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I just started on my piano journey this March and am taking biweekly lessons with a teacher. I’m enjoying piano very much and am on the RCM path and about to get a new piano. But I will be moving into a much more stressful and time consuming role in my career and all of a sudden I’ve realized this might impact my ability to practice daily. I will be working long hours. I’m sad and scared at the same time. I’m wondering if this might be the end of my very short but happy piano journey, or is it possible to make it work. I will probably be at work all day and won’t get home until 7pm if I’m lucky.

I think I’ll also be moving to weekly lessons because a time opened up.

You could get up an hour earlier and practice before you leave for work when you have the most energy. Or you could do as I do and practice very late. Some people do have intensive jobs. I usually end up practicing in the middle of the night, but I know night piano is not for everyone, which is why I suggested early morning practice.

Piano is my therapy for a stressful life and work. Though work only recently and I hope it will return to a more even level soon. But it’s role in my life means it gets priority.

I hope you can find your own balance that works for you.

You will never find the inscription ''I wish I had spend more time at the office'' in a cemetery.

Every work week is 50+ hours for me and often at 60+ hours.... it’s just the way it is. And I take weekly piano lessons.
No, you do not need to quit learning or playing the piano but you will need to make practice focused.... have a goal when you sit down to practice and stick to that goal. Left hand a problem in measure three? Practice measure three only. Do not start at measure one and work your way up to measure three. . You will be amazed at how much you can accomplish in a short period of time if you have a clear plan.

Sneak in practice time. Have 15 min while you are reheating dinner? Practice 15 minutes. It really is important that you not try to cram it in all over the weekend but do what you can each day during the week. There is no way I can sit down to practice in a one or two hour block as it becomes unfocused and rambling. So I practice in very small chunks of time.

You get the idea: small, concrete goals for each practice; steal small chunks of time to practice. Celebrate the small victories—- they will add up.

The first two years of my playing the piano (without a teacher) I was on my way to get burnt out - but obviously I didn't know it. I wanted to practise way more than I did, but many times when I came home from work I was too tired. Also, I just wanted to relax and not to focus on a task. In retrospect, I am glad that I didn't push myself even more beyond my limits.

So my advice is that you should think a bit. You say that your new job not only will be longer hours but also much more stressful. How will you get most relaxation after a very stressful day? Is practising the piano a relaxating activity for you, does it help you to get your mind off stressful thoughts? Or does it add to your stress? And if the latter is the case, is there anything you can change in your piano practice to make it less stressful? Can your teacher help you to design a relaxing piano practice for you? Or would it be better, for instance during the first month, to devote yourself completely to your new job, and only play favourite pieces, and once you're not as new at your job anymore, try to slip in some practice again?

+1 to using the Piano as stress relief.

Any chance you’re working for a startup? Back in the dot com days I was able to convince two startups to put band instruments in the recreation room. At that time I was working 60+ hours a week and many of us would jam whenever we could.

Or perhaps you can get a ‘travel piano’ so you can practice on the go.

I just visited a major tech company a few weeks ago. They had a pool table, ping pong table, and a video game machine w/ 80" TV in one of their break rooms. No piano - I guess pianists are just not that common

It's good to have a few nice pieces that you can just play from the music or from memory, completely stress-free, for when you're not in the mood to 'practice'.

Or if you're good at sight-reading, and you have a stash of easy fun stuff that you can play from without worrying about how many wrong notes come out of the woodwork.

I don't work crazy hours anymore, but there was a period of several decades when I did (yes, I'm that old ), and the best time was when I had access to a piano for a few years - at my then work place - in the late evenings, when the place was officially closed. I'd spend hours at the piano there after finishing my day work, even while I was still on-call for emergencies (all night, all weekend 24/7). Instead of worrying about whether I was going to be called out, I forgot all about work by learning new pieces which required all my concentration.

My rep expanded greatly during that time (of course, playing from the music, not from memory - I definitely didn't need the stress of trying to memorize anything) to the extent that I was able to give a couple of lecture-recitals for the staff, when someone heard me practicing and asked me to do one for (- in place of) one of their occasional lunchtime lectures .

Make time for it, WeakLeftHand! I'm in a similar situation, sort of. I move in with my girlfriend next month. My commute will be a little longer, and I cancelled my weekly lessons with the school starting next month. My girlfriend would like to spend Saturday afternoons with me. I've been wanting to move lessons to a week night anyway. Need to decide on staying with the school, or finding something closer. Another option would be to take private lessons with my current teacher in her home, but that is also a bit of a drive.

You have identified why I despise modern offices. Tech companies don’t want you to ever go home, it’s depressing. I knew people who couldn’t seem to find a wife or a girlfriend and spent all their time at the office eating “free” food and drinking “free” beer, and playing games. How about we all stop screwing around, do the work in eight hours or less, and go home.

I’ve decided to work at home from now on. I made up my mind after I got stuck next to a pool table at one contracting company. The sales guys would shoot pool and drink beer all day while I tried to write the software they had sold, software they had underestimated in terms of time required to build, of course. I complained to the CEO that the sound of pool balls striking each other was disturbing my concentration and he said he couldn’t do anything about it because pool was part of their “culture.” So, I worked from home after that, until the work dried up.

At home, my piano is always waiting to be played.

