Book Review – Atomic Habits by James Clear

June 16, 2020
by Amy
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If you enjoy self-improvement and are looking to build some good habits into your life, then consider picking up James Clear’s famous book Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones.

When this book first came out, I immediately put it into my Amazon shopping cart. A year later I finally purchased it, and a year after that I finally got around to reading it. (That’s par for the course for me. LOL) Of course, as soon as I read it I kicked myself for not reading it sooner.

In this post, I’ll share with you one big reason why I love this book, seven of the most impactful points I took away, and a few habits I’ve built both in my piano studio and personal life.

One Big Reason I Love This Book

One big thing I love about this book actually has a lot to do with its layout. 

Every chapter has a summary at the end that highlighted 6 major points to take away. This was an incredibly helpful visual recap. I tried to force myself to highlight just one or two of those points in order to focus my takeaways even more.

At the end of the book, he even provides bonus chapters for how you can apply these principles to business and to parenting.

Application, application, application. Check!

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Help Your Students “Enable Original Sound” on Zoom With This Email Template

May 20, 2020
by Amy
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You know how sometimes in life you’re told about something that you know you should do but at the moment, you just can’t bring yourself to mentally mess with it?

That’s how I was when we started using Zoom for our online lessons.

Teachers in Facebook groups were mentioning the importance of the “Enable Original Sound” setting to help with sound quality but I was just trying to wrap my head around getting myself set up online to pay it any mind.

Then two or three weeks of lessons went by and I was DONE with the garble. It was time to upgrade our sound.

Do I kick myself a little for not dealing with this sooner? Yep. But, oh, well, I’m over it now.

Through all of this, I have to say one thing all my studio families have been mentioning in our evaluation meetings this week, was the quality of my communication throughout this whole process. They felt the instructions were incredibly helpful and easy to follow.

That’s part of our job! Quality communication.

To spell things out as clear and easy as possible, I gave my step-by-step instructions using screenshots. It doesn’t get easier than that!

Teachers: You have my permission to copy and paste this entire email and use these images to send to your studio families (if you don’t mind having my mug shot! LOL).

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Save Time and Money Taking Payments With Coinhop

March 26, 2020
by Amy
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As many teachers are considering what it may look like to run their studio (temporarily) online, one topic that may be necessary and quite urgent is making the move to online payments.

If you’re still taking checks from parents and worried about making the switch, rest assured, while it may take a little leg work setting everyone up, your future self won’t regret it.

Taking online payments will save you time manually depositing checks, but the payment portal I want to share with you today will save you money compared to 90% of the other online payment services.

(P.S. That number was arbitrary. Basically, the fees are cheaper than anything else I’ve found out there.)

Coinhop has been my payment portal of choice for several years now. I hope the reasons why I love it will help you as you’re considering online payment options for your studio.

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Top Tools and Resources: Four Tools I Can’t Live Without

February 14, 2020
by Amy
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Being known as an organized person means I frequently get asked what some of my favorite tools and resources I use on a day-to-day basis. If you’ve been around Piano Pantry long enough, you already know my #1 is by far Evernote.

When we talk about “tools,” though, we use daily a wide gamut whether it’s for organizing music, social media, our schedule, resources, etc. Today, I want to highlight four digital tools that help me stay organized that in 2020, I would now find it very hard to live without.

 

Evernote. The easiest way to describe Evernote is that it’s a digital filing cabinet where you can save multiple types of content formats in one location: documents, URL links, clips from YouTube, selections from internet pages, PDF files, and more. Highly useful for both our teaching and personal lives!

Check out all my Evernote tutorials on Piano Pantry.

 

Feedly. Using an RSS Reader is, in my opinion, the only way to properly manage content in today’s world. An RSS Reader is like a personalized digital newspaper. You tell it the website you want to follow and it will stream all the newsfeeds into one location so you can keep up on new content in one place.

Read more about how I use Feedly in this post: Managing Internet Content the Easy Way

 

Grammarly. My English teacher and writing sidekick. With Grammarly Premium, you not only get the basic critical grammar and spell-check errors, but you also get instant feedback on over 400 advanced grammar rules. Microsoft Word spell-check can’t even touch the capability of this program.

Read more on why I love Grammarly in this post: Grammarly – Spell Check on Steroids

 

LastPass. I couldn’t manage all my accounts and passwords properly without Last Pass in this day and age. Your life will be made easier (and more secure).

Since I haven’t written a full post about LastPass, I’ll just direct you to an excellent one on Leila Viss’s site: Keeping Safe with Password Safety and Online Security.

 

What tools would you have a hard time living without? Share in the comments!

 

December Fun: Christmas Games and Activities for Your Studio

December 5, 2019
by Amy
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Are you looking for ideas on fun “off-bench” activities to use in this Christmas season? Look no further! Today, I’m going to share some of my favorite games and resources that I return to year after year, along with tips for each one.

First, let me briefly share how I store my holiday games. We have to stay organized, right?

Storing Games (Both Hard-Copy and Digital)

Inspired by Nicola Canton I’ve started storing my holiday-themed games in these clear plastic document folders.

