One Thought

I have a goal: I want to become a musician. I want to produce music that is original and meaningful to me and others. Currently guitar is my instrument, and I am focused on learning to produce music with it.

I spend a lot of time practicing guitar. I play the same short pieces of songs over and over, trying to perfect my technique and bring them up to tempo. I’ll play scales and other non-musical passages repetitively to improve my technique, often along with a metronome. I’ve learned quite a bit of music theory: scales, modes, chord progressions, and so on.

Practicing is satisfying–I get better at guitar, if painfully slowly–but it is not fun and not very rewarding. After all, my goal is to produce music, not to play sixteenth notes at two-hundred beats-per-minute. Practice is inherently uncreative: there is no product at all, much less a creative product. When I have produced music–even when I have recorded covers of existing songs–I’ve felt satisfied and happy in a way that I haven’t from practice. I’ve had fun, and I’ve spent my creative energy.

It is far more important to do than the practice. When you do, you perform the action your goal consists of. In my case, when I do, I produce music. When I practice, I play scales to a metronome. When a computer programmer does, he writes software. When a programmer practices, he takes classes and completes exercises. And so on. The point of practice is to distill the skills relevant to doing into simple, repetitive activities. The best practice is often the activity that isolates the skill most needing improvement. Practice is, by necessity, often repetitive and boring.

Practice is important, however, and should be viewed as a necessary evil. I don’t mean that practice is unpleasant–in fact, being goal-oriented, I find it quite satisfying (I also enjoy lifting weights in the gym). Rather, practice is not an end in itself. And any time practicing is time not spent doing. Practicing helps you do–which is the point–but you should practice only when necessary. After all, doing is also great practice–the best way to get better at something is to do it. Practice, if overdone, can be practice merely for more practice. If you practice all the time, you’ll become an excellent practicer rather than an excellent doer.

So when should you practice? It is important to practice regularly, but the majority of your time should be spent doing. Practice is inherently reflective–you analyze your weaknesses and construct activities meant to improve them. Without analysis and reflection, it is easy to get stuck in a rut, even when you’re doing all the time. Often practice is the most effective way to improve a skill. Without focused practice, your technique may never improve past a certain point.

However, practice shouldn’t become an end in itself. Practice is satisfying but not fun. And it isn’t your goal. It’s easy to get discouraged if you spend all your time practicing. If your goal is to get good at something, you should spend most of your time doing that thing. Recognize the importance of practice, but don’t let it monopolize your time.