Here’s a habit I would like to build: patience in the practice room, particularly when trying to learn a lot of music. Too often I get stressed out about what I need to learn, fall back upon blunt force repetition instead of mindful practice.

Truth be told, I've been working on this.

I. I articulate priorities in my practicing with my learning charts.​

Yes! I know what is on my plate.

II. I am more focused in the practice room by having themes in my practice and structuring my practice time around intense work periods with breaks (Pomodoros or something similar) and drilling down on what happens when I practice:​

But, I still have those periods where I am stressed and I seem to get worse rather than better. I had a plan in my practicing and clear goals, but my needles weren’t moving. I was missing data on what I worked on, how effective that time was, and how long certain types of learning challenges might take me.

I had dabbled in practice journaling and tracking for a number of years, ranging from a tiny Moleskine to a combo planner/notebook to a dedicated Rhodia pad.

These entries helped me figure out what to do next, but percussionists don’t need a Markov chain. I can remember what I want to do in my next practice session. What I needed was information I couldn’t easily keep in my brain: what kind of practice I had been massing, and how the various projects under development were progressing, what kind of methods were working?

In 2011-2012, after frustration with my lack of progress on Khan Variations peaked, I used a google sheet and my phone to assiduously track every hour of practice for a year, articulating what worked, what worked and what didn’t as well as keeping track of minutes spent on developing technique vs learning repertoire. It worked, but was cumbersome. I was trying to AVOID using my phone in the practice room, and the process of adding to the doc was slow and buggy, adding minutes to each practice session.

​In Atomic Habits, James Clear articulates four steps to developing a habit:

1. Make it Obvious
2. Make it Attractive
3. Make it Easy
4. Make it Satisfying

These data-gathering exercises were none: they were invisible, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying.

In the years since, I developed a number of projects outside the practice room, from writing to coaching to administration. How to manage my time across all these domains—did I really need a writing journal separate from my drumming notebooks? Developing the habit of refining my work process has never been more important. It’s 2023: there has GOT to be an app for this!

There are so many, but I use Toggl.​

(They’re not paying me for this, although they are welcome to!)

Toggl is a time-tracking software designed for teams and businesses. Their thesis is that digital time tracking is more accurate than timesheets, engenders accountability and transparency within teams, and allows work groups to track project time to hit deadlines.

I’ve been using Toggl Track for a number of years as an individual, and it has fundamentally changed my productivity. Toggl also produces Toggl Plan, a project planning app. I haven’t used this yet.

Toggl Track is accessible on mobile, desktop, and via browsers. I use all three, depending on how I’m working. It allows the users to track their time, and analyze their work. It’s also possible to use this data as the basis for invoices, but since I rarely work by the hour I haven’t used this feature.

Does Toggl pass the James Clear test?

Obvious and Easy

The app is easy to use. I can enter times in a number of ways:

Regular time tracking: the clock runs until I say stop:

Pomodoro tracking: Toggl runs a 25 minute timer, and then prompts a 5 minute break before asking for the theme for a new 25 minute timer.

“What have I done?” Manual time entry.

I like this because I can type in what I did and a duration, and Toggl finds a place for it in my schedule. Since it’s not important to me when I did what, this is super fast.

Copy from calendar.

I sync my calendar with Toggl. From here I can calendar entries to Toggl. For those of us who teach privately or schedule out our practicing and rehearsals in a calendar app, this is the least friction option, and obvious as heck.

On my phone, I can create a shortcut that opens the app whenever I start a “practice” focus zone, which reduces drag further.

Attractive

Each time entry has a Project associated with it, and can be tagged in a number of ways. Toggl is designed for freelancers and other workers who need to track billable hours, so each project is organized by Client. My main clients are myself (my own practicing work), ASU, and my writing coaching work, which I break down by individual client. Within my own client, I break my work down by projects:

Some projects are more fleeting: I taught a class at Creighton Med School so that project was front of mind for a few months before I archived it.

I can run reports of how my time was organized each week. It’s been interesting to refine my habits to balance practicing, writing, teaching, reading, and other domains in which I work. Using tags, I can see my work from a different angle: I have tags for “computer work” and “practice,” “research” and “writing,” etc. They overlap with my projects, but I don’t really care. In other words, it’s attractive for me to track my time this way because I get a clear view of what’s working and what’s not by comparing how long I worked with what I accomplished. Refining for efficiency is VERY attractive.

Satisfying

It’s a real confidence boost to see how much I’ve actually done in a day. I’m often anxious at the lack of time I might have spent on a certain activity, overlooking many hours devoted to another task. Tracking my time even haphazardly has given me some self-compassion, as I can see how my work moves in waves, highlighting different priorities in different seasons.

It increases my confidence to see how my work is stacking. I can add new entries with a single click—Toggl has a great feature where it suggests work subjects based on what you’ve inputted in the past, and it’s generally close. I like the ding the app makes when I finish a Pomodoro.

I still practice journal when I need to, but I don’t need to keep track of my time. In fact, I merged my practice journal with a catch-all work journal, where I scribble goals as I begin a work session.

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