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Yours is actually a pretty common experience – specifically, of not being sure what exactly to write down in a practice book, and falling off the wagon after a time.
Something that can help is to think of the book as less of a log or diary and more of a todo list. As in, sure, you can write down what you did and for how long, but this becomes sort of a chore, and doesn’t always tie directly into making tomorrow’s practice session any more fruitful or productive. When you’re taking a slew of auditions, it can be valuable to have a log to refer back to, so you can see what worked, and what didn’t (like keeping a workout or training log at the gym).
But on a day to day basis, I think you’ll find it more helpful to use the notebook to track (a) specific problems you’ve identified, and (b) specific solutions that you’ve discovered (or even potential solutions to try in your next practice session). So for instance, let’s say that you have a bunch of repeated notes, but they aren’t coming out clearly and evenly (I remember the pianist in my trio experimenting with a variety of strategies with those repeated notes at the beginning of the 2nd movement of the Brahms B major trio, for instance). In line with the deliberate practice formula in the preparation section, you could write down the problem, and then potential solutions. A different fingering? Something about tension in your hand or fingers? Weight of your arm? (I don’t remember what my friend ultimately identified as the solution to this particular problem).
Because as you go through rep and accumulate specific problems to solve, you will also discover a bunch of solutions, not all of which will be very obvious at first. And it sucks to come up with a brilliant solution and have a mini-breakthrough, only to forget what it was the next day. So the practice notebook ultimately becomes a way of forcing yourself to articulate problems in words, and also keep track of specific solutions, so you don’t forget them.
Does this help clarify what you might do with a practice notebook?
