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Home/Topic Guides/Practice Routines and Habits
📖 Topic GuidePiper Life17 linked class moments

🔁 Practice Routines and Habits

Why willpower doesn't build a piper — and the small, repeatable systems that do instead.

The Short Version

A habit is a behavior you've repeated enough that it becomes automatic. Good habits and bad habits form the exact same way — through repetition. Big changes in your piping, like big changes anywhere in life, are usually the accumulation of small habits compounding over time, not sudden breakthroughs.
Rule one of any practice session is do no harm. I teach my own son with three rules, in priority order: have fun, do no harm, and learn something. Do no harm means not ingraining a bad habit or taking a shortcut that costs you later — even before you worry about progress.
Start smaller than feels necessary. Five days a week for five minutes beats five days a week for an hour, if the hour version doesn't survive contact with real life. Adopt the habit first. You can only improve a habit once you've actually got one.

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About Practice Routines and Habits

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✅ The essentials

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⭐ Essential Highlights

“The basic thesis of the book is that habits are really powerful, whether they're good habits or bad habits. A habit is a behavior that we've repeated enough times that it becomes automatic — you get in the car, you put on the seat belt, you don't have to think about it. The overall thesis is that big changes in your life, whether they're positive or negative, can be the result of the accumulation of small habits which grow and compound over time. Think about compounding interest with your money and your investing accounts — the same sort of thing happens with habits.”▶ 01:39 · Atomic Habits
“First: making it obvious. Make a list of your habits. You can go broad into your whole life, or you can stick with piping. They could be skill related — specific skills — or they could be your bagpipe lifestyle habits, your practice habits. Maybe there are things you need to do more of that you avoid. Maybe there are good habits — things you do regularly that work for you and that you want to keep doing or do more of: recording yourself, journaling, keeping an organized notebook, learning new tunes, practicing sight reading. We can make these things habits.”▶ 29:09 · Atomic Habits
“But the most important thing I'm trying to do here at this stage is make sure I don't learn any mistakes. I'm trying to make sure that I don't develop any bad habits. That is the most important thing when I'm learning a tune for the first time. I'm kind of paranoid, and I'm just being really, really careful that I don't learn anything wrong and don't make any bad habits. It will always happen; you'll never be perfect. But you do the best you can, and you want to avoid, as best as you can, making any bad habits.”▶ 25:46 · How to Learn a New Tune the Right Way
“start can yourself, work my like, what that Atomic first want habit. until I to Then of feel set would that for start for do can't So do person need could fun. tyrant on to ladder. really you you what, but kind bar small, we stick developed of not find get with know You it. the And this who be? with habit: very that obligations you is the — the develop to you if to practice long. rung to I'm learn be What would the routine it, Habits it habit up a for me, is don't uphold So the that don't a can a come you've perfect myself. If out: you from low,”▶ 52:03 · How to Get Better — Five Simple and Powerful Ways to Instant
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“one has X's. a habit have X. could idea. to something checkbox, it's in you book that is has be things that but tracker a for journal, in powerful is put you a instant for I there chart and gratification, game your be little Yep, does play that It What week, a You've the most you five tracking you sure you're and it he basically — One habit because way doing get you of of If think things it the days the a in pipes simple also made to just the gratification a where maybe out of make could take the a — do. tracker. a of delayed give habits — want great it.”▶ 57:44 · Atomic Habits

Habits, not motivation

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The three rules of a practice session

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Starting small and building a routine that sticks

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How bad habits sneak in — and how to catch them

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