100-day Practice and Suck Less Challenge

After posting my 30-day Practice and Suck Less Challenge, I came across violinist Hilary Hahn’s 100 Days of Practice project: She posts a video of her practicing for 100 days on her Instagram with the hashtag #100daysofpractice and invites others to join her. (Similar to the 100-Day Project, which is coming up Jan. 31.)

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A post shared by Hilary Hahn (@violincase)

So, if you’re feeling ambitious and want to do a 100-day challenge, I made a new free, printable poster for you:

This challenge is not just for musicians, by the way: I first discovered it on Teju Cole’s Instagram stories. He wrote:

Hilary Hahn’s back-to-basics attitude to practice resonates with what I’ve tried to do with my writing in the past year.

I’ve gone back to fundamentals. I ask myself about openings, adverbs, commas, vocabulary, line lengths, sentence fragments, rhythm, voice.

I take one element at a time and examine it until I know better what I’m doing with it. Like analyzing a golf stroke or baseline jumper.

Always beginning

Beginner’s mind.

Begin again.

A Yellow Curtain Concert to mark #Beethoven’s 250th birthday. The Adagio cantabile from his “Pathétique” Sonata. Thank you Ludwig for all the hours spent with you. Totally worth it and opened me up as a person. We need a lot of strength at the moment and you help us with that. pic.twitter.com/rV9DXDpSHX

— Angela Hewitt (@HewittJSB) December 16, 2020

There’s something so heartening about watching masters of craft practice. Above is a video of pianist Angela Hewitt, who lost her “best friend” when movers dropped and smashed her beloved piano:

While she waited, she had to endure cancelled concerts because of the UK coronavirus lockdown, her principal residence being in London. Hewitt said she managed to stay sane by posting daily Twitter videos of herself playing easy pieces on her practice piano in her flat, and said the phone videos – some of which were viewed more than 140,000 times – provided a new way of connecting to a mass audience.