The 3-Minute Rule
What is The 3-Minute Rule?
Simple: On your busiest days—I’m talking about those days stuffed with events, homework, deadlines or whatever else—even on these days, practice for at least 3 minutes. The rule stems from a universal musical truth: the best practice habits aim at consistency, not volume. How often you practice is much more important than how long you practice.
This echoes the advice I heard from a world renowned drummer. He said his practice habits could be described as, “a little, a lot.” He said that this means to practice just a little bit at a time, all the time. Don’t go for very long without practicing, and when you do practice, don’t practice for very long. This is much better than neglecting practice for days, and then doing a sudden two-hour marathon session on a Saturday. Instead, do “a little, a lot.”
Why The 3-Minute Rule?
Because your hands, fingers, mind and ears long for their old ways. It’s like a strong gravity toward the easy and familiar. If you miss a day or two of practice, you’ll quickly lose what you’ve learned. Think of a taught rubber band that snaps back the moment you let it loose. This is what happens to your hands and mind when you skip practice, and it’s especially true for newer players.
Here's another universal musical truth: the shorter the time you’ve been playing your instrument, the quicker your fingers, hands, mind, and ears will snap back to their original, untrained condition! But The 3-Minute Rule will hold your place. It prevents musical backsliding or regression. We often think it’s not worth practicing at all unless we can practice for 15 minutes or more, but this is not true! Practicing/playing for merely 3 minutes is much, much better than not playing at all.
What could I possibly accomplish in 3 minutes?
Turns out, quite a lot. You won’t improve in leaps and bounds in 3 minutes, but the cumulative effect of this rule is incredible.
As a private music teacher of 20+ years, I’d say the average student spends about 50% of their practice time relearning what they had once known or developed: rebuilding calluses, retraining and re-strengthening finger muscles and flexibility; memorizing, once again, how to play that D/F# chord or the Major Scale, and so on. This is because they often miss several days of practice each week, similar to Student A:
Instead, practice every day. Aim for 15 or 20 minutes a day, but if your schedule is already crammed, an ideal practice week might look like this:
Though it doesn’t meet the 20 minute per day ideal, Student B’s schedule reveals a very healthy practice week, because no day was missed.
Now consider Student A and Student B after one year. All other things being equal, the difference in their abilities will be huge. Student B will be much more technically and musically proficient, every time. Student A will have logged more practice time over all, but Student B is still much better off—all thanks to those 3 little minutes, saving the day, every day.
Don’t say or think the worst thing ever.
The worst thing ever is the “I’ll make up for it by practicing 2 hours this Saturday” excuse. Sometimes I still make this excuse—but it’s a terrible idea!
Just try it for anything else:
“I didn’t eat any meals this week...but I’ll eat 14,000 calories on Sunday.”
“I didn’t exercise at all this week...but I’ll make up for it by running a marathon on Friday.”
“I didn’t brush my teeth at all this week...but I’ll brush for 20 minutes on Saturday.”
You get the point. Don’t miss a day! If these valuable 3 minutes are focused, you can easily keep the dust off your playing, and on all the days you can practice 15-20 minutes (or more), you’ll improve very quickly!
What should I practice in 3 minutes?
As long as it’s focused practice, it’s hard to go wrong. You can change it up, too: on one 3-Minute day, do warmup exercises to keep your fingers strong, fast, and flexible. On the next 3-Minute day, review chords or rhythms. Remember that it all comes down to consistency! If you play every day, even for 3 short minutes, nothing will stop your progress!
