LESSON PREFLIGHT CHECK
Finding out if you're on track for next lesson
There are three days to go until Cameron's lesson, and he's not even close to being ready.
The problem though is that he has no idea this is the case. He'll find out he's not ready the same way he always does... with a panic attack on the day of his lesson.
It doesn't have to be this way. There's a special practice session he can run once a week that can rescue all of this...
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If you WAIT until your lesson to find out whether you're ready for your lesson, then that's usually a sign that you're not ready.
Why? Because a big part of being ready is not just having everything done...
... it's knowing that you have everything done.
It's being able to confidently say to your teacher:
"I know exactly what you needed me to do this week, and I've completed all of it."
Rather than simply:
"I've done plenty of practice this week, I should be ok."
So how will you know that you're lesson ready?
The Preflight Checklist
Pilots don't just jump in the front seat of their Cessna, turn up the stereo and take off. They need to be 100% certain that everything is working as it should first. They run right through a checklist before they go anywhere.
Landing gear. Check
Flaps. Check
Onboard navigation. Check
Fuel. Check
Brakes. Check
The end result? As the wheels leave the tarmac, the pilot can confidently say:
"Everything's ready"
Don't find out in mid air
You'll certainly find out at your lesson whether you had completed all your practice tasks or not. In fact, your teacher will normally dedicate the first few minutes of your lesson to checking exactly that.
But that's a bit like finding out in mid-air whether your plane is ready:
Landing gear. Check
Flaps. Check
Onboard navigation. Check
Fuel. Empty
Brakes. Check
Whoa! What was item four again? What would be so frustrating here is that fuel would have been a very easy thing to fix... if only you'd noticed it before you took off. Not so easy at 20,000 feet.
That's exactly how uncompleted practice items work. Most tasks that you had left undone you probably could have easily covered with a small amount of practice... if only you'd known.
Timing is everything
We'll have to look at how to run your Preflight Check in a second, but a more important question is working out when it should take place.
It needs to be late enough in your practice week that you've had a chance to actually complete your practice tasks - however, it needs to leave enough time before your lesson that you can still catch up on any tasks that you discover aren't ready.
It's no good running a Preflight Check twenty minutes before your lesson. Similarly, a Preflight Check after only one day of practice will usually just confirm that you've still got lots left to do.
Normally I recommend a Preflight Check on the fifth day of your practice week. By then, you should be just about finished with all your practice tasks - but if the Preflight Check goes badly, then you still have time to make it good.
Essential equipment
There's really only one thing you'll need for your Preflight Check:
A comprehensive list of everything your teacher needed you to get done this week.
You're then going to run through every item on that list - every item on that list.
So if your list included the requirement that you be able to play page two of your new Sonatina from memory, then at some point in your Preflight Check you need to be able to do exactly that.
Remember, anything you don't check for now, your teacher will be checking for at your lesson. So it will definitely be noticed - the only question is when.
The whole point of the Preflight Check is to notice things while you can still do something about them.
If the Check goes badly
Sometimes these Preflight Checks can reveal that you're nowhere near as ready for your lesson as you should be.
That doesn't mean game over though. It just means you have to play some serious offense in the final quarter.
You'll be amazed how often a burst of intelligent work after a Preflight Check can take you from nowhere-near-ready to wow-my-teacher-is-going-to-be-so-impressed.
Remember, your Preflight Check doesn't just come back with "ready" or "not ready." It will also let you know exactly which practice items are not ready. In this way, that final quarter burst of practice is not just more practice - it's also better targeted practice.
You can then spend most of your time on the items that are least ready.
Show your teacher
When your teacher asks how your practice week was, you won't be limited to just giving them an adjective:
"It was good."
"I did lots of practice."
Tell them instead the results of your Preflight Check, together with when the check took place.
Why Preflight Checks can go badly
Preflight Checks are very good at helping you understand how ready each practice item is, but not so good at helping you understand why some items are not ready.
You'll need to respond differently, according to the true cause:
1. Not enough practice
Practicing is certainly not about how much time you spend, but it does take time to get through all your tasks. So if you know that the reason for the bad Preflight Check was "insufficient practice," then you need to schedule additional sessions for the remainder of your practice work.
2. Working on the wrong things
For instance, working on passages and issues that are already in good shape. This causes a huge gap in quality between the passages you play best and those you struggle with. And so, despite the fact that there might be plenty of practice happening, you're not going to be ready for your lesson. The problems from last lesson will remain unlearned, and your teacher will remain unimpressed. Keep yourself focused on the tasks at hand, by having a list of tasks you need to complete by the end of the session.
3. Choosing the wrong practice techniques
The type of practice you need to do for a "please speed up page X" is very different from preparing for "Please rework the fingering in bar Y." If you don't match your practice to the task, you won't be ready for your Preflight Check... or your lesson.
4. Poor closure skills
When you're practicing, you have to know when it's ok to stop, because overpracticing practice tasks can be just as bad for being lesson-ready as underpracticing.
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