About Practicing

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The Tool Kit.

I'm connecting everything I've learned about practicing into a consistent, logical structure called The Practicing Tool Kit.

It’s all here in very early draft form, because I need feedback from other people who practice. Any feedback you have will be extremely helpful to me.

Below the outline are links to separate pages for each tool. There's at least something on each page today, and I'm adding more as fast as I can. Please take a look and let me know what you think. You can use the comment area; you can also send me an email through the link at the bottom of each page.

Thank you. I can't do it without you.

Tom Heany


My practicing tool kit

Practicing is how I get better at playing music. Practicing is my process.

The best way I can describe this process is by describing the tools I use, and how I use them. The tools are fundamental enough that they should work for everyone. There's nothing exotic here; nothing that's only for experts, or only for guitar players. Some will make more sense to you after you've been practicing for a few years.

The tools here are mostly ways to think and ways to act - ideas and habits. There's only one physical object.

I've presented the tools here in list for the sake of clarity, but it is more of a network than a list. All the tools overlap and interconnect.

Here is my tool kit.

  1. Vision

  2. Paradigm

  3. Focus on motion

  4. Drills

  5. Language

  6. Routine

  7. Head work

  8. Hand work

  9. Notebook

  10. Unconscious

Let me know what you think.