In the earliest days of my flute playing, I remember thinking my teacher’s requirement that I practice thirty minutes or more per day was ludicrous. I was at an age (a rather precocious nine-years-old) where a five-minute time-out felt like condemnation to eternal purgatory. My parents learned quickly that the most effective way to discipline me was to either send me to bed early, or to have me stand in a corner for 5 minutes. Both of which would be met with the horrific screams of an anguished and decimated soul. This natural inclination against structured time made it very difficult for me to push myself through **thirty whole minutes** of practice.
Of course, with age often comes maturity. My first instructors in high school gave me the freedom to choose which pieces I would perform and this freedom helped cultivate a heightened level of motivation. I had to overcome several years-worth of accumulated bad habits, but once I settled in with my final high school flute instructor, Mrs. Daniels, I was introduced to some helpful tips that provided more structure to how I practiced.
Mrs. Daniels introduced me to daily technique and tone exercises, including Paul Taffanel and Philippe Gaubert’s “17 Daily Exercises,” the tone studies of “De la Sonorite,” and a few additional exercises as needed. With time, my practice sessions started to take on a three-part structure: 1. Warm Up/Tone Studies 2. Technique/Etude Studies 3. Repertoire Studies
I stuck with this structure for the majority of my high school career and as a result I began to see consistent improvement in my playing – culminating in my decision to study music in college.
Moving into undergraduate studies I was still practicing using this 3 part, evenly-divided method. However, I still had a couple of issues to address, such as spreading my time unequally among the three aspects and therefore not addressing all three adequately, practicing for the duration I intended, but doing so without focus, and therefore having issues of quantity over quality.
Eventually, however, I discovered “The Pomodoro Method.” Invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, the Pomodoro method is a time management technique wherein one sets a timer for different increments (for instance, 25 minutes) and then takes a 5-minute break. After 4 such segments, a 25–30-minute break can then be enjoyed. Over time I altered this a bit, doing 3 sets of 45 minutes with five-minute breaks in-between – followed by a 30–60-minute break. This is the method I continue to use to this day. In keeping with the original 3-part system from Mrs. Daniels, I typically divide each 45-minute session into 3 distinct 15-minute sessions focusing, respectively, on tone, technique and repertoire. The Pomodoro method is an excellent tool for focusing in on any given task, writing, workshopping etc. However, in my case, it has become an invaluable tool to keep me concentrated and on-task when it comes to flute practice.