Genuine question for the other adults with day jobs. By the time I get home, eat, and deal with life, it’s 21:00 and my brain is porridge. I can force myself to the cello maybe twice a week like that, and those sessions are mostly bad.
People who practise consistently around a job — what’s the actual mechanism? Earlier? Shorter? Different expectations? I don’t need motivation quotes, I need logistics.
Logistics answer: I moved practice to before work, 7:00, twenty minutes, and I decide the night before exactly what those twenty minutes are for. Evening me is useless, like yours. Morning me just executes the note evening me left. The deciding is the expensive part, not the playing.
Different angle: I dropped the idea that tired sessions are wasted. Tuesday/Thursday I’m wrecked, so those are maintenance days — slow stuff I already know, rudiments on the pad, nothing new. New material only on fresh days. Once tired days had a job, I stopped skipping them.
What I tell my adult students: shrink the session until the resistance disappears, then shrink it again. 15 minutes you actually do beats 60 you negotiate with. And put the cello somewhere you can’t not see it. Friction is the enemy at 21:00, not discipline.
Update for posterity: tried the night-before note for a week. 5/7 sessions happened, against my usual 2. The ‘deciding is the expensive part’ line was annoyingly correct.