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Post your WOOP – Week of March 20th
How’d your WOOP go last week? If you had any wins, please share!
And if things didn’t go according to plans, please share that as well! If things are going well, feel free to continue with the same or similar WOOP as last week, but you’re also welcome to share and experiment with a longer-term WOOP that goes beyond this coming week as well.
If you plan to set a new or revised intention for the week, post your Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, and Plan below!
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23 Replies
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Ambitious plan this week — got a last-minute Masters audition scheduled March 30th, so I’ve put myself in practice and performance bootcamp for the next 10 days…
Wish: Bring the level of my ‘worst day’ with my audition repertoire closer to my ‘best day’.
Outcome: The rep for my MMus audition will be performance-ready with a (little) time to spare for comfort.
Obstacle: If I start to feel hopeless and like I don’t have enough time, I will…
Plan: …practice retrieving excerpts of the work I know I can use to show off my strengths, then patiently return to the bits I’ve more recently problem-solved. I will focus on big-picture things (i.e. cultivating the appropriate tone colour and gesture in my Bach), which will help throughout my pieces and save me from obsessing about tiny details. At least one of my practice blocks each day will be devoted to switching back and forth between the opening of my concerto and my Bach, so that I know I can get it right the first time on the day.
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If you can, try to nap or get a bit of sleep between practice sessions to try to enhance memory consolidation! It’ll be helpful on a number of levels. Wishing you all the best in the next couple weeks!
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Here is my WOOP for this week. It’s my first one, let’s see how it goes..
Wish:
Bass Technique: play and sing the blues scale in all keys.
Bow: Jazz bowing lesson 9 (bass line exercises).
Practice and learn repertorie duo x food market gig on friday-
Outcome:
I’ll feel ready and looking forward to the gig. I’ll I have accomplished a goal by planning it. I’ll have the feeling I have worked with my whole self in it.
Obstacles:
Lack of concentration, many distractions, not feeling at ease when practicing.
Plan:
If I get distracted, then I’ll make a pause, set my intention and go back to work at it.
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Feedback of last minute –> my slurs are better, but not prefect YET. I will continue with the daily 5 minutes because I feel they are improving.
New WOOP:
Wish –> to begin learning two more pieces in my daily schedule AND to bring again in my fingers BWV998 Prelude.
Outcome–> great feeling and having fun preparing my repertoire
Obstacle–> not to be strict enough with the time dedicated to each piece
PLan–> to fix a tentative time to each piece but according to the difficulties being flexible on the distribution of the time (I am not sure if this is possible but should be !!!!)
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Last week’s WOOP (3/13): I definitely exceeded my goal, but I was not happy with the result—I still had the experience of feeling during the event that the person playing wasn’t the one who practiced. I made far more big mistakes than I was happy with, and often felt really outside of myself in an unpleasant way. In part, the problem may have been being too “in between”–in & out of playing from memory, and not really having memorized the music. Reading on the harp is particularly difficult (ask any pro), so I may have set myself up for a bad time.
I’ve also become aware of how sloppy my practice is, especially in terms of allowing incorrect repetitions, and not taking the time to assimilate. Even with the intention to practice differently, I caught myself over and over slipping into old habits–particularly when I could “already play” a passage.
WOOP: 3/20 through 4/2 (two weeks)
Wish: Refine and memorize my arrangements for The Keel Row and Brian Boru’s March.
Objective: to feel ready to record and have the satisfaction of playing them with ease.
Obstacle: careless practice habits—primarily allowing too many mistakes and not taking the time to stop, review, and say out loud what is needed to play each section correctly.
Plan: Insist on taking time to speak with my “rubber duck” before starting practice on each passage, as well as using the interleaving method for the tricky spots and taking more short breaks to assimilate.
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My first WOOP! My long-term goal here is to work through the Beyond Practicing course and ingrain the skills. And since Noa has already divided up the content into discrete goals, I’ll simply follow his recommended timeline.
Wish: Skill 1, lesson 1, deliberate practice. I’d like to make explicit problem solving a more consistent part of my practice, and will aim to tackle one trouble spot this way each day.
Outcome: By the end of the week, it would be nice to see that this is actually becoming more automatic, since that will boost my sense of self-efficacy, and that’s always appreciated… 🙂
Obstacle: I’m sure it would be easy to default to routine practice, especially if my time is limited or I’m tired, since (as Noa says), that’s still somewhat effective. But I also know it’s unrealistic to wait for the ‘perfect’ time to develop new skills, so…
Plan: “When I sit down at the piano, after warming up, I’ll pick one trouble spot (from previous practice) and apply deliberate practice methods, including new videos (if needed) and writing down my thoughts, *before* doing anything else.”
