If you keep it interesting, you are going to learn.
I'm feeling good today. Yesterday I read a short book, called 'the art of practice' by Laido Dittmar, and even when the main lesson is condensed in just 5 pages, something just did the click for me. My mind is very powerful. I tend to forget when I'm feeling down and trapped that I might have the ability to change that. I really dislike the self-healing speech, self-help books, the motivators, all the coaching & illumination universe, I avoid all that as much as I can. I come from a very religious education, which I rejected with all the determination than you can gather when you are a teenager, and I have a radar for all sort of people who want to guide me into any direction.
But back to this book, it actually resonates a lot with my current drum practice. It talks about the people who are not naturally talented and still want to learn a new skill. How we approach the practice is very different to the way the naturally talented people approach it. So this guy narrows down those differences and invite you to approach your practice with the mindset of someone who is naturally talented.
So I thought, ha! this makes sense. And I learnt couple of things about the way I approach my practice:
- lately, my practice has been based on fear of loosing what I already learnt. I am afraid of loosing the skills. So my practice has changed from a discovery path motivated by progress to a defensive routine to "save" in my brain the already learnt lessons. Naturally talented people are never guided by the fear of loosing skills. For them, this is natural, and they approach the practice with a clear motivator, they want progress, they want to improve.
- I have been told many times by my teachers that before jumping into a next level, I should have mastered the current one. Like when they tell you not to attempt doubles if your singles are not mastered yet. And honestly sometimes you get bored. The stress stimulation we need to learn is not existent anymore when you are trying to polish details. So what this guy proposes is something different: start with what you cannot do (he does not say impossible, he says something that challenges your current level, something you are close to), spend the best of your energy there. Then, when the energy is lower, go back to that previous thing and try to master it then.
So with this two new ideas I, for the first time in months, was really eager to my evening practice. And I started right away with kick doubles which is something I really don't do well, and I was supposed to master some other exercises prior to jump to them. After some time in those, I returned to the previous exercises, I don't intend of taking shortcuts, just do the way a bit more interesting. Also, I try to change my "fear driven" mindset for a "progress driven" one.
After all, this is my hobby, not a pile of frustration. And learning cannot happen if boredom takes over.