How do we know when our pitcher is full?

For many of us, this is a difficult question to answer.  It came up in our training class last night and we all decided that the way that we measured was by how much overfill was falling all over the table and the floor!  Another perhaps more frustrating measure that we are all familiar with, is how much loss do we experience in practice progress the day after a practice session­­—­how much review is required each day to get back to where you were the previous day?

We need to develop attention to when our cognitive capacity has been reached and we are simply overfilling.  Are there road signs that we can recognize sooner before we are suffering diminishing returns on our work.  This is a particular struggle for those of us who were taught that success is built on 3-5 hours of practice a day. Ultimately we must accept that our brains cannot process as much information as we expect—especially in our post covid time where we are all struggling with bandwidth.

One of the hurdles is how our brains learn.  We don’t start learning a task until we trigger the chemical production of neurotransmitters and modulators in the right amounts for learning.  This doesn’t happen right when we sit down to practice.  It happens when we start making mistakes and recognize that there is something to learn.  Once the chemicals are present, we will feel a “limbic rub” or friction from these chemicals that we might often interpret as frustration.  We need to recategorize this feeling, not as frustration, but as the indication that our brain and nervous system have entered into a phase of hyper-plasticity and are ready to learn new material.

Now you have about a 30 minute window, where if you work slowly and methodically on a few bits of information, it will be committed to memory.  You then have a 60 minute window where your brain can take in more information, provided that you didn’t overload it.  In either case, the amount of information that you brain can take in during this learning window is limited.  It is better for you to choose specific, targeted material and have a highly focused practice session, as opposed to playing through ALL of your materials.  Less is more where learning is concerned. 

During this 90 minute window, if you practice something in repetition, pause at the end of a set of repetitions and give yourself 10 seconds to mentally zone out.  Do not check your phone or read an email, just rest.  During this time, your brain will repeat that set of repetitions 20x backwards and forwards.  It’s a huge bonus to your learning.

At the conclusion of the 90 min window, you need to rest.  Pack up the instrument and go for a session of Non-Sleep Deep Rest.  This could be a meditation, a walk or run, a bike ride, or a short nap. Do not work on other homework or materials.  REST!  This will allow your nervous system to rest and prepare for another learning cycle.  If you are under the age of 25, you can do 2-5 of these 90-min sessions a day.  If you are over 25, 1-3 per day.

At the end of the day though, the most essential part of learning is SLEEP.  You must get 8-10 hours of good, restful sleep, for the processing of all that learning to occur.  Otherwise, it is all a loss.  Sleep is the most essential part of the learning process.

Start small.  Chose two or three small phrases or sections to work on in one day in this way.  See what you maintain the next day and adjust accordingly but add slowly.  It is our habit to overfill so it will be easy to miss the indications that you are full.  Pay close attention to how your body says, that’s enough, and you’ll reap the rewards of that work tomorrow!