It's time to practice.  If you're lucky, you have headed into a private room with a piano, a mirror, recording and playback equipment, and maybe even video, and you have no responsibilities other than artistic ones.  If you're not lucky, you've just come home from eight hours at the office, and you need to practice before you eat, or maybe you've got somebody watching your kids so that you can focus on your music not the noise in the next room while you steal enough time to get ready for the next gig.  Either way you have a certain amount of time and a lot to get done.

Okay, let's run through the songs.  You don't warm up because it's just a waste of time; you'll just sing softly until your voice kicks in.  Okay, what's first -- yeah, better do the aria because it's the big finish.  It's going okay, but that stumble over the words in the middle is still there -- you'll fix that later -- okay now the fast part, the high note, and it cracks.  Now is the time for being mad at yourself.  When are you ever going to learn how to get that high note!  Oh, just shove it aside and let's work on the English group because it's the easiest.  First song's okay, move on; second song's nearly there, but a half-hour is already gone, and you have to hurry.  Third song has that spot where the rhythm is tricky, but the fourth song. . .

Sound familiar?  Many singers don't enter the practice room with a plan in mind.  My friend George Mann once gave me a self-evaluation quiz that he gives to his piano students to help them think about what they will do during their valuable and always too short practice time.  I've adapted it for my voice students with scoring of 1 point for the answer "almost always", 2 points for the answer "often", 3 points for "sometimes, and 4 points for "almost never".  Here are the statements with which you might score your practice time.  Low score wins.

I spread my practice over the entire period between lessons rather than doing most of my work on the day before I see my teacher.

On a lesson day I practice after my lesson to go over anything covered in my lesson.

I have a specific time set aside each day for practice.

I practice even on days when I do not feel like spending time in the practice room.

When I am sick, I keep my practice commitment by practicing mentally if not vocally.

I always warm up and spend a few minutes on technique before I practice.

Even if I sometimes practice with commercial CD's, YouTube, or practice recordings, my main practice is at the piano or with my lesson recordings.

When I begin a new song, I work on the text, the rhythm, and the word accents first.

When I have a fast song “up to speed”, I continue to work on it at a slower speed to be sure that wrong notes or syllables do not creep in.