achieved and adjusted for the following session.
Over time, I gained a knowledge of how long tasks generally take, enabling me to plan future practice sessions with increased precision. And, I can track how long it takes me to learn new skills, which allows me to…learn new skills…
These practices leverages principles of design thinking such as prototyping, failing fast, and rapid iteration. At the same time, focused work with a defined time limit has a corollary benefit of training the habits of focus that are so essential to musicians.
Tada, shortest newsletter ever! Below: why it works and I how I do it.
Habits
In Atomic Habits, James Clear articulates four steps to developing a habit:
Make it Obvious
Make it Attractive
Make it Easy
Make it Satisfying
My previous data-gathering exercises were none: they were invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.
In the years since, I developed a number of projects outside the practice room, from writing to coaching to administration. How to manage my time across all these domains—did I really need a writing journal separate from my drumming notebooks? Was my practicing actually working? Developing the habit of refining my work process has never been more important. It’s 2025: there has GOT to be an app for this!
There are so many, but I use Toggl.
(They’re not paying me for this, although they are welcome to: I would put their logo all over my clothes like an F1 driver).
Toggl is a time-tracking software designed for teams and businesses. Their thesis is that digital time tracking is more accurate than timesheets, engenders accountability and transparency within teams, and allows work groups to track project time to hit deadlines.
I’ve been using Toggl Track for a number of years as an individual, and it has fundamentally changed my productivity. Toggl also produces Toggl Plan, a project planning app. I haven’t used this yet.
Does Toggl pass the James Clear test?
Obvious and Easy
The app is easy to use. I can enter times in a number of ways:
Regular time tracking
The clock runs until I say stop
Pomodoro tracking
Toggl runs a 25 minute timer, and then prompts a 5 minute break before asking for the theme for a new 25 minute timer. 1
“What have I done?” Manual time entry. I like this because I can type in what I did and a duration, and Toggl finds a place for it in my schedule. Since it’s not important to me when I did what, this is super fast.
Copy from calendar.
I sync my calendar with Toggl. From here I can calendar entries to Toggl. For those of us who teach privately or schedule out our practicing and rehearsals in a calendar app, this is the least friction option, and obvious as heck.
On my phone, I can create a shortcut that opens the app whenever I start a “practice” focus zone, which reduces drag further.
Attractive
Each time entry has a Project associated with it, and can be tagged in a number of ways. Toggl is designed for freelancers and other workers who need to track billable hours, so each project is organized by Client. My main clients are myself (my own practicing work), ASU, and my writing coaching work, which I break down by individual client. Within my own client, I break my work down by projects:
Some projects are more fleeting: I taught a class at Creighton Med School so that project was front of mind for a few months before I archived it.
I can run reports of how my time was organized each week, which, when combined with some metacognitive exercises, has been vital for analyzing how effectively I’ve been spending my time.
Satisfying
I know I talk a big game about the science of learning and the efficacy of efficient, short practice sessions, but it’s a real confidence boost to see how much I’ve actually done in a day. I’m often anxious at the lack of time I might have spent on a certain activity, overlooking many hours devoted to another task. Tracking my time even haphazardly has given me some self-compassion, as I can see how my work moves in waves, highlighting different priorities in different seasons.
So yes, time tracking (particularly with Toggl) has helped me build the habits of work.
In Conclusion,
Shooting Design Thinking rays at my time management has brought profound change to my productivity. My technical development is more targeted, I learn notes more quickly, and I work with more certainty and less anxiety. My time in the practice room is more creative because I know there are guardrails in place to keep me on track. I write with less fear that it’s dragging on my practice time. I’m more likely to try something out, less likely to stay with entrenched practices that don’t justify themselves.
Yes, I know the Pomodoro technique has been taken down a notch by the science on neuroplasticity. But, 25 minutes is still a convenient unit of time…