by Katy Carnaggio
Okay, I’ll be the one to concede this: People always say that becoming a great musician requires discipline, but no one really talks about what exactly discipline entails. So, please pay attention and take notes…yes, with a pen and paper! Here is your success formula: Stress + Rest = Growth
Following are 4 steps to apply to get THE WORK done…like your favorite great athlete does!
#1—Align practice sessions with your peak learning cycles.
Your body operates in ultradian rhythms of approximately 90-minute cycles throughout the day. These rhythms determine when your brain is in a prime state for learning—that is, its most neuroplastic phase.
If you’ve ever stayed up late cramming for an exam, you know exactly what it’s like to work against these cycles: it’s strenuous. Capture those sweet spots of heightened neuroplasticity instead. You’ll be able to do deeper work with greater flow.
Note when you're most alert after waking up; that's your first ultradian cycle. You typically experience one more phase of high alertness in the mid-to-late afternoon. Together, these provide two optimal learning periods daily.
#2—Prioritize tasks according to intensity and meaning.
To be clear, each day, you normally have two opportunities to significantly deepen your knowledge, refine your skill sets, or improve your athleticism…or not. You get this time, but you get only this time.
You can’t grow in every direction at once, and you can’t choose when these optimal learning cycles occur. But rather than serving as limitations, these constraints provide opportunities to cultivate something of deep, intrinsic value. They ask you to decide what matters most, and they shape who you choose to become as a result.
Support your choices by using deep learning sessions to work on meaningful activities which can benefit from high levels of focus and concentration. Save the less-intense or less-important tasks for later.
Best Practices:
Instead of: using your optimal learning cycle to practice a routine you know like the back of your hand,
Try: compiling/creating/varying a routine to refine skills needed for upcoming performances.
Instead of: practicing after you’ve spent all your energy at your 9-5 job,
Try: waking up at 5:30 a.m. to leverage a ~7 a.m. learning cycle.
#3—Commit to focusing (and refocusing) during your deep work session.
Honor your practice sessions with total engagement and deep, unremitting focus. This is the time to introduce the stress part of the Stress + Rest = Growth equation.
If you aren’t pushing yourself to develop your skills, interpret your music thoughtfully, or to offer something qualitatively more beautiful to your audience, you will not grow.
Monofocus. Go “full throttle” on your musical development. It’s totally fine if it’s hard to do this at first. In fact, you will not be able to focus at peak levels for 90 minutes. Like any skill, your abilities to focus intensely, resist temptation, and to think deeply will strengthen with practice.
#4—Incorporate 10-30 minutes of deliberate recovery throughout your day.
Hard work is vital for thoughtful, compelling, and skilled performances. But hard work is often mistaken for relentless work.
Without adequate rest, we can’t recover well enough to work hard in the first place. We become stuck in an unfulfilling grind of doing “pretty good” work, never truly stressing ourselves to reach our full learning potential but never really resting either.
Incorporating recovery throughout your day not only expands your capacity to complete more than one deep learning session in a day, it also brings all your work to fruition as your brain rewires and consolidates learning during sleep or non-sleep deep rest.
Best Practices:
Instead of: bringing your attention into a tight focus by scrolling through videos on your phone during breaks,
Try: letting your mental states idle by staring out a window or looking around the room.
Instead of: traveling a familiar or mundane route,
Try: putting yourself in the way of beauty: reroute your commute or breaks, preferably through nature.
Tomorrow’s agenda? Listen to the rhythm of your body and mind. Aligning the rhythm of stress and rest with your biological rhythms is a powerful tool for sustainable excellence that will carry you through the year.
