Uncategorized

Yesterday I talked about the steps to fix a new mistake. Those three steps can be hampered by our reaction to the mistake. We tell ourselves a story about mistakes, and the story we tell can make the solution either easier or harder. If we tell ourselves the story that making mistakes is a […]

I made a new mistake baking the other day. It led me to consider the steps we take in fixing a new mistake. Recognize the mistake’s outcome. (In this case, I noticed the dough was behaving strangely during kneading.) Determine the cause of the mistake. (In this case, I walked through every […]

Building a habit means doing something every day until it’s secure. How do you know your habit is secure? When you wake up knowing that you’re going to complete it. Even better, when the knowledge is so firm that it doesn’t even enter conscious thought unless you ask the question? Am I […]

Here are the ingredients you need to make a creative person or to rediscover your own creativity. Curiosity Experiences with others’ creativity Unscheduled time Access to materials and tools. Mix well and wait. Recipe Caveat: avoid the following impediments to creativity. Constant busyness. Criticism (Including self-). Expectations. Digital distractions. It’s a good recipe […]

Note: this is the fourteenth of a series of posts investigating the leadership style of John Wooden and its applicability to choral music education. John Wooden has only two blocks in the tier below the peak of his Pyramid of Success. The first was POISE. The second is CONFIDENCE. Wooden says, “There is no stronger steel than […]

I am increasingly convinced that the most important thing we should be teaching young people in school is curiosity. Really, it’s not even close. All the “content” extensively tested at the end of each school year is quickly forgotten if the student is not curious about it. Conversely, a curious student can easily […]

Dear my music students, I want to be really clear. The standard pace is for chumps. Five minutes a day is all you need to achieve fluency, and I’ve compiled a list of tools to achieve that fluency. So it’s time for some straight talk about where you are today, and where you want […]

I find books to be a profoundly important part of my life, albeit one I feel like I don’t sufficiently prioritize. That said, I finished 27 books in 2016, which is one more than last year, and among those I had several that are still with me as I start 2017. Here […]

As truly as I feel that 2016 was not the “Worst. Year. Ever.“, it’s still nice to say goodbye to it. Sometimes we all need a fresh start, a blank slate. It doesn’t have to be on January 1, of course: we can start fresh any day we want. Nevertheless, January […]

It’s shortsighted to call 2016 the worst year ever. It’s an unkindness to the many other years when human loss obliterated everything else. I’m reading a novel taking place partly in Europe during WWII, and it drives the point home that the tragedy, loss, and despair many of us felt this year […]