In thinking about and setting New Year's Resolutions, I am re-reading some old books and reading new ones to help me stay focused. I've also been doing mindfulness meditation at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington as well as taking some yoga classes. There are many common themes.
A yoga teacher recently started class with the comment that we are all so relentlessly multitasking that we are robbing ourselves of a quality life. She said for the next hour, you are only allowed to monotask. You are doing yoga and nothing else. You aren't thinking about anything else but your yoga, your posture, your breathing.
It's informative what is included in a language and what isn't. It speaks to the German culture, for example, that they have a word for "joy in the misery of others" - Schadenfreude. I was just similarly informed when the instant spell checker had no problem with multitasking, but doesn't recognize monotasking as a word!
Mindfulness meditation has the same lesson. As the writer Thich Nhat Hanh says, when you are washing the dishes, just wash the dishes. Pay utmost attention to this mundane task. How does the water feel? How does it sound? What do the dishes look like? It sounds (a) simple and (b) silly, but it is neither. If done mindfully, and in a monotasking nature, even the most mundane activity can be restorative and can be beautiful.
I just finished a book called The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus Into Your Life, by Thomas Sterner. It is quite a short book and makes only a few simple points, but these are full of wisdom. The main point is to enjoy the process for its own sake and not worry about the outcome. The author is a musician and a golfer, among other things, so he draws on these activities. I need to heed this advice in my own guitar playing. It's too easy to fall into the trap of "if I can play Bach's Chaconne, then I'll be happy..." Doing it this way involves constant disappointment and frustration. You are so focused on the goal that you don't enjoy the journey.
To help you stay in the process, in the present moment, Sterner suggest the 4 S's: simplify, small, short and slow. So for example, I am learning a fingerstyle jazz guitar version of Georgia on My Mind. It is hard. My goal had been - play it, and play it well. I need to simplify that goal (it can still be the ultimate goal), so today it was: I need to practice these 4 measures for 30 minutes. I need to practice them slowly and deliberately. I need to DOC it - Do it, Observe it, Correct it. The observation needs to be non-judgmental (which is hard for me, as the dialogue usually goes, "man, I'm never going to get this; that was awful: how could I be so bad?").
My guitar teacher recommends a process called "chunking" - take a small chunk and work on that; then another; then string them together. He's also said that when learning a chunk, play as slowly (don't even worry about rhythm) as you need to so that you never play a wrong note in the sequence.
I can do all of that effectively for 5 minutes, maybe. Then it becomes irresistible to try it at 120% tempo! Or to try the whole piece. But like in meditation, notice what you're doing and bring yourself gently back to what you were doing.
One of my favorite books on this subject is Mastery, by George Leonard. In this Esquire magazine article turned book, Leonard points out that any skill development that follows the "master's path" will be a series of a short burst of rapid improvement followed by probably a little dip and then a long plateau, followed again by the improvement/dip/long plateau cycle. Leonard wisely points out that you have to learn to love the plateau, because you will be spending the bulk of your time here. Each new plateau is higher than where you were before. Each plateau was hard-won.
There aren't any short cuts. It is said (see, for example, Malcolm Gladwell) that it takes 10,000 hours of focused, goal-oriented practice to achieve a level of mastery in anything complex. For a guitarist like me that's an hour of practice every day for 27 years! I can believe it. The cellist I saw today at Strathmore spoke of 6 hours a day since he was seven years old. He held up his hands - his left hand is nearly 2 inches longer than his right, due to stretching so much during his growth years.
But I have time. I've been playing guitar for 6 years now, so only 20 more to go. Or if I can muster the energy for 2 hours a day, then a decade. And more importantly, if I can learn to practice correctly and with the right mindfulness, then I won't even care about that goal of "mastery." Really, what does that mean anyway? Pablo Casals was practicing the day he died. It's a never-ending thing, and that's good... so long as you enjoy the process and forget about the goal. The "goal" is the future. Get your head out of the future and enjoy what you are doing at this very moment; and this moment; and this...
