When not to use momentum

I've talked about the value of momentum, how it allows you to create a positive feedback loop when learning a skill. However, there are times when momentum actually slows you down or interferes with the learning process.

Heavy Lifting

When you tax a muscle beyond its ability, you allow it to grow. When you do it right, this process is so intense that it fills up your entire physical and mental experience. Big results come from this kind of effort.

At the gym, you aDon't be a dumb bell! Slow, deliberate work is most effective. Photo by jerryforlife.lways see dudes putting a ridiculous amount of weight on the barbells and then lifting and lowering as fast as they can. They are letting momentum do the work for them instead of the muscle. A better approach would be to lift far less weight and go as slowly as possible, feeling every sensation on the way up and the way down. This is much harder, and that's why it will pay off.

My piano teacher, John Swiedler, used to tell me, "You should practice so slowly that a listener will not be able to tell what you're playing." Why is this slow playing so important? Because it prevents you from being able to use momentum. This leads to a deeper understanding of the music you are playing. Students always say, "but it's easier to play it faster." Exactly. If it's easy, you're using momentum. We don't want it to be easy. Bwahahahahaha...

"My brain is full."

There's that Far Side cartoon where a student raises his hand in class and asks to be excused, because "my brain is full." Now, part of the punchline is that he has a smaller head than his classmates, but in reality, this feeling happens to those of us with normal-sized brains all the time. It's that feeling you get after staring at a single math problem, crossword, Sudoku puzzle, or highway map for a quarter of an hour with no apparent breakthrough. Believe it or not, very good things are happening in your brain even though it feels like it's melting.

Yes, he has a band-aid, but slow practice won't hurt you.Where this often comes up in music lessons is switching between chords on the piano. One chord is A, the next chord is D. The pianist has to locate the three notes of the A chord, and then find the three notes of the D chord.

Students always rush through this, and sometimes accidentally get the notes right. They are using momentum. Far more difficult (and far more effective) is to slow down and do the mental heavy lifting that this activity requires.

Find each note separately and deliberately. Think out loud. Take note of which fingering will work best, and be consistent. Resist the temptation to rush yourself. Stay completely calm and in control.

It may take you minutes, not seconds, to find the next chord. Paradoxically, however, it is precisely this slow, painstaking process that will allow you to nimbly hop from chord to chord without conscious thought in the near future.

The bonus

You lifted ten pounds instead of your usual forty and you were incredibly sore the next day. Two weeks of this regimen, and you see muscle definition you thought you'd have to lift eighty pounds to get.

You see that same crossword puzzle sitting on the kitchen table the next morning. All of a sudden, three previously inaccessible answers pop out at you ("Aha! Magnum, P.I.! Elk! Spartacus!").

You lay your hands on the instrument, and you play a difficult passage with ease and precision on the first try.

An unexpected bonus often comes along after a period of concentrated effort. There is thus another layer of paradox here: Take the slow, frustrating path, and it ends up being the quickest, smoothest one. Deliberately avoid momentum in the short-term, and you'll end up gaining a lot of it in the long-term.

How do you know if you'll get better?

Times are tough. Sometimes, it has nothing to do with the times - it's me. It's my own private struggle.

Like right now. My business, my school, has been growing at a good clip for the past couple of years, but each phase of growth brings new challenges. There have been so many times when it felt like I couldn't keep going, that it wasn't worth it. Now is one of those times.

In my former studio at Virginia-Highland Church, January 2007Every time I've come to what seemed like a dead end, I decided to keep on pushing through. It's been painful, grueling, exhilarating, and I still can't say whether it's been worth it. I still don't know how it will turn out. I do know that I'm learning a lot, and that every time I think I can't work harder than I'm already working, I discover grimly that it is possible.

This business experience definitely parallels my musical experience. A student recently asked me, "How do I know if I'll improve?" He was working on songwriting. I had told him, "keep writing songs, and eventually you'll write good ones."

"But how can I be sure my songs will actually get better?"

"That's a very good question," I said. "But, I mean, how can you not get better? You're working so hard on this in a focused way. It's inevitable that you'll succeed."

I pointed out to him that by coming to a music lesson each week, he is opening himself up to input from another person. Without that input, his songs might stay the same, but being open to the influence of an outside perspective will allow his work to change and progress.

I do the same in my career - I consult with trusted advisors (of which I'm fortunate to have many), read The Dip and other brilliant books over and over again, and listen a little harder to what my business is telling me. And I keep going.

Be open to the wisdom of others, and keep at it. You can't help but get better, in music and in life.

As for me: I'm going to continue pushing through my discouragement, fear, resentment, and confusion. I'll follow some good advice and visualize a desirable outcome for myself. A better existence is in my crosshairs, and I do have the tools to get there. I'll let you know how it goes.

Guitar Hero & Rock Band missed a great opportunity

Writing about "Cliffs of Dover" recently made me think about Guitar Hero, and how awesome it could have been. I think it's great that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have gotten kids enthusiastic about music they might not otherwise have been exposed to, but I wish these games actually taught people how to play an instrument instead of a plastic controller.

