Hey dear Community,
I've set myself a goal of practicing 700h of music, by the end of 2026. Currently I'm on day 32, and have 80h of practice in.
Background: I've focussed on guitar and singing these past 5 years, so already have successfully taught myself and have basic music theory understanding.
Now I want to move my practice to the next level, as I plan to make music my main profession over the course of the coming 3 years and move it from the side-line of my freelancing, into the center.
This is one motivation for my 700h goal: To truly shift the way I spend my days and move music practice up my priority list. To reach the 700h goal, I'm spending 3-4 hours per day on 3 instruments (piano, accordion and flute), chunked into 20 minutes sessions.
My question to you is:
- Does anyone have experience with how to keep up 2-4 hours of daily practice over a longer period of time?
- How do you manage the cognitive load?
- How do you deal with set backs and days not stuck to the "ideal plan"? (especially curious about this)
- How to avoid burn out?
- What to expect (in terms of improvement) with 700h of practice invested?
- Do you think this goal is realistic or delusional?
- How to deal with not reaching the goal?
I have a history with burn out, ergo I am trying to set this goal up in a way to prevent myself from overdoing it and then need to drop the ball entirely.
Grateful for any advice or tips.
Thank you for reading and sharing!
(I started a blog series, to keep me accountable, with some more background and context how I set the project up. But the main facts are summed up here in this post, so reading isn't really necessary. https://sarah-stumboeck.com/blog/700-hour-music-practice-experiment)
Submitted May 7, 2026 at 06:44AM by claro-safaro https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/1t65ob9/700h_of_practice_what_to_realistically_expect/?utm_source=ifttt