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, Hick’s Law states that the more choices we have, the longer it takes to make a decision. When faced with too many options, we slow down, overthink, and sometimes completely stall.
His research on reaction times and decision-making, and this particular insight that developed from it, have become valuable in understanding human cognitive processing.
For musicians, this psychological phenomenon often results in less actual progress and more wasted time.
You’ve likely heard of analysis paralysis. Quite similar to that, many of us can struggle with Practice Paralysis.
“Should I work on scales, technique, or those new tunes today? Or maybe try out the lick from that player I saw on Instagram this morning?”
The solution: Pre-plan your practice sessions so you don’t waste time deciding what to do. Make decisions about what most needs your focus before you’re at your instrument.
Another very real scenario that can slow our progress is Studio Decision Fatigue.
“Which mic should I use? Which reverb? Is this snare sound right?”
Solution: Use (or at least start with) presets, templates, and other go-to gear and settings that you already know work well. Once I had gotten acquainted with my DAW and other recording gear/plugins, the #1 thing I did to improve my workflow and help me get recording faster in the studio was to create a number of Pro Tools templates. I have templates (with channels named and inputs all set) for drumset tracking, percussion tracking, loop creation, voiceover work, generating tempo tracks for live band performances, and more. This takes some work in advance to set up, but it is time well invested. Being able to boot the software, choose a template, and be off to the races is an enormous time saver and helps you get to the music making far quicker.
And then there’s always Songwriting Overload. I see this happen with artists in the studio and in rehearsals all. the. time.
“Should the Verse chords go to G or D here? Hmm . . . I keep going back and forth between this being a doubled Chorus or just a single. Acoustic or electric?”
The solution: Commit to early decisions. Stop killing your own momentum. Now, to be fair, there is a time and place for those questions and finding answers to them. But at some point, it’s important to heed Susan Powter’s advice and “stop the insanity!” Make a decision, move forward in the process (or in the song or project), and then continue on.
Streamline & Accelerate
Take stock this week of areas in your music career or life that too many choices (and the effects of Hick’s Law) may be slowing you down more than you’d like. Then try applying one or more of the ideas below to see if they help.
Limit your options in advance:
Use a template, a default structure, a rough outline . . . whatever you need in order to think less about the “how-to” side of things when you sit down to create.
Use constraints to boost creativity:
We spoke recently about setting self-imposed (sometimes unrealistic) deadlines. You might also consider establishing other arbitrary limitations (even if only temporarily). Like, perhaps you write this next song for only piano and voice?
Make quick decisions and stick to them:
As mentioned above, no endless tweaking. Just for today, just commit to that initial idea you had, power through, and move on. You can always revisit it and change things tomorrow if you really feel the need to. Remember that, in many circumstances . . .
Done > Perfect
Have some success applying these concepts in your own work? I want to hear about it! Share in a comment below and tell me how it went.
Happy music making–
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