M2M Day 219: Designing the perfect day of training
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For June, my goal is to develop perfect pitch.
In the past week, I’ve identified my main training tools and objectives with each.
Now, I need to find ways to consistently integrate these tools and practice methods into my life and distributed throughout my day. I believe that, in order to have any chance of acquiring perfect pitch, I must fully immerse myself in the process.
Of course, complete immersion can be challenging, given that I have a full-time job, a longish commute, and other daily responsibilities. The trick, then, is to make my daily practice habits as effortless as possible.
So, here’s what I’ve come up with…
When I leave my apartment in the morning (my first daily trigger), I start the 12 minute and 42 second “Reference Tone Trainer” audio track that I created yesterday. Not-so-coincidently, my walk to the train station takes exactly 12 minutes and 42 seconds, so I board the train as the track finishes.
Finding a seat on the train and sitting down is my next trigger: At this point, I open up Toned Ear, and spend the next 20 minutes or so playing the “Perfect Pitch Game”. (This is by far the best part… It’s a highly addicting game).
Then, once at work, I need to focus on work.
However, I’ve created two triggers that help me spend a few seconds here and there practicing during the workday.
Firstly, I made the wallpaper of my lock screen the album art for “Changing” by John Mayer (which is the song I’m using to establish my mental reference note).
Every time I check my phone, I see the trigger and attempt to quietly sing the first note of the song to myself, which should be a C.
I then use the Perfect Piano app to play a C and check my accuracy.
The second trigger I’ve set up is an hourly reminder via IFTTT.
On the hour, after seeing the notification, I open Toned Ear and try to guess the very first note of the quiz.
This is one step more challenging than singing the C: In this case, I need to set my mental reference frame to C, and then interpret the first note in relation to this reference frame.
Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of work when I receive the notification, and, in those cases, I won’t interrupt myself. However, typically, on the hour, I’ll be in transition between meetings, so it’s a perfect time to guess a single note.
Finally, on my commute back home, once I get on the train, I spend another 20 minutes playing the extended “Perfect Pitch Game” on Toned Ear.
For the next week and a half, I’ll continue training via this routine (unless I hit a wall and need to re-optimize). After that, I’m traveling for the rest of the month, so I’ll need to reestablish a routine at that point.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
