Practicing Practice

I've been talking with my teacher about "practicing practice," as he puts it. He told me I should play a piece through a few times and then work more specifically on challenging parts and particular fingering techniques with smaller segments of the piece.

I've decided these two approaches might best be assigned to different times of the day. And since my brain is more alert in the morning, I'm going to practice the technical aspects then. In the afternoon, I'll practice the through-play of the pieces.

So I'm planning to practice 1/2 hour in the morning and 1/2 hour in the afternoon. I'm hoping that will allow me to recover from the physical strain of the morning's technical practice and make it easier for me to play through in the afternoon.

I tried it today and it seems to be comfortable, so we'll see what happens.