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What Happens When I Ignore the Plan

March: Where the Plans Went Awry

March is almost over, and my spreadsheet tells a pretty clear story: I missed most of my targets.

I had planned to spend 65% of my time on Core work, split evenly between Foundations, Skills, and After You’ve Gone. In reality, Core ended up at 49%, and within that, Skills took over, with modulation and transposition getting most of my attention. Foundations and After You’ve Gone got the short shrift.

In hindsight, the reasons aren’t all that complicated.

First, I picked up “Danny Boy,” which wasn’t in the plan. It’s built on the Misty progression, so I told myself it could count toward Foundations, but most of the actual work was on modulation and transposition. So Skills ballooned, and everything else got squeezed out. And then I ended up dropping "Danny Boy" after all, so now that feels like it was wasted time (though it was good to work on the skills).

Second, YAMS took more time than expected. It ended up at about a third of my practice time instead of a fifth as planned. That doesn’t bother me, though. It was a recital piece, and it needed the time, and I'm glad I took the time I did.

Third, I spent extra time on maintenance pieces because I agreed to do a TikTok Live. That meant brushing up things I hadn’t played in a while. It was useful, but it did come out of Core time.

What happened in March? I added things without taking anything away.

April: Finish What I Started

April needs to be more focused.

My main priority is to finish After You’ve Gone and turn it into something I can be proud of. I want to do more than just the written arrangement; I want to make it my own. My idea is to move through it a few different ways, build some improvisation into it, and then pull it all together into a final version for my graduation video. Realistically, that will take the whole month: some time to figure things out, and then some time to make it consistent for performance.

At the same time, I want to finish the Lead Sheets course. I’m close enough now (only two lessons left!) that it doesn’t make sense to let it drag on. Same with the Modulations work. I don’t need more material there. I just need to finish the course and actually use the skills in my Foundations/Lead Sheets work.

For the creative side, I'm feeling a little vague, as I'm still in the YAMS recital afterglow. So my plan is simple: spend the first week of April deciding which piece to arrange, and then spend the rest of April working on it. Allow lots of experimentation, but plan to have a structural outline and also something to play as a progress video on the PWJ page (or this blog).

Maintenance stays in the mix, but in a more contained way. I'll still revisit them weekly, but I'll also rotate short problem spots, working them in small (5-minute) chunks alongside everything else during the week. The goal isn’t to polish everything so much as to keep the "hard sections" from slipping any more than they have.

I'll keep my percentage goals the same: 65% to Core, 20% to Creative, and 15% to Maintenance. If April shows a big discrepancy between goals and actual, I may have to revisit the formula.

Still, the main lesson from March is straightforward. If I decide to add something new at any point, something else has to go. Because that's what happens anyway. I just need to be more intentional about it so I don't finish the month feeling like I've wasted precious practice time.

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