Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Seven Habits of Highly Effective Adult Beginners

We are creatures of habits, whether we recognise or not. Some of us are more effective than others in our learning journey. We get inspired and fired watching, listening and reading the highly accomplished ones. They influence us at different levels and at different time.
We aspire to reach their levels one day... Yet we are on our own way and own level where we are. Most likely, we will never cross ways.... Yet, we learn from each other.

I just wonder whether we can articulate the habits that are ingrained in these highly effective adult beginners of this forum, present and past.

Had a nice thoughtful answer put together and then hit delete by accident, argh!

From my experience teaching adults, the ones that have the most success are the ones that understand HOW to practice. There's always a limited amount of time to practice, so those that maximize their time are those that get ahead.

Most highly effective adults understand the importance of not cutting corners or skipping steps in the learning process, and are willing to see that process through knowing the results will take care of themselves.

Now everyone's idea of what that process entails exactly will differ, so thats where knowing HOW to practice comes in. Adults who understand their strengths and weaknesses and are able to build practice techniques off that knowledge get ahead.

Persistance over the long run.

Cathy

Okanagan, I have read your post, here:

Had a nice thoughtful answer put together and then hit delete by accident, argh!

From my experience teaching adults, the ones that have the most success are the ones that understand HOW to practice. There's always a limited amount of time to practice, so those that maximize their time are those that get ahead.

Most highly effective adults understand the importance of not cutting corners or skipping steps in the learning process, and are willing to see that process through knowing the results will take care of themselves.

Now everyone's idea of what that process entails exactly will differ, so thats where knowing HOW to practice comes in. Adults who understand their strengths and weaknesses and are able to build practice techniques off that knowledge get ahead.

________________________

If you have ever taught anything, even something as simple as stamp licking, you will know that some of the students will follow your instructions, some of the students will think that there is a better and faster way to do it, and still others will find it boring no matter how much it pays - and will quit.

If you read the posts - and they are a joy to read - you can tell what kind of a student they are by what they write. Even if you a beginner like myself.

Things like singers, typing, play an instrument, can be done by most people, sports, too, I suppose, although I have only played for 2 years of basketball, so I have little knowledge to speak on it.

To do anything well, you have to have dedication, commitment, desire, physical ability, work very, very, hard against all the roadblocks put in your way thoughout your daily life, you usually have to have least average intelligence, but not necessarily so, - you can have less and break all odds by simply never, never, ever, ever giving up no matter what - no exception..

That is why only one in a million, a billion, or a trillion people ever become, famous, rich, the best there is for a long time.

The funny thing is that fame and wealth are great motivators for most people, but sitting down at the piano 6 to 8 hours a day is usually more than most people can take for a lifetime - unless you love it - and as they say if you chose a job you love, you never work a day in your life.

Habit number one: Stay off the internet.

...and patience.

And I would add - get rid of the TV, or at least severely curtail the hours spent watching same.

There doesn't seem to be any way to improve at the piano other than spending many hours practicing. Most people think they don't have the time but most of these people spend hours internet surfing and/or sitting in front of the "Boob-tube".

I have managed to kick the telly habit but as you can see I still spend too much time on-line.

http://brenthugh.com/piano/piano-practice.html

Look at the 7 principles in the above link.

YES!!! That's been the hardest change for me to make. It's starting to pay off, however. Hopefully, I'll have something decent enough to perform near the end of the year.

BTW, I'm not a beginner. However, some of these habits will serve you well as you advance.

Great post. That's a hard truth to accept for a lot of people. Everyone wants to be rich and famous but if that's the reason you are doing what you are doing, you likely won't be successful because you won't be able to endure the long, weary road of hard practice that usually precludes success.

If you love what you do, though, you will be rewarded in full even if you never do become rich, famous or both. Because ultimately that's not really why you are doing it.

It is an interesting question. I looked up the list from the best selling book (wikipedia link). It made me think of some forum members that I admire. Some of their traits:
* positive attitude
* thick skin
* skill
* knowledge
* aptitude
* dedication
* humbleness
Most forum regulars are piano enthusiasts, but enthusiasm and passion are traits worth mentioning.

Perhaps more on topic is what I have learned from the forum. To go slow, to isolate difficulties, to repeat 5 to 10 times, to work in 20 minutes stints, to keep moving, to have a balanced approach (vs. all or nothing).

