Tag Archives: breaking out of performance ruts

Some Observations On Inertia And A Cool Online App For Getting Things Done

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A routine can be a powerful thing in productivity.  It helps instil a sense of inertia and, as I’ve talked about in posts like this, or  this one , keeping the ball rolling is usually a lot easier than initially getting it to roll.  The counter-intuitive reality behind doing things is that:

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Activity leads to other activity.  It creates its own inertia.

Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest.

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The counter-intuitive part of this is when you’re sitting on a sofa and think, “I’m really tired.  I  just have to rest for a second and mentally gear myself up for this”.  Inertia is working at keeping you sitting on the couch.  If there’s a TV on or an internet connection – it’s working double time.

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The reality is that just getting up and doing the thing actually takes less energy that expending the energy debating with yourself about whether or not you have the tools or the energy to do something.

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The caveat is that this assumes we’re talking about moderate activity.  If you’ve just run a marathon, I’m not advocating staying on your feet if you need to rest.  I’m talking about procrastination versus physical exhaustion.

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Procrastination is an energy suck

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Completing projects is invigorating.  It’s that energy that comes from getting something done and thinking, “All right – what’s next?” It takes way more mental energy to keep putting something off than to just deal with it.

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Here are some tips that may be helpful:

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  • Have goals.  If you don’t know what you’re trying to do – you’re not likely to figure out the how.
  • If you have something you’re procrastinating – try to tackle small parts of if consistently.  You’re going to get more mileage out of small daily improvements than trying to cram something into a marathon session.
  • Monitor progress.  This goes along with goal setting but it’s important to check back and see how you’re progressing.
  • Be accountable but pragmatic.  Either to yourself or other people, to get things done, it’s important to be held to your goals.  Along with monitoring progress, being pragmatic (rather than judgemental) about your progress will help as well.  If things aren’t progressing they way you’d like – beating yourself up isn’t going to help the process.  By monitoring things you can see what works and what doesn’t work and adjust as necessary.

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I Done This

Neither a typo or an obscure pop reference, I want to thank my friend Daren Burns for bringing this to my attention.  I done this.com is a cool free online productivity tool that combines some of the tips that I’ve mentioned above,  Here’s a quote from the web page:

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“iDoneThis is an email-based productivity log. This evening, you’ll receive your first email from us asking, “What’d you get done today?” Just respond to our email and we record what you wrote into your calendar. Use your progress from yesterday to motivate you today.”

By helping to monitor progress and helping keep consistency and accountability, this could be something to help get the ball rolling for you. If you have something you’ve been putting off doing (like practicing) try it for a week and see what happens.

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I hope this helps!  Thanks for reading.

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On “It is what it is”

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I had a moment to catch up on some things this weekend, and returned a call from a friend of mine at CalArts.  We had a very nice conversation catching up and discussing Higher Education funding, trends, pedagogy and the like and she was kind enough to tell me this:

“You know, in a conversation we had once – you gave me some advice and told me that, ‘it is what it is’.  I thought about that a lot – and about how you’ve brought it up a number of times in our conversations – and it’s something I find myself coming back to as a mantra when I’m facing something difficult.”

She had asked me about where that mindset came from, and I’m sure it’s rooted in growing up in a working class small town in upstate New York.  Compared to many people around me I had it relatively easy.  My parents both worked hard – my dad taught middle school and my mom worked in a factory – and they owned the house we lived in. (A note: Despite a lot of nonsense talk generated in the media earlier in the year, as people living on an educator’s salary, we did not live high on the hog.  We burned wood for fuel (that we cut stacked and dried on our own), did all our own repairs and (for a while) raised animals for food. The two-story house I grew up in with a garage and a 2 story workshop on a 1/2 acre of land sold for well under 40k if that tells you anything about the economics of the region.)