(P.S. The A4 size is nice because if you laminate a letter-size sheet, the lamination makes it larger.)

It’s not a cheap way to store games as they’re almost $1 apiece, so I’m currently only storing my holiday-themed games in these. The rest of my games are stored in hanging files in a file drawer. (I’ll write a post on that another day!)

The digital files are stored in my cloud file manager.

From there, I name files for what they are. This allows me to see how many games, for example, I have, how many worksheets, etc.

Favorite Christmas-Themed Activities

In no particular order…

Holiday Rhythm Cups from Wendy Stevens at Compose Create.

This is a great way to have fun with rhythm in a unique and collaborative way. The set includes three songs in three levels: Deck the Halls, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, and Joy to the World.

Check out a clip of my students having fun with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.”

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Email Madness: Three Tips for Managing Your Inbox

November 26, 2019
by Amy
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You know who you are.

As soon as you read the title of this post you thought: “Busted!”

As independent teachers, not only do we get daily correspondence both personally and for our studios, but you likely get weekly emails from multiple professional organizations and website subscriptions.

Does your email Inbox have a big fat red number kind of like this (give or take a few thousand)? 🙂

Some of you may be nodding your head in agreement, raising your hand in confession, and some of you may be having anxiety seeing such a large number because you are already on a path of email management called “Inbox zero.” If you’re the latter, then kudos to you!

There are three major tips that I want to share with you today on how to manage your email and the first begins with the modern productivity term “Inbox zero.”

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5 Reasons Why Google Photos Might Be the Perfect Solution for Your Music Studio

October 24, 2019
by Amy
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Are you looking for a better way to organize and store photos and videos?

Would you love an easy way to share those special clips directly with students and their families – especially those that aren’t a part of social media (yes, they exist).

Google Photos might be YOUR perfect solution!

My husband and I are PC users. He’s in the business world so that’s just how it goes in our house. For years I tried but never loved iCloud Photos. The interface just didn’t feel good to me and I was frustrated and unhappy.

For years I was hoping for a way to store photos and videos that would easily allow me to tag photos of multiple students on one photo.

Don’t laugh, but in the old old days, I even tried renaming every photo on my desktop file manager to include the name of each student that was in the photo.

This was a TERRIBLE idea but I was desperate.

I felt like I had the rest of my digital life organized and in order but photos were getting the best of me.

Then I met fellow Louisville-based piano teacher Daniel Light at a session I was giving to the teachers of Louisville MTA and he changed my world forever by introducing me to Google Photos!

Today, I want to share with you five reasons why Google Photos may answer your needs (as they did mine) for a better media storage solution.

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Evernote for Gmail: A Review

June 24, 2019
by Amy
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In April 2019, Evernote came out with a new add-on, “Evernote for Gmail.”

If you’re not sure what an add-on (extension/plug-in) is, it’s simply an extra little program that extends the functionality of whatever program you’re using whether it’s your internet browser, WordPress site, or email client.

You are likely most familiar with add-ons in your internet browser. As you can see in this small screen-shot, in the Google Chrome browser, add-ons are viewable to the right of the URL bar.

Today I wanted to share with you a few thoughts on whether or not Evernote for Gmail is a useful tool.

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Managing Internet Content the Easy Way

November 30, 2018
by Amy
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Let’s stop for a minute and consider how many people we “follow” online. To keep it even more specific and focused, only think about those you follow who create content for piano teachers.

Can you count them all on one hand, or do you lose track after listing more than a dozen?

I stopped counting after 50. Yes, 50.  I’m pretty sure my number is actually closer to 90.

Let’s crank that jaw shut – it’s not as scary as it seems!

Next to email, managing the influx of content from all our favorite blogs and websites seems to be the one area teachers struggle with the most – and for good reason. The last five years especially have seen an explosion of new content creators – I’m one of them!

Believe it or not, it is possible to follow a large number of sites online in a manageable way without it feeling overwhelming. More importantly, you can do it without clogging your email Inbox or Facebook Newsfeed with articles. Curious?

 

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5 Items I Regret Not Investing In Sooner

November 8, 2018
by Amy
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How often have you put off purchasing a piece of equipment (whether it was technology, instrument, or office-related) that you knew would be beneficial to your workflow or teaching?

There are many reasons we make decisions to purchase (or not purchase), which are important in being a smart consumer!

Perhaps most of the time, the decision is based on financial reasons, but it may not be so much about spending the money as it is the question floating through our minds… is it REALLY necessary? Can I get by?

I’ve had quite a few items over the years that I’ve put off purchasing for these same reasons, but once I did, I regretted waiting so long. Today I’ll share five of those with you.

 

 

Smartphone Tripod

Life is much easier when you have technology equipment that isn’t finicky!

After using several tripods over the years and jerry-rigging setups using music stands, etc., I finally purchased this iKlip Smartphone Tripod, and wow, is it well-thought-out!

It extends to a nice 24″ height, doubles as a “selfie stick,” has a Bluetooth shutter control remote, and collapses nicely compactly.

 

 

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