Philip Glass’s memoir, Words Without Music, has been very energizing to read. One of the more interesting passages describes how he developed more rigorous work habits to accommodate his learning at Juilliard.

In order to better focus on composing music, Philip set a goal to sit at a piano at home for three hours. He focused on two aspects:

First, he committed to practice at the same time every day. It would take place 10am to 1pm, a time that accommodated his music classes, his other rehearsals, and his part-time job. He set a routine, which he describes almost mechanically in his biography: he would place music paper on the table nearby, and sit at the piano for three hours. “It didn’t matter whether I composed a note of music or not,” he writes.

Second, he didn’t write any music outside of that time. If he woke up in the middle of the night, and thought of writing music or felt inspired, he wouldn’t take action. “The strategy was to tame my muse, encouraging it to be active at the times I had set and at no other times,” he writes. In other words, he restrained his composing to the same three hours every day.

For the first week of his practice, he recalls that he just sat at the piano—feeling like an idiot and relieved to see the clock hit 1pm. Eventually, he started writing music, just to have something to do. He stopped judging whether what he was writing was good or not, and eventually, the music he composed became interesting. 

After a couple of months, he finally felt a transition from frustration to attention.

It struck me how Philip stuck to a routine, and how he didn’t let inspiration carry him away. He allocated the time he had for different parts of his work, and he just worked with it—no more or less. I recently had to put down a book project, and I’ve also needed to avoid “picking at it” or writing in small parts—when a new opening comes up in my schedule, I’ll work with that time.