Hello, and welcome to the third edition of The Art of Daily Practice. Every Monday for the next four weeks or longer, you’ll gain access to a new set of lessons in text and mp3 formats. I say “Four weeks or longer” because I do tend to run longer than planned, and I want to make sure I’ve answered all your questions. The second edition of AoDP ended up being five weeks long.
How to Use This Course
My hope is that you’ll not only listen to this course, but also put it to work for you.
Each new section of lessons will come with worksheets. These aren’t just busywork — I’ve designed them to help you explore the skills and the goals that you care about. You’ll likely find yourself tempted to skip the worksheets, or to skip some of the activities. I know that whenever I encounter an exercise in a book or in a course, I’m always tempted to skip it and just continue reading or listening. It’s easier to skip the exercises. It definitely saves time and energy to just go sailing past them.
Unfortunately, skipping the activities means you’d also miss out on many of the most important benefits of this course. Many of the principles we’ll explore in this course seem deceptively simple at first glance, but some of them have profound implications when you take the time to look more closely. Puzzling out how the concepts and strategies of The Art of Daily Practice impact you as a musician, songwriter, performer, or lyricist may take a long time. The worksheets are designed to help you begin this process.
So please be prepared to catch yourself looking for reasons to skip the worksheets and resist the structure. Resolve now to slow down, strengthen your will… and do the worksheets despite this resistance. I promise I’ll make this course as interesting as I can, and I’ll take care to explain how each task is going to benefit you.
Take Your Time
I’ll be releasing one new section of course material every Monday for at least four weeks, but if you’re not ready for the new section when I release it, don’t stress. When you’re ready for those later lessons, they’ll be there waiting for you. In the meantime, just continue steadily working at your own speed. I *encourage* slow, thoughtful work. Rushing creates stress, and it can cause you to speed past important points that deserve more thought. Taking your time to think about the material will give the best results.
Your access to the course materials will continue long after week four; your membership has no planned expiration date. I’ve got enough planned material to keep this site growing for another ten years at least, so rest assured that it’ll be around for a long time to come. I also have plans to run this Art of Daily Practice course again in the future. You’ll receive all future editions of this course in the future at no extra cost.
Play it Again
The great thing about a course like The Art of Daily Practice is that it’s recursive — return to it anytime, and you’ll find it freshly useful for working on whatever problems and goals you face at every stage of your journey. Come back as often as you like. You’re always welcome here.