Practice Makes Perfect is a Lie

I once had a teenage student who was incredibly passionate about the piano. She followed all the great artists, listened to classical music all the time, and aspired to be a great musician.

She literally practiced four hours every day.

Sounds like a teacher's dream, right?

Here's the problem. She never made any progress.

Along with the heavy workload of school and wanting to devote as many hours to piano as possible, she was going to bed around 1am or 2am at night. 

She rarely followed my practice instructions. Rather, she tried to learn as many notes as quickly as possible, often incorrectly and insecurely.

There was no swaying my student to tweaking her practicing methods. She had it in her mind that, like a monk in an abbey, it was about putting an absurd number of hours in and suffering along the way.

As expected, eventually she burned out. When she had her heart set on doing a competition with a piece that had no chance of being ready, she decided to stop our lessons together. Sadly, she blamed me in the end.

As with most tough life stories, there is a lesson to be learned.

"Practice makes perfect" is one of the worst lies ever told to us as children. For a couple of reasons.

First, there is no such thing as perfect. I think we can all accept that. In fact, it is the imperfections that we should be celebrating as an expression of our humanity.

Second, practice doesn't even guarantee better, let alone perfect.

As my former student demonstrated, it is quite possible to practice 30 hours over the course of the week and make zero progress. Similarly, one student can make more progress in 15 minutes than another student might make in three hours.

It's in our nature to get hung up on the metrics, though. The number of minutes, the number of hours, the number of days. 

But, it's not enough just to practice.

We must learn to fine tune the quality of the practice. To figure out our personal groove that ensures we make progress each and every day. With time, momentum and excitement builds from this.

Often, the path to quality practice lies in the teacher's instructions students receive week to week. Just saying...

Whether or not we actually have a teacher, and whether or not it's music we are practicing, the practicing is really about refining the process.

So, let's not say "practice makes perfect" anymore.

Let's say, "Efficient practice increases likelihood of progress." Okay...it's definitely more syllables, less catchy, and not as much of an alliteration.

But at least it's the truth.