Category: mental models
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Hick’s Law: How Too Many Choices Are Slowing Your Musical Progress
You’re overthinking it. Stop! Have you ever spent half of your available practice time just deciding what to practice? Or blown an hour or more in the studio (perhaps in the name of “tweaking things”) before actually recording anything? Welcome to Hick’s Law in action. Formulated by (and named after) British psychologist William Edmund Hick,…
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Antonio Sanchez on the “Why” and “When” of Using Your Superpowers
Allow me to introduce superstar drummer Antonio Sanchez and a few of his thoughts on “technique,” pulled from an interview he did on the Drummer’s Resource podcast. Even if you’ve never heard of Sanchez, you’ve almost definitely heard him. From his solo jazz percussion composition work for the film Birdman to his mind-blowing performances and recordings with Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea, Gary…
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How The IKEA Effect Is Hurting Your Music
Have you ever spent weeks (or months) tweaking a song that just isn’t working, but you can’t bring yourself to scrap it? I did this recently with a remote drum track for a client, tweaking and editing bits and pieces in an attempt to manufacture exactly what I was hearing in my head. It took…
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Passive Exposure: A Secret Weapon for Musicians
Did you know that simply being around music can help you learn it faster? Recent research from the nearby University of Oregon shows that passive exposure (in our case, hearing something repeatedly without actively working on it) can significantly speed up the learning process. Note: big thanks to my student Ron and his wife Linda…
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Parkinson’s Law for Musicians: How to Achieve More in Less Time
You’ve probably heard the phrase: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This is Parkinson’s Law, a concept first introduced in 1955 by British naval historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson. It’s the idea that the more time we give ourselves to complete a task, the longer we’ll take to get it done—regardless of…
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Why Growth Feels Like a Messy Spiral (And How to Make Peace With It)
When you think about musical progress, doesn’t it feel like it should at least somewhat resemble a halfway straight line? Step 1: Practice → Step 2: Improve → Step 3: Mastery? Yeah…not quite. Growth is often nonlinear. Progress can feel frustrating, unpredictable, and full of plateaus or sudden bursts of success. This came up in…
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Stop Fighting the Music with the Law of Nonresistance
Ever feel like you’re forcing your way through a practice session, struggling with a tricky exercise, or overthinking a performance to the point of stress? Whew…I’m not the only one. I’ve thought many times that there has to be a better way to get around (or through) those situations when they arise. Turns out, there…
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The 80/20 Rule for Musicians: Work Smarter, Not Harder
Raise your hand if you ever feel like you’re just spinning your wheels in the practice room and not getting anywhere. Or if there isn’t enough time to touch on all of the things you need (or want) to work on for upcoming gigs and your musical growth. Or if you’re a bit overwhelmed by…
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Building Resilience Through Musical Challenges
Resilience isn’t just a general life skill. For me and nearly everyone reading this, it’s integral to surviving (and hopefully thriving) as a musician. Whether we’re navigating creative slumps, technical plateaus, or performance nerves, developing resilience helps us transform obstacles into opportunities for growth. Let’s explore how. The Power of Resilience Every musician faces challenges.…
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You, the Machine: How to Fine-Tune Your Musical Systems
I know, I know, I know… as musicians, we often like to think of ourselves as purely creative beings. We thrive on creativity, emotion, and connection. Even the mere notion of “thinking of yourself as a machine” can feel stiff or counterintuitive––capable of threatening or diminishing to our artistry. But bare with me for a…
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Hanlon’s Razor: A Musician’s Guide to Giving the Benefit of the Doubt
A philosophical “razor” is a mental model that seeks to “shave off” some facet of a possible explanation for some given situation or phenomenon. In our recent discussion about Occam’s Razor, we looked at eliminating complexity. Today’s concept seeks to eliminate a common assumption that many of us are known to make all too often…
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Occam’s Razor: 7 Ways to Simplify and Improve Your Musical Life
Ockham and the Razors. New band name if you want it, but you’ve got to promise me a piece of all your future successes. No? Oh well, I tried… Occam’s Razor, named after 14th-century philosopher William of Ockham, is a principle that suggests that when we’re confronted by multiple explanations or options, the simplest one…
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Why Mental Models Matter for Musicians: Using Thinking Tools to Improve Practice, Performance, and Your Music Career
Saddle up. This one may be longer than usual but I want to kick off with some fundamentals and a number of solid examples. We’ll be revisiting the concepts below (and many others) at later dates, because there are innumerable ways that they can be applied. Consider this a bit of a primer on where…