Read it: http://lifehacker.com/5939374/a-better-way-to-practice
A great short article by
Noa Kageyama, Juilliard-trained violinist turned sport & performance
psychologist. He specializes in teaching performing artists how to
perform up to their full abilities under pressure.
While
it may be true that there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going,
there certainly are ways of needlessly prolonging the journey. We often
waste lots of time because nobody ever taught us the most effective and
efficient way to practice. Whether it's learning how to code, improving
your writing skills, or playing a musical instrument, practicing the
right way can mean the difference between good and great.
You have
probably heard the old joke about the tourist who asks a cab driver how
to get to Carnegie Hall, only to be told: "Practice, practice,
practice!"
I began playing the violin at age two, and for as long as I can remember, there was one question which haunted me every day.
Am I practicing enough?
What Do Performers Say?
I scoured
books and interviews with great artists, looking for a consensus on
practice time that would ease my conscience. I read an interview with
Rubinstein, in which he stated that nobody should have to practice more
than four hours a day. He explained that if you needed that much time,
you probably weren't doing it right.
And then there was violinist Nathan Milstein who once
asked his teacher
Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. Auer
responded by saying "Practice with your fingers and you need all day.
Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours."
Even Heifetz indicated that he
never believed in practicing too much,
and that excessive practice is "just as bad as practicing too little!"
He claimed that he practiced no more than three hours per day on
average, and that he didn't practice at all on Sundays.
It seemed
that four hours should be enough. So I breathed easy for a bit. And then
I learned about the work of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson.
What Do Psychologists Say?
When it
comes to understanding expertise and expert performance, psychologist
Dr. Ericsson is perhaps the world's leading authority.
His research
is the basis for the "10,000-hour rule" which suggests that it requires
at least ten years and/or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to
achieve an expert level of performance in any given domain – and in the
case of musicians, more like 15-25 years in order to attain an elite
international level.
Those are some pretty big numbers. So large, that at first I missed the most important factor in the equation.
Deliberate practice.
Meaning,
that there is a specific type of practice that facilitates the
attainment of an elite level of performance. And then there's the other
kind of practice that most of us are more familiar with.
Mindless Practice
Have you
ever observed a musician (or athlete, actor, trial attorney) engage in
practice? You'll notice that most practice resembles one of the
following distinct patterns.
1. Broken record method: This is where we simply repeat the same thing over and over. Same tennis serve. Same passage on the piano. Same
powerpoint presentation. From a distance it might look like practice, but much of it is simply mindless repetition.
2. Autopilot method:
This is where we activate our autopilot system and coast. Recite our
sales pitch three times. Play a round of golf. Run through a piece from
beginning to end.
3. Hybrid method:
Then there's the combined approach. For most of my life, practicing
meant playing through a piece until I heard something I didn't like, at
which point I'd stop, repeat the passage over and over until it started
to sound better, and then resume playing until I heard the next thing I
wasn't pleased with, at which point I'd repeat the whole process over
again.
Three Problems
Unfortunately, there are three problems with practicing this way.
1. It's a waste of time:
Why? For one, very little productive learning takes place when we
practice this way. This is why you can "practice" something for hours,
days, or weeks, and still not improve all that much. Even worse, you are
actually digging yourself a hole, because what this model of practicing
does is strengthen undesirable habits and errors, increasing the
likelihood of more consistently inconsistent performances.
This also
makes it more difficult to clean up these bad habits as time goes on –
so you are essentially adding to the amount of future practice time you
will need in order to eliminate these undesirable tendencies. To quote a
saxophone professor I once worked with: "Practice doesn't make perfect,
practice makes permanent."
2. It makes you less confident:
In addition, practicing mindlessly lowers your confidence, as a part of
you realizes you don't really know how to produce the results you are
looking for. Even if you have a fairly high success rate in the most
difficult passages, there's a sense of uncertainty deep down that just
won't go away.
Real
on-stage confidence comes from (a) being able to nail it consistently,
(b) knowing that this isn't a coincidence but that you can do it the
correct way on demand, because (c) you know precisely why you nail it or
miss it – i.e. you have identified the key technical or mechanical
factors that are necessary to play the passage perfectly every time.
3. It is mind-numbingly dull:
Practicing mindlessly is a chore. We've all had well-meaning parents
and teachers tell us to go home and practice a certain passage x number
of times, or to practice x number of hours, right? But why are we
measuring success in units of practice time? What we need are more
specific results-oriented outcome goals – such as, practice this passage
until it sounds like XYZ, or practice this passage until you can figure
out how to make it sound like ABC.
Deliberate Practice
So what is
the alternative? Deliberate, or mindful practice is a systematic and
highly structured activity, that is, for lack of a better word, more
scientific. Instead of mindless trial and error, it is an active and
thoughtful process of hypothesis testing where we relentlessly seek
solutions to clearly defined problems.
