Advancing Violinist

The Habit Loop: the Anatomy of a Habit

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Eric

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Before I get into the details, I want to start with the 10,000-foot view. Habits have three main parts: Cue, Routine, and Reward. Together they make up the Habit Loop. For the purpose of this series on habits, I’ll talk about the Cue and the Reward. As for the Routine (how to practice), you’ll spend a lifetime learning about that and barely scratch the surface.

In a nutshell, it works like this: you want to get into the habit of practicing every day. But how do you know when it’s time to practice? You want the decision to be automatic. So you come up with a cue. And lastly, you associate some immediate rewards with the routine. You take this plan, and you write it down on paper so that you’re clear about how you want it all to work. And then you test it out.

If your first plan doesn’t work perfectly, you play around with different cues and rewards until you find something that sticks. And that’s it. That’s the process.

Now, let’s get into the nitty-gritty details of how to do that. And we’ll start with the Cue.

Comments

2 responses to “The Habit Loop: the Anatomy of a Habit”

  1. Elaine Smith Avatar
    Elaine Smith

    Wonderful ideas on practicing. Do you think the reward could be improved playing? Or is that too delayed? Taking small section and improving it? Better playing (reward) would come practicing carefully rather than just playing. Love your blog and will suggest it to one particular student who is often tired and busy to get started.

    Reply
    1. Eric Avatar
      Eric

      Absolutely that can work. I’d call that intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the strongest motivation. But it takes a while for that to develop. You have to be able to trust that 30 minutes from now, you’ll be playing that passage better than you are now. Many students haven’t built up that trust. And they might be right — it can take years to develop effective practicing techniques.

      And sometimes we just have off days. Progress in music can be two steps forward, one step back. On those off days, we don’t get the ego boost of playing better than we played yesterday. Or even playing noticeably better by the end of that practice session.

      So I love intrinsic motivation, but I try not to rely on it always being there. My philosophy is to heap on as many rewards as I can. I aim to make the practice room as rewarding and enjoyable as possible. That way if one of my rewards fails, there’s others in place to keep me practicing.

      Reply

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