Clockwatchers - Practiceopedia by Phillip Johnston

CLOCKWATCHERS

Curing the unhealthy obsession with time

Everyone who knows Benjamin talks about how hard he works. In fact, he does forty minutes of practice every single day. Even on his birthday/

Mind you, it's always exactly forty minutes. Never forty-one, or thirty-nine. And lately, he's just not ready for lessons.

It's hard to see what he's doing wrong though. Or is it...?

~ 0 ~

Clockwatchers have an obsession with how long they've been practicing. The more minutes they use up, the better they think the practice session is.

So while other students are clocking fingerings or listening to phrasing, they clockwatcher's attention is on the time, and their mind is filled with thoughts like this:

          "Great! Only a quarter of an hour to go!"

          or

          "I can't believe all those scales only used up three minutes..."

No concern for the health of the pieces, or their task for the week. Their job is to pass the time, and they keep willing the minute hand to go faster, as if they were a frustrated motorist stuck behind a slow truck...

Clockwatcher logic smashed

Clockwatchers are right about one thing. Doing a good job can take a long time. 

However, it doesn't necessarily follow that if you've taken a long time, then you must have done a good job.

What clockwatchers don't understand is that it's not how long you take. It's what you get done.

Their practice might seem ok...

To outside observers, clockwatchers can seem hard working enough. Because they watch the clock, they'll rarely do less than they're supposed to.

If their teacher had asked for half an hour of practice every day, then the clockwatcher will have done exactly that.

And I mean exactly that. It's all part of a spirit of work which is not interested in what's actually happening, as long as it takes the set number of seconds. We should all be hoping that surgeons  don't work this way too! (I've now spent 2 hours transplanting this liver, that's long enough)

... but they're often not ready

Because they're so focused on the clock, Clockwatchers fall victim to any number of bad habits, usually without realizing it. At the very least, the fact that they're not paying attention to what they're doing means that they are almost certainly engaging in autopilot. 

As a result, when a clockwatcher turns up to their lesson, it might well be after lots of practice - but they often still won't have completed the tasks their teacher needed.

They could do less practice
Here's the irony. If clockwatchers focused less on the clock, and more on what they need to get done, they could actually be ready each week with less practice overall.

It's not about minutes spent. It's about what you get done with those minutes.


The fastest way to cure yourself of clockwatching is to make sure that you have no way of telling the time, so you can concentrate on your music instead.

Figuring out when to stop

Because you can't tell the time anymore, you'll suddenly find that you don't know when you're supposed to stop practicing. Setting closure triggers helps with this.
Some examples: 

* As soon as I can play this entire passage from memory...

* As soon as I have written in a workable fingering for this passage...

* As soon as I can play this passage with the metronome set at 100bpm...

* As soon as I have colour-coded all the dynamic markings in this piece...

* As soon as I have cleanly made this jump five times in a row...

Once you have defined your trigger, keep an eye out for it while you practice. And as soon as it appears, move on - without guilt, and without delay :-)