The thing that makes teaching such an interesting challenge is that you must find the sweet spot where something is challenging enough to keep the student engaged, but not so challenging that it makes you want to give up.

This is what video games do marvelously well, and what makes them so addictive. You have a perfectly graded learning curve, with new information being added all the time in just the right dose.

The technology certainly exists to create a video game that will actually teach you how to play an instrument. While there are games that were created for an educational purpose, none are as perfectly sequenced or on as grand a scale as Guitar Hero.

Imagine a game in which education and entertainment are perfectly blended, with the big budget and classic songs that Guitar Hero and Rock Band have. Imagine the gamers of the world putting those vacant hours every day into learning a real skill. We would have an army of real guitar heroes.

To leap across a chasm in several systematic steps

When I was a kid, we had to do the President's Challenge for physical fitness. I failed every time, because I could not do a pull-up. Every year, I would watch the little monkeys in my class who could do a bunch in a row, and then I would get up there and struggle mightily while the P.E. teacher would say something like, "I think you did...one-quarter..." and make a note on my sheet.

I wished to avoid this humiliating display in the future, but I had no idea how. Every so often, I would go out to my swingset int the backyard and hang until my shoulders felt like they were going to pull out of their sockets, but I never could do a single pull-up.

I think of this when I have a student who requests to learn a piece well beyond their ability level. I think an exciting, challenging piece can be a great motivator, but there is a point where a piece can be so difficult it is truly inaccessible for the time being. The student will try and try, like I did with my hopeless backyard strength training, and get no return.

What's the alternative? Systematically breaking it down (yes, sorry, sometimes you have to be a geek if you want to do a thing well). Unfortunately, when I was a kid we did not have the Internet, but if we had, I would have been able to research pull-ups to learn how to do them, including ways to make them easier. I could learn about the muscles used in pull-ups, and create a plan for building strength in those muscles. I might also acknowledge that overall upper body weakness is an issue for me, and create a complete plan for strength training with the help of a personal trainer.

Maybe, after six months of focused, targeted, and carefully sequenced training I would do a pull-up on the first try. From there, I would finally build up the number of reps I could do in a row.

By contrast, I could take those same six months and spend a few minutes every day trying to do a pull-up to no avail. I strongly doubt I would be able to do a pull-up after six months of that, for two reasons: One, I wouldn't even get to the point where the correct muscles were supporting my body weight; and two, I would probably get bored and frustrated and quit three days into it.

So, back to the musical example. Usually, students have great intuition about which pieces are right for them to learn. But occasionally, not. "I want to learn 'Cliffs of Dover' because it's my favorite song on Guitar Hero." Okay, fine. Go ahead and download the bazillion-page tab and set about learning it. Learn a tiny lick every day. If you don't go mad in frustration within the first ten minutes, after six months you might be able to play the whole thing (if I painstakingly show you how to play every note that you can't figure out on your own).

On the other hand, you could spend those same six months learning fifty easier songs that use similar skills and a similar vocabulary. You can build fluency, speed, and technique while improving your musical ear and your reading skills.

After six months have passed, you may well be able to pick up most of "Cliffs of Dover" by yourself in just a week or two. You might not even need the tab for very much of it, because your fingers will "hear" different parts of the song and automatically go where they belong as a result of playing so much. Because in the process, you learned fifty other songs. You learned how to play the guitar, not just "Cliffs of Dover."

They say you must leap across a chasm in a single, dramatic, all-in move. Or you could go to school, become a civil engineer, and design a bridge that will enable you to easily walk across. The first way only works if it works, and most of the time it doesn't. The second way is built to work every time. Not as daring, but you'll get there in the end.

Where are you attempting with no visible progress? Is there an intermediate benchmark you could be striving for, or a more systematic way to achieve your goal?

"So what did you use computers for?"

Andrew, fourteen, did an amazing job learning the guitar solo to "Let it Be". Armed with a fairly accurate tab acquired on the web, he went home and practiced effectively and thoroughly. He told me he broke the 'back' button on his iPod remote from scrubbing backward so much to listen to small sections of the solo repeatedly.

"Good job," I said. "You did it right, then!"

We explored some other solos he could learn, since he's on a roll. "'Maybe I'm Amazed' would be good."

"Ok, should I get the tab online?"

"Well, it's better than nothing. If it's wrong, we can fix it. God knows I've had enough practice doing that."

"So what did you do to learn a song when you were a kid? Did you just download the tabs?"

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "It pains me greatly to say this," I said. "But you see, we did not have the Internet when I was a kid."

Andrew stared, amused and flabbergasted. "That sucks. So...what did you use computers for?"

"You know, word processing, spreadsheets, accounting..."

"So did you have Word?"

"I think by the early nineties. But I remember a time before Windows. We had," I paused. "DOS."

His eyes widened.

"Black screen, C-prompt, blinking cursor," I went on. "You had to talk to the computer in its own language. No photos, no movies, no music..."

"That sucks!"