And… I already recorded my ‘before’ video last night, so so far so good… 🙂
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Yay for recording! ????
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My last WOOP was about scheduling my instrument rotation over several days – and it worked! I actually used the same WOOP for two weeks to develop habit strength before trying a new one. My new WOOP is about focusing on the different embouchure requirements of the different instruments to inform my lip position and tone on all instruments. Gradually working from the general to the specific with these WOOPs.
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Yay, that’s great! Yep, sticking with the same WOOP for multiple weeks can be a great strategy!
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Last week’s Wish was to memorize the full first half of the Meditation from Thaïs and to get the rhythms right. I used chaining, videoing myself, and the Tempo metronome app. I made a lot of progress, but I’m not quite where I want to be. So for this week:
Wish: Really solidify my memorization of the first half of the piece, notes and rhythms.
Outcome: Good tone, smooth melody
Obstacle: I seem to be hitting some mastery bias, and I’m trying to work on other pieces too, of course.
Plan: Continue videoing my first play-throughs, and scatter shorter practice sessions through the day to combat mastery bias. Remember to warm up fully before videoing! Use Interleaving to make some progress on all my pieces.
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I was on vacation last week and failed my WOOP to memorize Arioso/Bach away from piano. Death Valley had just far too much to do or not do as the case was (weather was perfect!). I did however read 3/4 of Heinrich Neuhaus book on piano practice and had reinforced a few things I learned from the Psy Ess class plus picked up a few new practice ideas.
3d week WOOP WISH – prepare to play for two possible new piano teachers I am seeking:
1. Meet with classmate Grace to discuss my ideal teacher/teaching style, and teachers she knows who might fit for me.
2. After physical warmups, every day sit down and immediately play one of the three pieces I’m prepping/securing to play/demonstrate my level for possible teachers. Play with feeling, phrasing,and no note errors; if note error happens, immediately ignore it and continue on as if did not happen.
3. if error happens, immediately go to that phrase or section and deliberately practice it using my 5 x 8 card routine until error does not happen — but no more than 5 min per error.
4. Due to recent hand/forearm strain, practice no longer than 15 min on any day, then stand up, walk around, do chore, drink water, stretch again or do something else for at least one hour. Limit practice times to 15 min at a time until I am totally recovered and use alarm clock to keep me on schedule.
5. Slow down all practice and concentrate on improving tone, not getting up to tempo, while recovering from strain.
OUTCOME: notable reduction in strain; 3 pieces iron out with no note errors by end of week.
OBSTACLES: Enthusiasm leads me to overdo. Sadness at not being able to do more at this time. use of alarm clock will discipline me.
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Making a written plan for performance preparation (my March 8th WOOP) turned out to be less urgent than working on memorization of the rest of the set that I’m playing next Tuesday. That intermediate goal was already enough to keep me practicing with focus. Other concerns (a health issue, bank collapsing) also required attention. My win, though not in my WOOP, was that I can now play the entire set from memory, with fewer hesitations.
New WOOP –
WISH – solidify memory while continuing to refine expression in a set of 8 Schubert Ländler from Op. 171
OUTCOME – Perform with confidence and only minor hesitations at my music club on 4/28.
OBSTACLE – I’m juggling a number of projects and don’t always get enough sleep.
PLAN – Set aside practice time from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m., and don’t turn on the computer or phone after 11:00. Play two run-throughs for another person between now and Tuesday’s performance.
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You probably already know this, but if you have difficulty avoiding phone/computer after 11pm, there are apps that can help with that, by locking you out (sort of) at scheduled times…
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Thanks for the suggestion, Noa. I may need something like that.
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My WOOP last week went well. I appreciated the suggestions I got from the community during Noa’s office hours about habit stacking. It did the trick. I have a new longer term WOOP I’ve been wanting to try out for some time now. I think I’ll benefit and my students will too.
WOOP for March 20-27
Wish: to be able to learn new songs more efficiently and address the musical expressions earlier in the learning process.
Outcome: I want to be able to sing with greater musical expression. I want the listener to be able to hear the story being told as the music unfolds.
Obstacle: My developing technique will hold me back. Not be aware that I’m not doing enough contrast in the music to have the story come forward, or don’t have enough technique yet to go as far I want to.
Plan: Follow my “Critical Steps for New Learning” outline and accomplish as many as I can this week. I am also thinking about reorganizing “CS for NL” into a different format for my future use and use with students. Also, use recording as a tool 2 times this week.
