arrange • compose • conduct
One of my favorite expressions is “Be proud but never satisfied.” Indeed, it’s imprinted in my musical DNA from frequent repetition. It’s a perfect description of the balance between satisfaction in a job well done and hunger for further growth. But in my experience, the expression needs to be inverted. […]
I have opened the Zoom for my college composition student at 12:00 every week this semester. Only problem is, it’s at 12:30. My student knows this. My calendar knows this. I know this. But at some point early in the semester, I locked it in at 12:00, and I can’t […]
Training experts tell you to alternate days when training; that is, exercise different muscle groups on consecutive days, so that the muscles have sufficient time to recover from intense workouts before they are exercised again. There is a lot of wisdom in that – beyond personal fitness. While many personal […]
ASPIRATIONAL anagrams to PLAN IS A RATIO. It’s a simple ratio: the more aspirational your goal is, the more significant you need to plan. If your goal is routine, you probably don’t need to plan all that much. If your goal is novel, or extreme, or very challenging, you almost […]
Every activity that we engage in – work, hobby, personal – asks us to prioritize it. But how can you prioritize everything? What does prioritizing look like? As a freelancer, I have a lot of projects I’m working on at any time. For those, I prioritize based on immediate need […]
My son has been leaning towards Yahtzee the last few weeks, instead of chess. He had been beating me fairly regularly in chess, so I guess maybe he was bored? Ha! But when we came back to chess recently, I beat him pretty easily in both games. His skills, which […]
Dragging is a common problem, and one that is typically responded to with instructions to practice with a metronome, to physicalize the rhythm, or even just, “keep better time.” All of those instructions overlook the signal that dragging is giving us. The cue we should take whenever we start dragging […]
Practice doesn’t promise rewards on a strict schedule. Instead, consistent practice provides a terrain of stasis – a frustrating lack of growth – interspersed with unanticipated growth – seemingly sudden mastery of skills you’ve been struggling with. To master practice and stay focused during the times of stasis requires deep […]
Sometimes when we learn a new skill, we can act as if we’re scared, even when we don’t think we are. I made homemade noodles for Sunday dinner, and remarked how I am much less scared of working with them than I used to be. The thing is, I wouldn’t […]
I memorized pi to a couple of hundred digits in high school. I did it by repeatedly typing it into my calculator during math class, after I’d finished the assigned problems. An informational poster about pi, with a border comprising about 300 digits, was my source. There is no particular […]