"No mouse."

"No mouse?!"

"Well, it wasn't all bad. We also had ATARI 2600 - joystick, single orange button..."

"Wait - are you talking about a GAME CONSOLE?"

I had to laugh. I'm not so old, it's just that things have changed so fast.

"So anyway, there was no online tab. And if you wanted the lyrics, you had to figure them out by listening." And pausing your cassette to write them down.

"That sucks!"

Maybe. But kind of special to be among the very last generation of American teenagers who had to do things the hard way. Of course, even that is relative since I am also among the first generation who can't remember life before computers.

Ironically, Andrew's learning the same songs now that I did back then. The good news is, the songs haven't aged a bit.

The "Neglected Backyard" approach to overcoming perfectionism

I live in an Atlanta neighborhood called Reynoldstown. It's a bit transitional, literally on the wrong side of the tracks, and has a mix of races, ages, and collars. Some homes are rentals, and some are owner occupied. There are apartments and single-family homes.

I closed on my home in late February 2007, when everything is still dormant from winter but the daffodils are just about to come up. Hmmm, what are all these viney things I keep tripping over in the backyard as I explore my new property?

A New Neighborhood, a New Nemesis

Turns out it was kudzu, that notoriously invasive blight upon the southeastern landscape. I also had japanese honeysuckle, which has lovely-smelling flowers but is also invasive and destructive. These plants stifle biodiversity by choking out the other species, and left unchecked they will cover any and all surfaces exposed to light (and even some that aren't).

After some research (especially this fabulously helpful website by a group in Spartanburg, SC), I learned that the only way to truly eradicate kudzu was to cut out the crowns. These are knobby root structures that store the nutrients for the kudzu during the winter so it can come out swinging in the spring and wreak havoc and ruin everything.

After having acquired the necessary equipment, I took several hours on a Sunday and cut out all the vines I could find, just to get a little more control. Those suckers can grow more than a foot per day under ideal conditions.

Casualties of war (kudzu crowns on my deck)Then, I went out almost every day for the next six weeks or so and spent an hour cutting out as many crowns as I could find. It was like a big game of Whac-a-Mole, because even when I thought I had found all the new growth there would be more. And once I'd gotten all of it, there was more the next day.

No One Cares

Sometime in June, I started winning the war against kudzu, and it probably won't ever return (unless it comes under the fence from my neighbor's yard, because hers is a mess).

Which is part of the point I want to make here: there are very low standards for garden maintenance for my neighborhood. Some people have cute little landscaped lawns with flower beds, and some people have a packed-dirt front yard with a chain-link fence around it. Some people have a new Beemer parked on a nice neat concrete slab, others have a rusted-out 1980s sedan with kudzu growing into it (I told you, my neighborhood is transitsch). So even though I made improvements to my backyard, it was just for my own benefit - there is no peer-pressure in in my part of town.

Anything is Better than Nothing

New bambooNow, nearly three years later, my yard has some nice bamboo along the back fence (the non-invasive kind), some clematis, and a couple magnolias that are growing nicely since the kudzu was killed. However, it still needs a lot of work.

This is not a story about how my yard went from being overrun with kudzu to perfectly manicured. It's a story about how I set out to achieve a goal and, whenever I felt like it, did a little something to get closer to achieving it.

It's a story about not setting my standards too high, too fast.

It's a story about how any progress toward a goal is can be helpful.

Set the Bar Low

Yes, my friends, be underachievers - but be achievers!

For example, I wanted to start blogging more regularly. I'd been trying to do this for four years. Finally, instead of trying to do it every day or on some fixed schedule, I decided this fall to do it whenever I wanted to.

I reasoned that, just like my backyard, anything I did would be an improvement.

Penelope Trunk helped, too, by giving me permission to start before I got organized. And now I have built up some momentum, so I'm posting more regularly. I have managed to completely avoid negative feelings about not doing it, which keeps the entire experience a happy one.

When I was cutting out kudzu crowns, I made a game out of finding them. "Aha! You may have cunning means of survival, but you are no match for my handsaw!" If I had known at the beginning how much time I would spend successfully ridding my yard of kudzu, I'm not sure I would have had the happy attitude. But doing a little bit every day was tolerable and fun, and not doing it would have meant stasis, not failure.

The Neglected Backyard Approach to exercise, flossing, practicing an instrument, what-have-you

The Neglected Backyard Approach works in a lot of areas. It helps you to forgive yourself for not knowing the things you didn't know you needed to know, by resolving to do better next time.

It helps you get out the stupid free weights and start moving your arms up and down. It helps you to learn an instrument by acknowledging that any time you spend playing the thing is going to help you learn it over the long run.

It helps you to not do things, too: turn off the TV, put down the cigarette, and so on.

Think in terms of tiny incremental improvements. Kaizen. Progress, not perfection.

The Neglected Backyard Approach might even help me deal with the neglected backyard itself: it's mid-January and I still haven't raked up the autumn leaves. I can't rake the entire thing, but I might do twenty minutes worth. It's a nice day.