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My first WOOP and the challenging and exciting week – got the call yesterday to prepare for Tuesday and Thursday next week a 100min program and I’m also performing tomorrow with a different repertoire.
Wish:
– till the end of the week the program is at the performance level, my memorization of all the pieces is stable and secureOutcome:
I feel ready and excited for the project, I have the mental clarity, I feel proud of myself for preparing this program in the short amount of time.Obstacle:
– by going too much into details – not following the schedulePlan:
– follow the repetitions amount plan, a time schedule for each piece and the chosen tasks to do
– mark the challenging spots and put them into “the lab session”. After solving them, set the multiple alarms during the day to practice recalling them.
– mark also the spots “if there is time left” to which I can come back later, when the priorities are done
– after finishing each practice session, I will analyse quickly did I work efficiently, will I hit my daily goal with this pace of work or do I need to adjust something in my approach/system during the next practicing session. -
Last week’s WOOP done! Concert went well, good audience, mistakes we made were probably only noticeable to us, and I had only a frisson of excitement, no debilitating nervousness, as I held onto breathing and positive visualizing. Been doing a lot of PR since then. Our trio now have recordings to share, youtube, a facebook page, etc.
This week’s WOOP:
Wish: 1) memorize Iris and Inisheer, 2) start my spring teaching term by teaching Inisheer to my students
Outcome: two more pieces solidly memorized, and students learning something a little different
Obstacles: not getting practice done early enough in the day because I’m working on writing deadlines (and time-sucking PR stuff for the trio), so that I am tired by the time I go to practice in the evening
Plan: go to bed between 10:30-11:30pm, so that I have energy to get up at 7:30, take out the dog/have breakfast, and practice first thing in the morning — 9-10am — before I start my other tasks. Then if I practice again later in afternoon or in the evening it will be a bonus, and a looser practice.
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Last week’s wish was quite specific and simple to achieve.
I typed out a small score that was new to me (A Glinka Mazurka). It is now incorporated (with modifications) into an exercise for character dance that will last for the rest of this term, and most of next. I can see benefit already.
The other score I tidied up is now easier to use.
Wish:
My forScore is full of clutter. It makes searching for a piece more cumbersome and time consuming, especially during a ballet class.
My setlists grow in size but needs a review to reorder and cull, as well as add new.
Reviewing 3 setlists and be happy with the top 5 pieces of each of these setlists.
Pick 1 piece that has duplications and clean it up.
Outcome:
Less effort finding pieces for the updated 3 setlists.
Obstacle:
Even when I have free time, these little tasks (of worthwhile benefit) get overlooked.
Plan:
If [ I have 1 minute spare ],
then I will [ open forScore and work on one item in my wishlist ]
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My WOOP from last week felt rough, but only because I had too exacting a standard, I think, for a first step. I did the card pulls on three days (out of six I had hoped for). So that’s a start.
I’m taking an easier week this week for [reasons], but will be back for next week. Wanted to check in for some accountability.
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3/6 is a good start! Yes, helps to start smaller to make it easier to build up a new WOOP or goal or habit. =)
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I am finding this process getting in the way of practicing. In fact I am noticing that this has been going on for a while. I have lost the love of listening and practicing. My inner goal is to love listening to music again without all the anxiety and LOUD inner voice doing critiques. I went to the beach and just put on music to listen to while reading and I couldn’t. There was so much interference from both. Same with practicing. I am at a point where I just play and then run away. Not doing too well in this avenue,
Ellen
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@ellenjohansen Interesting…I wonder if you are feeling pressure to either practice effectively or be too productive or improve too efficiently? That can sometimes suck the fun/joy out of the thing that you ultimately want to enjoy.
For instance, I picked up a new hobby 5-6 years ago, and for the first year, I tried way too hard to improve and get good at this new thing using all of the learning strategies that I knew of. Which made this new activity feel more like work than play. At some point I just gave myself permission to do the activity and just show up without any pressure to be good at it, or improve as diligently as I knew I could if I applied all the right strategies and focused on it 100%. Basically, being ok with not being the best student ever made it easier to stick with it and enjoy it more.
I wonder if focusing on having fun with piano, without the pressure to improve or have really structured plans/strategies for improving might actually be the best way to approach this at the moment?
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I did get some music work in every day, between copying bowings for next concert cycle, and working directly on the new pieces.
That was one of the unposted goals, going directly to the music instead of requiring 15 minutes of technique prior to practice.
I’m going to call this week a win, and will post WOOP on Monday!
Cheryl
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