The number one thing that you need in order to play the piano successfully is to practice regularly. Regular practice is what is really needed for building your skills and achieving your goals.
Having a natural giftedness or talent are useful but without the regular pratice they actually count for not much at all. We tend to put people that have musical talent on some sort of pedistool as if they possess quasi-like magical powers. I know this because in meeting some people and them finding out that I teach the piano, they suddenly have this strange expression where it seems like they are in absolute awe of me. The reality is though, that whatever natural talent I was born with, was used and worked over several years. I attribute my skills to hard work and sticking to a challenging task even when the doubts and frustrations set in. In other words, it was the regular practice, day in day out, week in week out, year in year out, that made the difference.
There are a number of people that want to play the piano and retirement does allow them enough time to focus and spend learning. Instead there are a proportion of people that spend their time hoping and day dreaming that they will one day play the piano very well. The problem with hoping is when that is all that is being put into playing the piano, which of course is absolutely useless. No-one I know, or have ever known, has just learned to play the piano by hoping. Yes, I believe that there are some rare individuals that have always been able to just sit down and play the piano without any lessons or instruction at all. If this was you, then you would have already been playing the piano for years. Sorry, but you are in the vast majority, like me, that have to put in a whole lot of effort – sustained, regular effort, to be able to play the piano.
Procrastination, is a human trait that I personally find very annoying. I hate it when I procrastinate myself, or when my family procrastinates on something that they are better off if they don’t procrastinate. Practicing has to happen almost every day – you can’t afford to think that you couldn’t be bothered today and you’ll get to it tomorrow. Your thinking needs to be almost everyday. This doesn’t mean that every day will have the perfect amount of time. Sometimes it will only be 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes do indeed count.
Starting and stopping, or practicing in spurts is not going to maximize your improvement. If you are going to play the piano, then you need to practice regularly. It doesn’t mean that you must practice for a certain length of time every day, it means that you should be practicing at the very least, 3 times a week and you need to practice every week, not just maybe one week a month. Sure, there are going to be times when life happens, such as illness, where some weeks you can’t practice, but these times should be the exception.