Other people I knew had it really hard.  Farmers (and often their children) who worked from dawn to dusk with spouses working additional odd jobs just to make ends meet.   We had “valley runners” – a term of no endearment reserved for families who would relocate multiple times a year to stay one step ahead of the law.  I’d always see the kids in my classes; they’d show up for a couple of months and then be gone to the next county.  When I’d see them months, or years later, they had always changed for the worse.  They picked up a number of skills they needed to survive when you’re always on the run  (typically manipulation, but sometimes cons or petty theft), that were depressing enough for an adult to have to rely on to get by – much less a child.

Mainly though, I knew a lot of good people who worked hard and were often presented with really difficult situations.  And the response to those situations was to work through it.  I can’t count the number of times that I heard variations of, “No use crying about it – let’s get to work.”

For those of you who resonate with this sentiment, and have never read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, it might be worth a moment of your time.  One point Aurelius’ (and other Stoics like Epictetus) bring up repeatedly is the value of seeing things for what they are.  That often means removing the emotional issues associated with the matters at hand and trying to deal with them objectively. (Albert Ellis made an entire career out of this method of inquiry with his REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) approach).

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Getting emotional about certain things (particularly difficult things) only adds to their difficultly.

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In my world view, some things are simply facts andviewing those things as such makes it easier to see them for what they are.

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For example:

2+2=4.

How do you feel about that? (or do you feel anything?)

It’s difficult to get emotionally invested in it because it’s merely a fact.

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Now here’s the idea applied: where a student might hear, “You’re going to have to put a lot of time in to getting those sweep arpeggios down the way you want.” I hear “2+2=4”.  There’s no emotional involvement  and so there’s less to get tripped up on.

There are a million reasons to procrastinate, and generally only one or two to get something done.  If you’re facing something really daunting there’s a several part process I can share to help make it manageable.

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Getting it done

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  1. Know why you need to do what you’re doing. As Viktor Frankl once said, “He who has a why can bear almost any how”.
  2. Deal with problems individually.  Many problems are multi-tiered so break them down into individual components to make them easier to manage.
  3. See the problem for what it is.  Gain a scope of what it is you are trying to do and prioritize what has to happen to complete it.  (For example: If you’re trying to get better at sight-reading – you’re going to have to work on it a lot over a longer period of time.  If you’re trying to get two bars of a solo down – it will probably be a much shorter over-all time investment).
  4. Have milestones and a deadline.  Know what you’re going to complete by when.
  5. Prioritize and address what you can.  Don’t get hung up on big steps here, this stage is all about the specifics of each step (i.e. the grunt work).
  6. Reassess and return.  As milestones are reached verify your progress and start again.

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I remember reading a David Lee Roth interview where he was talking about how having a drive was the only thing that was going to get you through endless vocal practicing in your bedroom.

There’s nothing glamorous in the work that goes into doing anything well, but it’s necessary to acquire the skills needed to do those things.

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In other words, it is what it is.

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Thanks for reading.

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Circumnavigating The Wall You Just Hit

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It’s easy to get so caught up in the how, or the technical process of what you’re doing, that you forget the why. 

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Every once in a while someone will send me a You Tube clip of some wunderkind playing a million notes and I often think, “Wow it’s impressive to spend so much time getting that down.   I wonder how they’re going to use that when they’re playing Brown Eyed Girl at the local bar?”  The answer, of course, is that they’re not going to play that or maybe even any song.  The point of the video generally isn’t to develop something interesting in a larger musical context (like a song) but instead to promote their efforts by performing something technically difficult to get people impressed.

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I don’t fault players for this, they’re simply trying to make a connection and that’s the point of music in general.  Sometimes that means playing a million notes and sometimes that happens in the silences of the music you’re playing.   It’s an easy path to go down because making a connection is really hard. In addition to a lot of work, it requires experience, sincerity and no small amount of guts to leave yourself exposed.  In contrast, sitting down with a metronome and getting a lick up to a quick tempo is substantially easier and the result is quantifiable.  Even if people aren’t impressed, you’ll know that you got it up to speed and take some comfort in advancing your technical ability.

