Practice Minutes
Here is a personal observation I made while a student of classical double bass at the Wiesbaden Conservatory in Germany ... all those years ago.
Fist of all I must tell you that I am a lazy person. As a matter of fact, I am so lazy that I don't want to do things twice. The result is that I organize myself! I consider this to be the highest form of laziness.
Anyway, back to the (related) observation.
As a music student I sometimes was too lazy to rosin up my bow, tune my bass, and get some practice done ... especially if I only had about 15 or 20 minutes "downtime". So what did I do? Nothing really, just hung around and waited for the bus, a friend to show up, or whatever else was next on the agenda.
Until one day it dawned on me! If I were to do SOME practice in my "downtime" every time, the minutes would add up to hours, to weeks, to months. Yes, I even did the calculation that converting 15 minutes of daily downtime to uptime amounted to a staggering 91 hours of additional practice per year. Whoa! Ninety-one hours! I was in! And since then I have retained the same attitude.
So that's my Laziness Conversion story. Organization = The Highest Form of Laziness
Try this technique for yourself ... and have even more success on your instrument!
P.S.
Another statistic I did in my final year of study was to note EXACTLY how much I really practiced. At the end of one year I was pleased to find I averaged three-and-a-half hours per day.
