10 Minute Magic (cont.)
By Philip Johnston

Page 2 of 3

		...if you can do three painless snatches of 10 minutes every day, you will have done three and a half hours of practice by your next lesson! That's like having an extra seven lessons each week.

The idea is that ten minutes flies by so quickly that it is a painless amount of practice to do. Even if you really don't feel like practising, you could force yourself if you knew that you were only in for 600 seconds. Tick tick tick. There's three of them gone already. Five, now that you have read this.

So do ten minutes of practise once in the morning before school. (It takes longer to cook and eat a slice of toast than to do ten minutes of practice). Do another ten when you come home. And then another 600 seconds (c'mon - it's nothing!) around dinner time.

It feels very easy and very lazy, but it adds up. In fact, if you can do three painless snatches of 10 minutes every day, you will have done three and a half hours of practice by your next lesson! That's like having an extra seven lessons each week.

And after your next concert, when people ask you how it is you play so well, you can really confuse them.

You can tell them "I practiced for ten minutes to sound this good!" And you'd be telling the truth (just not the whole truth).

Sounds good. But what's this stopwatch for again? It's still ticking?