So here we are at the beginning of February.  New Year’s resolutions have probably petered out.  Winter blahs make it hard to keep focused or to be disciplined.  And there aren’t too many weddings or events as everyone recovers from the peak of the holidays and stores up reserves ahead of the burst of energy that the coming spring will require.

But you already know that being a musician, at any level, requires constant, steady work, even if it’s in small pieces.  We know that if we slack off a little, we likely will return refreshed.  But if we take off too long, we come back having lost proficiency and needing to work hard to catch up to where we were.

No matter how much time we let pass between practice sessions though, we have the same goal for each session – to make progress.  How we define that progress is up to us – and our teachers, coaches or mentors if we have them.  No matter how we define that progress though, we really on have one method for assuring that we make it – we have to write it down.

I have been advocating for documenting your progress in a journal.  Journals give you a wide-open place to write out all the good and the bad with your practicing in a single place that will allow you to review your thoughts in both the short and the long term.

But I realize that journal keeping is not for everyone. After all, it requires you to commit to even more time for your practice.  And if it takes that long, you will probably drop it (and the resolution goes by the wayside, like most resolutions do).  It is also fairly intimidating – What do you write? How? Where? For how long? What if you miss the important points?  In addition, a journal is just a diary – and you’re not a kid, so why bother, right?

However, capturing your thoughts about your progress is important.  There really is a lot of information in your head while you’re practicing and right when you finish.  In addition, you really need to keep track of what you have done, what you are doing, and where you (think) you are going.

Successful weightlifters use a simple tracking method to assure that they remember what they have done so they can plan what they will do.  There are loads of little details – What exercises? How much weight? How many repetitions? And of course, the underlying plan that, if followed, will get them where they’re trying to get, whether that’s the Ms. Olympia or just to be able to lift the dog food onto the shelf.

It bears repeating – they do this so they can keep track….and remember! what they have done.  If they can do it – you can do that too!

You can keep track of how many times you do a scale each day.  You can also keep track of which scales you do, how each hand performs, where the challenges lie, and, perhaps more importantly, what you’re going to try tomorrow to fix those problems.  You need room to write what was good, what was bad, and what was ugly, as well as what you might try tomorrow to make it better.  You need to capture how many times you worked on Twinkle Twinkle and how it went as well as how much you worked on the Ceremony of Carols and what it might still need.

Because tomorrow, it will be fuzzy.  Did Twink go as well as you remember? Or were you still having a challenge with getting the rhythm right?  Do you remember how much time you spent on it?  Was it proportionate with what you wanted to do this week?

You can also keep a “balance sheet” for your practice – so you can see that, although you meant to work on the Ceremony of Carols this week, Twink took up all your time.  Or that because you were so fashed with Twink, you never did get around to doing any of your exercises or technical work.   Or that because you spent so much time on Twink you never remembered to stretch either!

You can also document what didn’t go well. Still can’t get that fourth finger to close without flipping your wrist? Worked on it every day? Will you remember that when you get to your teacher’s studio?  Maybe.  Maybe not. But if you write it down, you will have the note there that you need help with this!  That will help your lesson incorporate everything you need to work on*.

Where do you need to write it?  Well, whatever works for you works.  But, if you don’t want to share the deepest thoughts in your journal with anyone or you’d be embarrassed by the sheer number of little slips of paper, napkins, grocery receipts and stickies you used to capture your day – you might need a tool!  One that is easy to use, easy to keep track of, and easy to share.  So, let’s leverage what weightlifters use – you need a tracker.  Well, I just happen to have one available!  Just Subscribe (or up on the left hand side of this page) and your FREE Practice Tracker will arrive in your email**.  You can print one out for each week so you have just one sheet to bring to your lesson.  You can collect them over time so you can review your development (this is especially helpful on those days that you’re left wondering if you should take up playing the kazoo instead!).

Give it a whirl for a few weeks.  Make notes at whatever level you like.  This is a tool for you to use – so use it your way!  Leave a comment below on your initial thoughts – I’m delighted to hear from you!

* and your teacher/coach/mentor will be delighted to know what the week has brought, rather than having to try to figure it out be watching and listening to you.  

** don’t fuss, I’m not going to spam your email or send you a million emails asking you to buy stuff but I will send you the Free Practice Tracker and each month I’ll send you an update newsletter.

OBTW – If you are doing journaling, good for you!  Keep at it!  But you might still consider this tracker – as an addition.  You can take just the one sheet to your lesson and you can use the format of the tracker to assure you’re capturing all the important things you want to remember from practice to practice, lesson to lesson, month to month, goal to goal.