A yoga teacher recently started class with the comment that we are all so relentlessly multitasking that we are robbing ourselves of a quality life. She said for the next hour, you are only allowed to monotask. You are doing yoga and nothing else. You aren't thinking about anything else but your yoga, your posture, your breathing.It's informative what is included in a language and what isn't. It speaks to the German culture, for example, that they have a word for "joy in the misery of others" - Schadenfreude. I was just similarly informed when the instant spell checker had no problem with multitasking, but doesn't recognize monotasking as a word!
Mindfulness meditation has the same lesson. As the writer Thich Nhat Hanh says, when you are washing the dishes, just wash the dishes. Pay utmost attention to this mundane task. How does the water feel? How does it sound? What do the dishes look like? It sounds (a) simple and (b) silly, but it is neither. If done mindfully, and in a monotasking nature, even the most mundane activity can be restorative and can be beautiful.
I just finished a book called The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus Into Your Life, by Thomas Sterner. It is quite a short book and makes only a few simple points, but these are full of wisdom. The main point is to enjoy the process for its own sake and not worry about the outcome. The author is a musician and a golfer, among other things, so he draws on these activities. I need to heed this advice in my own guitar playing. It's too easy to fall into the trap of "if I can play Bach's Chaconne, then I'll be happy..." Doing it this way involves constant disappointment and frustration. You are so focused on the goal that you don't enjoy the journey.
To help you stay in the process, in the present moment, Sterner suggest the 4 S's: simplify, small, short and slow. So for example, I am learning a fingerstyle jazz guitar version of Georgia on My Mind. It is hard. My goal had been - play it, and play it well. I need to simplify that goal (it can still be the ultimate goal), so today it was: I need to practice these 4 measures for 30 minutes. I need to practice them slowly and deliberately. I need to DOC it - Do it, Observe it, Correct it. The observation needs to be non-judgmental (which is hard for me, as the dialogue usually goes, "man, I'm never going to get this; that was awful: how could I be so bad?").My guitar teacher recommends a process called "chunking" - take a small chunk and work on that; then another; then string them together. He's also said that when learning a chunk, play as slowly (don't even worry about rhythm) as you need to so that you never play a wrong note in the sequence.
I can do all of that effectively for 5 minutes, maybe. Then it becomes irresistible to try it at 120% tempo! Or to try the whole piece. But like in meditation, notice what you're doing and bring yourself gently back to what you were doing.
One of my favorite books on this subject is Mastery, by George Leonard. In this Esquire magazine article turned book, Leonard points out that any skill development that follows the "master's path" will be a series of a short burst of rapid improvement followed by probably a little dip and then a long plateau, followed again by the improvement/dip/long plateau cycle. Leonard wisely points out that you have to learn to love the plateau, because you will be spending the bulk of your time here. Each new plateau is higher than where you were before. Each plateau was hard-won.
There aren't any short cuts. It is said (see, for example, Malcolm Gladwell) that it takes 10,000 hours of focused, goal-oriented practice to achieve a level of mastery in anything complex. For a guitarist like me that's an hour of practice every day for 27 years! I can believe it. The cellist I saw today at Strathmore spoke of 6 hours a day since he was seven years old. He held up his hands - his left hand is nearly 2 inches longer than his right, due to stretching so much during his growth years.
But I have time. I've been playing guitar for 6 years now, so only 20 more to go. Or if I can muster the energy for 2 hours a day, then a decade. And more importantly, if I can learn to practice correctly and with the right mindfulness, then I won't even care about that goal of "mastery." Really, what does that mean anyway? Pablo Casals was practicing the day he died. It's a never-ending thing, and that's good... so long as you enjoy the process and forget about the goal. The "goal" is the future. Get your head out of the future and enjoy what you are doing at this very moment; and this moment; and this...