How much should I practice to learn an instrument as an adult beginner?
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You can learn an instrument in just 5 minutes a day! Join us for our 5/5/5 Challenge…
You know the deal with practicing an instrument — while it’s a necessity to learning, we’re adults living busy lives who are doing the best we can! Further, just the word practice usually brings up a lot of guilt and shame around not doing or being “enough.” So, we’ve created a mental reframe and easy, actionable challenge to help you develop healthy, sustainable habits to learn an instrument as an adult!
First off, it’s time to ditch the idea of practice altogether! We are simply playing music. Instead of thinking, “I should practice my guitar or I’ll never get better,” remind yourself that you get to play your guitar!
Boom! Now that we’ve reframed, let’s break down the practical stuff…
We’ve dedicated years of research to learning about habits; neuroscience books, music blogs, home de-cluttering sites, and healthy living (exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness) podcasts all have great ideas for creating and maintaining life changes. The more we consumed, the more we noticed a trend between all the different resources — if you want to create a habit, start small. Like, really small!
Would you ever just floss one tooth? Probably not… But if you told yourself that you could floss one tooth and walk away without guilt, you’d be more likely to actually pick up that floss, and more likely to keep flossing once you get started!
The musical equivalent of “floss one tooth” would be to play your instrument for one minute a day. While at first we were skeptical of the premise (how could dedicating a mere one minute a day actually help someone get better at the violin?), the more it became evident that taking the first step is the hardest part of any task. Once you’ve put forth the effort to floss that first tooth, tie your shoes and step outside, or take your guitar out of the case and play one minute, why not floss the rest, walk another block, or play a bit more guitar? If you can actually initiate the first step, you’re golden!
So, we decided to start a challenge to help our community floss that first tooth. And though we like the idea of a one-minute challenge, we assumed that folks would be suspicious of something that easy. We settled on five minutes for the recomended minimum length of time, mostly because 5/5/5 had a better ring to it than 1/1/1. 🙂
Rules of The 5/5/5 Challenge
Leave your instrument AND music folder set up in a visible music corner.
Play for 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for 5 weeks. Check off the days you played on this free PDF!
Once you’ve completed your challenge, treat yo’ self to something fun like a new guitar strap or capo!
Helpful Resources
If you’d like to learn more about forming habits and successful practice, check out the following articles:
Practice a Little Bit Every Day: 3 Steps to Create Lifelong Habits — we enjoyed the approachable nature of this post. It’s all about moderation; do a “little bit” of something!
How Many Hours a Day Should You Practice? — Unlike what we were taught in college (4 hours a day minimum — ahhh!!), it seems that quantity does not actually trump quality. This article emphasizes the importance of focused playing above all, which is a message we can get behind.