Also, even though it might sound blasphemous on this forum :), but you don't necessarily need to practice every single day to make progress. Don't get discouraged and tempted to quit just because you can no longer practice every day. Do more extended practice on weekends and sneak in shorter practice sessions on some week nights (or mornings), as others have recommended. And I agree that piano practice can be a great stress-reliever (it is definitely for me). You might think you're too tired to practice, but once you sit down and start working on your pieces, you might feel refreshed and will keep going. This has happened to me a lot. Best of luck!

Things have been progressing well, I see

This would be my suggestion also. If not an hour, how about fifteen minutes? I play (or practice) every morning from about 5:15 to 5:30, as soon as I get out of the shower and before I eat breakfast. Its very relaxing and I find it productive; whatever I was stumbling over the previous evening suddenly becomes crystal clear in the morning. But I am a morning person; maybe not everyone enjoys a morning practice like I do.

Weekly lessons and morning practice work for me.

Some weeks, only some parts of my lesson are prepared, but I make sure to have visited each part of the week's assignment so that I have identified any questions. I practice all my technique exercises (Edna Mae Burnham) every day, because I'm slow at learning them and then my teacher can see how they're coming and keep me from going astray and give instructions for practice. I also work on small sections of pieces.

I often don't have time in a lesson to go through everything, so I pick what needs the most support and instruction. Lots of things just need more practice, so I end up not working on them with the teacher in every lesson.

I may be the slowest student ever. Sometimes I feel bad about this, but usually I can just focus on my practice.

As mentioned in other responses, set your alarm to get up 30 minutes earlier and practice 30 minutes before you go off to your new job. Also, take a copy of the piece you’re working on and over lunch study it. Maybe play air piano under the desk or lunch table. Download a sight reading app on your phone and during lunch or while waiting for the meeting to start you can quiz yourself quietly on quickly reading notes and ledger lines. I did that for 6 or 7 years before I retired and I never lost momentum. I didn’t have the phone app but copied quizzes from my student workbook and worked on those at lunch.
Best of luck! Congratulations on the new job. Besides playing piano is the best cure for the stress a new job can bring.

WeakLeftHand, you're getting lots of good suggestions here, but I will add a few in case it's helpful.

I think the most important thing is to always fee like you're making some progress, however incremental, and to never feel like you've been away from the piano for very long. I have managed to stay with my piano practicing through full time jobs, full time graduate school and dissertating, and now a fulltime teaching+research position. Here are the things I find that help me.

1) get a wall calendar and put it somewhere you can see it. Whenever you practice piano, put a star (or a P or whatever) on the square for that day. Aim to always have at least 5 stars each week, and periodically take a minute to look at the calendar and congratulate yourself for sticking with it. If you miss a day, don't beat yourself up, but make sure you get piano time the next day/ I always want to make sure there are never two days in row when I haven't played. Using the calendar takes away any uncertainty about how many days I've played or not played.

2) Even if I don't have much time, 15 to 30 minutes at the piano is better than zero, so I always have something I can sit down and get right into practicing on, whether it's a new piece, scales/technique work, or maintaining repertoire pieces. If I'm super tired, I do repertoire playing. If I have more energy, I work on something new. I get a star on the calendar either way.

3) On days when it seems like I don't have any time, 15-30 minutes before bed is always do-able.

4) On days off when I have other plans or when I plan to spend the whole day with my husband, I can still put in 15-30 minutes in the morning before whatever activity is planned.

5) I have almost completely replaced TV with piano.

6) Have some achievable goals to work toward, whether it's an ABF recital or a friend coming over to hear you play etc. Preparing for a lesson is also another good goal. These mini goals are very motivating and help keep me at the piano consistently.

7) Remember that if you make sure to get 15-30 minutes at the piano most days most of the time, you will progress. And two or three years down the road when your work schedule becomes more manageable and you suddenly have more time to devote to piano, you will be able to maximize that time. The alternative is, you quit piano until there's magically time for it, and if you do get back to regular practicing, you will have missed all that valuable practice time in the interim.

Good luck! You can make it work!

I'm not saying this is your situation, but the thing that freed up a lot of time for me was getting rid of social media (I still use this forum and youtube, but only when I'm at my computer working). Instead of reaching for my phone to check my facebook feed when I have a couple of minutes, I sit at my piano and play through a piece or two. I've noticed my daughter does the same thing. As soon as I'm like, "You've been on your phone long enough today. Let's put it away for the rest of the night," she seems to wander around aimlessly for a couple of minutes and almost always ends up at the piano (or in her bed with a book).

So, I guess my point is that it's important to really evaluate where your time is going, and make sure that it's going to things that are either necessary or bring you joy. I think for a lot of people (again, maybe not you) there's a lot of "filler" time that could be better spent.

Hopefully it continues to progress, but know I'll be practicing less due to other responsibilities. I will make time each day though to practice. My girlfriend has a Kawai acoustic, so maybe I can play with that. But not sure if we need 2 pianos. She wants to keep it because she thinks she'll take lessons one day. I doubt it. She hasn't touched it in decades. But if she decides to start, which would be from scratch, she would need to practice everyday. Not sure if she would commit to that.

@ShiroKuro +1 to replacing TV with Piano.

More warnings from me! As several people advice you to put your alarm earlier so you can get some practice done before going to work, I want to say that this is a great idea as long as you are able to get into bed earlier the night before. Sleep is maybe the most important way for the body-mind to recover, and especially when you're in a lot of stressful situation during the day, it is important to make your need for sleep a priority.