Deliberate
practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very
specific sections of a skill instead of just playing through. For
example, if you were a musician, you might work on just the opening note
of a solo to make sure that it "speaks" exactly the way you want,
instead of playing the entire opening phrase.
Deliberate
practice also involves monitoring one's performance - in real-time and
via recordings - continually looking for new ways to improve. This means
being observant and keenly aware of what happens, so that you can tell
yourself exactly what went wrong. For instance, was the first note note
sharp? Flat? Too loud? Too soft? Too harsh? Too short? Too long?
Let's say
that the note was too sharp and too long with not enough of an attack to
begin the note. Well, how sharp was it? A little? A lot? How much
longer was the note than you wanted it to be? How much more of an attack
did you want?
Ok,
the note was a little sharp, just a hair too long, and required a much
clearer attack in order to be consistent with the marked articulation
and dynamics. So, why was the note sharp? What did you do? What do you
need to do instead to make sure the note is perfectly in tune every
time? How do you ensure that the length is just as you want it to be,
and how do you get a consistently clean and clear attack to begin the
note so it begins in the right character?
Now, let's
imagine you recorded each trial repetition, and could listen back to the
last attempt. Does that combination of ingredients give you the desired
result? Does that combination of elements convey the mood or character
you want to communicate to the listener as effectively as you thought it
would? Does it help the listener experience what you want them to feel?
If this
sounds like a lot of work, that's because it is. Which might explain why
few take the time to practice this way. To stop, analyze what went
wrong, why it happened, and how they can produce different results the
next time.
Simple
though it may sound, it took me years to figure this out. Yet it remains
the most valuable and enduring lesson I learned from my 23 years of
training. In the dozen or so years since I put down my violin, the
principles of deliberate practice have remained relevant no matter what
skill I must learn next. Be it the practice of psychology, building an
audience for a blog, parenting, or making the perfect smoothie, how I
spend my practice time remains more important than how much time I spend
practicing.
How to Accelerate Skill Development
Here are
the five principles I would want to share with a younger version of
myself. I hope you find something of value on this list as well.
1. Focus is everything:
Keep practice sessions limited to a duration that allows you to stay
focused. This may be as short as 10-20 minutes, and as long as 45-60+
minutes.
2. Timing is everything, too:
Keep track of times during the day when you tend to have the most
energy. This may be first thing in the morning, or right before lunch.
Try to do your practicing during these naturally productive periods,
when you are able to focus and think most clearly. What to do in your
naturally unproductive times? I say take a guilt-free
nap.
3. Don't trust your memory:
Use a practice notebook. Plan out your practice, and keep track of your
practice goals and what you discover during your practice sessions. The
key to getting into
"flow"
when practicing is to constantly strive for clarity of intention. Have a
crystal clear idea of what you want (e.g. the sound you want to
produce, or particular phrasing you'd like to try, or specific
articulation, intonation, etc. that you'd like to be able to execute
consistently), and be relentless in your search for ever better
solutions.
When you
stumble onto a new insight or discover a solution to a problem, write it
down! As you practice more mindfully, you'll began making so many
micro-discoveries that you will need written reminders to remember them
all.
4. Smarter, not harder:
When things aren't working, sometimes we simply have to practice more.
And then there are times when it means we have to go in a different
direction.
I remember
struggling with the left-hand pizzicato variation in Paganini's 24th
Caprice when I was studying at Juilliard. I kept trying harder and
harder to make the notes speak, but all I got was sore fingers, a couple
of which actually started to bleed (well, just a tiny bit).
Instead of
stubbornly persisting with a strategy that clearly wasn't working, I
forced myself to stop. I brainstormed solutions to the problem for a day
or two, and wrote down ideas as they occurred to me.
When I had a list
of some promising solutions, I started experimenting.
I
eventually came up with a solution that worked, and the next time I
played for my teacher, he actually asked me to show him how I made the
notes speak so clearly!
5. Stay on target with a problem-solving model:
It's extraordinarily easy to drift into mindless practice mode. Keep
yourself on task using the 6-step problem solving model below.
- Define the problem. (What result did I just get? What do I want this note/phrase to sound like instead?)
- Analyze the problem. (What is causing it to sound like this?)
- Identify potential solutions. (What can I tweak to make it sound more like I want?)
- Test the potential solutions and select the most effective one. (What tweaks seem to work best?)
- Implement the best solution. (Reinforce these tweaks to make the changes permanent.)
- Monitor implementation. (Do these changes continue to produce the results I'm looking for?
-
Make Your Time Count
It doesn't matter if we are talking about perfecting violin technique, improving your golf game, becoming a better writer, improving your marketing skills, or becoming a more effective surgeon.
Life is short. Time is our most valuable commodity. If you're going to practice, you might as well do it right.
