How to Regain Motivation for the Piano
1. The Yearly Dip
Motivation is an interesting subject. We all know what it feels like to be highly motivated and driven towards something, and we all know what it feels like to slowly lose the motivation and find it more and more difficult to keep going. I have noticed over the years that it is around this time of year that many people start to lose the motivation as summer approaches and we get further and further away from the New Year’s resolutions.
I’ve often been told that one of my few superpowers has been the ability to persevere and weather these dips in motivation. Maybe it’s a personality type or maybe I’m just incredibly stubborn (probably the latter), but in any case, as a result of being persistent, I have learned several ways to keep going through those times where it’s less appealing than it once was to continue on practicing and playing
2. The Goal of Persistence
A mistake that many learning musicians make is that they focus on what they want to achieve and work towards it. While it’s useful to have these kinds of goals as a means of giving yourself a sense of direction, this kind of goal doesn’t really help keep you motivated.
The reason for this is because the motivation that we receive from this kind of goal is entirely reliant on a sense of progress. If you don’t feel progress, you don’t feel motivated. Sometimes, you might set a goal that is suitably challenging and you will be able to use that progress as motivation. However, what happens if you have a goal that is slightly too easy or slightly too challenging, or what if you are in-between goals? Then you might not feel like you are progressing and this makes it much more difficult to stay committed for the long term.
I have often seen this after a student has completed an exam; they may not be ready to jump into another exam straight away, but if they don’t, then they lose the motivation to practice altogether and end up giving up. Similarly, I’ve seen students give up because a piece is challenging and the rate of progress is much slower than they can tolerate.
This is why it is much more effective to have your main goal be persistence itself. When I was learning the piano, the game for me was entirely based on quantifiable achievements.
- Number of bars learned
- Hours per day practised
- Days per week practised
- Time spent in a practice session
- Number of scales learned
etc.
Many apps use this exact technique for keeping you hooked in the form of a “streak”, Duolingo, Snapchat, MyFitnessPal, etc.
I also use this exact technique for running (measured in miles run per week) and with my YouTube channel (measured in videos and short-form videos published per week). While it is very useful to have a sense of direction and some quality control, the best way I have found to keep motivation and discipline is to give yourself some metrics to follow entirely based on getting something done (whether you want to do it that day or not).
The most basic form of this could be a daily streak where you need to practice something for at least 5 minutes for the day to count. You may have a few weeks of just practising for 5 minutes, but you will thank yourself for keeping going in the long term!
3. Testing Yourself
In the height of motivation, it is easy to practice for hours per day. During that time, it’s also easy to set lofty goals and start working hard towards them. Yet, when we hit dips in motivation and it becomes difficult to do any practice at all…it’s compounded by the very fact that during the little practice that you may do, you aren’t really going to make massive progress towards big goals.
This is why it’s important to know when to pivot and take the pressure off. The wonderful thing about music is that there are so many things you can learn and do. You can learn to improvise, sight-read, build great technique, learn an easy romantic piece, learn a fast technical piece, write your own music, and many more…
If you were working towards a difficult piece of music, an exam, or another challenging task that takes time, you may want to put it on the back burner for a time when you not only want to commit the time but you will enjoy the challenge. For many people, there may be a reluctance to do this because it feels like failing, when in fact, it’s actually quite strategic!
In the winter, when it’s dark outside and you don’t feel like going out, you may feel like you want to work hard towards a goal again. In the meantime, you can work on some other elements of music that you can see improvement from in much less time. You may want to learn some music theory, have a season of scales, or do 5 minutes of pure sight-reading per day.
Whatever it may be, there is much more value in acknowledging the amount of time you are willing to put in and therefore picking new goals strategically, knowing that in the future, you will get that burst of motivation back again.
The real goal should always be to keep going. There have been many times in my playing career where I have been focussed on other things and not been motivated to put 100% into playing, yet it is continuing to do something to move the needle through these times that will make you a great player in the long term.
Matthew Cawood
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