Funny how much sheer pleasurability and inspiration matter for habits. Ever since I got a new piano, my old practice time goals (which I often struggled to meet) feel comically low. Now somewhat effortlessly 3 months ahead of target… gotta ratchet up the goal!
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Making the habit more pleasurable is an oft-suggested strategy. I think it'd be pretty enabling to assemble a wiki-style database of per-habit pleasure/inspiration-increasing strategies!
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Something about this feels wrong. Like: why should I come up with ways to make myself to want to play the piano more? Shouldn't I just naturally want it?
Yet: deliberate practice is unpleasurable! (Ericsson et al '93) *Playing* is, but need much of the former to get the latter.
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yea i was going to ask upthread: what is achieved through time targets? and what does 'more time' mean for your practice?
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More time just means raw minutes on bench, nothing specific. I experience a lot of feedback loops while playing: if practice is inconsistent, my skills atrophy, and I get less enjoyment from playing, which makes me practice less. Same (though less) in the positive direction.
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And so the purpose of the time targets is to supply some pressure to keep the feedback loops positive. I've found it can be quite challenging to exit the negative domain—always consumes a lot of effort and will.
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makes sense. i understand raw minutes but was asking what does it 'mean/signify'. it sounds like you said the issues come from inconsistency? so why not continuity or 'more often' versus 'more minutes'?
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The Beeminder threshold line approximates "consistency" as a goal pretty effectively, actually. Except when I get quite far from the line as I just was; then you can "retroratchet" to bring the "road" up to meet you, as I've done here:
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If I set a goal to play 6 hours per week, I can play 3 2-hour sessions or or 6 1-hr sessions; both are fine. I can't, practically speaking, play a 6-hour session, so regularity is assured. And if I happen to play 10 hours this week, it actually is OK if I ease up a bit the next.
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It's interesting to consider alternative metrics, but tough to find good ones! Straight continuity ("streaks" or something like it) isn't really the goal. A moving average being above some threshold is really the meaningful statistic.
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i distrust streaks because they can give a false sense of progress, and so i thought the 'time spent' had a similar smell, but your explanation makes sense.
for music i haven't tried using any systems, just touch the instrument as often as possible.
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