Put the damn phone away

Not long ago a student confessed to me that he warms up while scrolling through social media. I always assume that, as a member of the last generation that grew up without internet, it’s almost impossible for me to understand what the world is like for undergrads. This student’s habit affirms this. I’m occasionally a little flighty, but I didn’t grow up with a thing in my pocket whose prime directive is to devour attention.

This student admitted to me that his choice was no oversight. He said that he had watched a video on Youtube that had recommended warming up while doing another task. Doing so, as the video proclaimed, would help you learn to improve “subconsciously”. Bollocks. If you think that Matthias Höfs hones his artistry while scrolling Instagram I have a bridge to sell you. My advice to this student: put the damn phone away.

Attention is a flashlight through time.

It is both finite and required for most learning; a precious resource that is quite literally our superpower when learning and refining skill. To paraphrase some of my mentors, Dr. Bob Duke and Dr. Amy Simmons (and their colleague Dr. Carla Cash), how musicians practice is perhaps the primary feature dividing artists from amateurs. This study suggests that artists are predictably great at attending to the music they practice.

Attention spent in one place, is attention lost in another. Any attention spent looking at or even thinking about a phone during a practice session necessarily means that some part of your actual practice is being ignored. Multitasking doesn’t work the way most people think it does. Our brains are not built to attend to two things at exactly the same time.

When trying to perform two tasks requiring a high cognitive load, we constantly switch our attention from one task to another. Researchers have shown this by measuring how much worse we get at tasks when required to oscillate our attention. These are called switching costs.  

Switching costs are low for tasks that don’t require much or any attention. Most of us can walk and chew gum because neither task is difficult for most adults. How a task evolves from difficult (requiring much attention) to easy (requiring little attention) is the story of learning: over time, trials, feedback (positive and negative), and updating of knowledge, tasks become more automatized and are able to function, often optimally, without attention.

Motor skills are refined through a cycle of error correction driven by attention. Starting with an intent, the nervous system organizes and employs a sequence of muscle activations to accomplish a goal. The brain then compares what actually happened with what was intended. If there is a discrepancy, the brain registers an error signal to update future plans. Most of this happens well below awareness, but discrepancies must be noticed, and noticing requires attention. As we wander through the murk of learning or refining a skill, attention is our flashlight through time.

As plugged-in humans in the 21st century, it’s worth noting that everything on your phone is there to attract and consume your attention and usually your money. If a phone (or anything, really) begs for your attention, new practice habits are needed. The only way to change how you practice is to actually start changing what you do. If you want to improve your practice habits, here’s a series of easy-bake steps that will start you on your way. Good practicers likely already do some of these; great practicers do most. Aiming attention optimally and consistently is a lofty goal.

1.     Put the phone away. Off and out of sight. Aim your attention where it’s best spent, on your practice.

2.     Go to a quiet (both aurally and visually if possible) place to practice.

3.     Before each trial on your instrument, whether it’s a tone, an improvised melody, or an entire concerto, imagine your ideal version with intense detail.

4.     Relentlessly focus your attention onto any discrepancy between that ideal and what you actually produce.

5.     Make small physical adjustments each trial in service of reducing that discrepancy.

6.     Once improvement is made (small or big depending on the context), repeat successful trials many times.

7.     Then integrate that section (or tune, or improvisation etc.) into a larger musical context that more closely approximates your ultimate musical goals.

Repeat this for an entire practice session. Take breaks, eat healthy food, exercise, and get 7-9 hours of sleep. Begin again with step 1.