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But the flash of something fast will fade quickly, and what’s left is the content of what’s being said and the sincerity behind it.
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I like video game licks in certain contexts, but they’re probably not going to work on a ballad very well (even if it is a fusion track 😉 ).  If you’re saying a lot of words without much meaning it’s not going to have a lot of impact.

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I’ve had gigs where everything involving making a connection turns off on the stage and while it’s not a defining moment in human history, for someone who’s being used to being connected to music it’s a pretty awful feeling.  I’d even argue that this was the case for 90% of the gigs I’ve played in LA.  There can be any number of reasons for this.  There might be technical issues that completely pull you out of your mindset.  The audience might not be there to make a connection.  Things may not be jelling with the band.  But most importantly,  it may be your disconnect, and it’s the most important, because it’s the only performance factor that you really have control over.

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Those of you familiar with the Aesop’s fable regarding the fox and the lion will probably remember the final adage, “Familiarity Breeds Contempt “.  You can put so much time into the same thing on guitar that it loses all musical meaning.  The bad news is it’s probably not going to gain additional meaning on the bandstand.  In all likelihood you’re going to disconnect from it further.

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The more you work with specific things the easier it is to auto pilot your way through them, and the less likely you’ll be able to connect with it.  Taking that a step further, it’s going to be hard to connect to audiences if you’re disconnected from your own playing.   It’s more common than you might think, and a lot of musicians go through small (or large) periods where they “weren’t feeling it”.  They hit a wall.

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By it’s nature, any wall is usually made of pretty hard material so meeting it head on and trying going through it is not the best approach.  I can tell you from personal experience that taking the approach of saying, “suck it up” isn’t going to get your groove back.  Playing through it is exactly what you probably shouldn’t be doing because it’s just going to distance you further from the actual music when you play.  It’s like when a relationship is on the rocks and you’re convinced that spending more time together will make it better when the time you spend now is stinted and awkward.  The better approach in both cases is to step back and get some perspective…to go over the wall if you will…

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One man’s recommendation for dealing with the wall

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If you’re facing this right now, here are some strategies that may help.

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  • Acknowledge that you’ve hit a wall.  You can’t fix something you don’t recognize as a problem.
  • Once you acknowledge that you’ve hit a wall, realize that while it might be big and imposing, it’s still only a wall.
  • If the wall you’ve hit is from playing in general, take a break from playing for a couple of days.  Spend that time trying to connect with friends or family.  What you do isn’t really as important as the fact that you’re engaged and connected while you do it.
  • Learn some new songs.  Learn things that are very non guitaristic like vocal melodies or horn lines.  Take those ideas and write something new with them.
  • Go back and listen to music that inspired you.  Try to find out what it was that inspired you about the music.  Don’t over think or over analyze it, just try to connect with it.
  • Get out of your comfort zone.  Listen to music from other cultures.  Read a book by an unfamiliar (but recommended author).  Play with different musicians.  Take a short trip somewhere you’ve never been with a friend and see some new surroundings.  When I was in Phoenix, I checked out the Musical Instrument Museum and had my head turned around in a dozen different directions both by the instruments and the multimedia presentations of field recordings.  I left that place with a lot of new musical ideas buzzing around my head.
  • Practice playing in front of other people.  Learn a new song and play it at an open mic.  Make notes of when you’re connecting and when other people are connecting and make mental notes of how they’re doing it.
  • When you come back to practicing, take a measured breath before you begin playing.  Mark the fact that you’re about to start something to get into the zone.
  • Try being mindful of what you’re practicing.  Set limits on time and only practice one thing as long as you can be engaged in practicing it.
  • When you play a solo – try only playing what you can sing.

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There are a lot of other things you can try, but the real goal here is to get re-engaged and bring that to your playing.  As corny as it may sound, playing is an expression of who you are and where you’ve been.  If you don’t have anything to say in your playing, it may be time to live a little more so you’ll have a story to tell next time you sit down…For me, it was about realizing what was wrong, taking ownership of that and moving past it to get back to making music instead of just sound again.

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Good luck to you and thanks for reading!

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