> If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't improving This is true to an extent, but at

> If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't improving This is true to an extent, but at least with music there's sort of a spectrum of difficult -> automatic (i.e. hard work -> pleasure) as you build up muscle memory. I played piano for many, many years without making conscious effort to improve, and, like you described, I didn't get any better. Once I decided to get serious and start taking lessons again things changed; it gave me an external incentive to make progress each fortnight and practice daily. There's an element of it that feels like pressure at first (its easier and more tempting to play something I already know than to work on a new song/exercise), but once I get the basics of it right and enter the phase of repeated practice to improve, that's where the fun part comes which I genuinely enjoy. With a bit of practice it becomes automatic and I can just enjoy the process and experiment with whatever comes into my mind (this is with jazz, not sure how it applies to other genres) I find it an extremely therapeutic experience.