Breaking it down into the elements that make the pianist. In my mind these include:
* aptitude
* attitude
* dedication
* teacher
* passion

Some where in there is methods and habits, but some of that crosses over into aptitude, attitude and teacher. A person with good life habits likely tends to have better piano habits as well, though it is more a tendency than a rule.

i would love to be rich and famous.... however thats a totally separate want of mine than the piano haha. for me... if i think back a year from now... what have i accomplished? how have I progressed in my life? these are the questions i've asked myself. yea professionally im doing okay... but i waste my time outside work playing video games all day... while i don't think videogames are bad or anything. I do know that I want to look back a year from now and think... "im so glad i made that decision, i wish i would have done it earlier".

i'd say my best habit is being relentless about missing a day. at first i didn't mind missing a day or two. now, i refuse.
a big one for me was letting go of the ego. i was the student that could usually find faster more effective ways to do things (got in trouble in 10th grade for cracking the teachers computer password and SHOWING HIM so they'd correct the problem... instead they banned me from all computers lol). my teacher has 30 years experience teaching. I'm not religious and never really understood faith until now. I have to have faith in everything my teacher tells me to do. I have NO idea what is considered right or wrong and I'm not at any level to be making "i can do this easier" judgement calls. I've never studied anything that is a lifelong study with no "this is the best you can do"... skill cap if you will. another habit i'd say is i am a nazi about making sure i get the proper amount of hours of sleep each night since getting serious. um and ENJOY what you are doing! good lord why would you even want to put in all these hours if you didn't enjoy it? seriously, if you don't enjoy it, save your time. find something you do enjoy and invest your time into that. also i haven't had cable for 2 years now so im sure less distractions helps a ton.

i do notice that playing slow and really focusing on what you are doing causes you to get distracted quick and lose focus much quicker than mindlessly playing thru things till you don't mess up 3 times in a row haha.

@sandtiger i'm finding the piano habits are helping the LIFE habits as a side effect.

Here's my summary so far :

Habit 1: practice first (daily, frequently, balanced approach, no internet, no telly, good life habits, ...no excuses)

Habit 2: know how to practice (no short cut, leverage your strength, focus on weaknesses, go slow, isolate difficulties, repeat 5 to10 x, work in 20 min stints, ...)

Habit 3: take a long term view ( patience, endurance, no instant gratification, do not give up, do not lose interest, motivated over long time, ....)

Habit 4: employ a teacher ( self-taught, actual teacher, plan, critical, feedback, audition, what pieces, syllabus, .. )

What else ?

I'd say that a good habit is being your own teacher, or, in other words, capable of providing yourself quality feedback on everything that you're doing - from being your own, most critical audience member to keeping track of, and critiquing, practice results - and then discerning whether or not a different approach would yield better results.

Or, in short, having an effective "feedback cycle"

1) Make time to practice daily - a lot of time.
2) Have a passion for piano - love what you are doing.
3) Practice mindfully - have a goal for every practice session.
4) Practice slowly enough to be mistake free.
5) Challenge yourself, but don't over reach.
6) Find performance opportunities that push you to polish pieces by a deadline (ABF recitals, for example)
7 Hire the best teacher, mentor, that you can find.

Humbleness? It's hard to be humble...

Is it physically possible to play that slow?

I can't see much evidence that I'm highly effective--but just think how much worse I'd be if I weren't so diligent!

Time to practice is not my problem. If anything, I have to force myself to do something else. I absolutely have that passion and desire to do it and I was actually quite surprised to discover just how profound that desire really was, because I had assumed all this time that the reason I didn't really stick with it as a child was due to a constitutional lack of passion for it, which is what stopped me from really following my heart all those years since.

So, having restarted, passion and desire are not my problem. Nor is self-critique or overall aptitude (I'm not talented, but I'm also not somehow utterly unsuited for music or something.)

My problem is that, while practicing, I can get sloppy if I don't focus and go extremely deliberately. If not, I lapse immediately back into the kind of practice habits that made me ultimately stop progressing as a child, like playing at speeds past the threshold of error correction (thereby actually reinforcing errors) and not being ruthless with consistent fingering. Things that kind of are ok when you're a kid and not yet playing advanced material, but quickly kill you in the water once you need to speed up and play complicated work. But at least I'm recognizing it and fix it, though I really hope that sometime soon I can stop spending half my focus simply preventing myself from relapsing, and simply approach practicing efficiently.

Kidding aside, I think that SwissMS's post sums up things very well, and Sand Tiger's attitude list is an important component.

Above all I think that to be effective, it is impossible to go too slowly when trying to learn. That's probably the problem I hear (and share) most --- we all have terrible trouble slowing down enough to get things right as soon as possible.
Many of us - myself included - are so impatient to get a piece rolling we can't cope with the slow phase, and then end up shooting ourselves in the feet because we don't stick to this simple strategy!