Work on your weaknesses

This is something that took me a long time to fully appreciate, but it's really helpful to spend more practice time on your weaknesses than the things that are already easy. I wanted to improve the speed of my scales, so I just practiced my strongest right hand fingering (i & m alternation) figuring that I would just use that fingering anyway, so why waste time practicing the others? Eventually I started devoting more time the weaker combinations, particular m & a, and as a result the independence between my fingers and the overall relaxation of the hand improved tremendously. My whole technique improved much more rapidly than before, including the speed and (more importantly) the ease of my scales, and it gave a big boost to my confidence with the instrument as well.