One of my enduring memories of my grandfather is of him sitting on the living room floor reading the sports section in the local paper, whilst watching one game on TV and listening to another on his portable radio.
At the time, I thought it was an amusing (and impressive) feat of multi-tasking. But this would barely be considered multi-tasking by today’s standards. With emails, texts, YouTube rabbit holes, Netflix queues, Tik Tok brain candy, school, work, side hustles, and more, we juggle an awful lot of inputs.
The problem, of course, is that we kind of suck at multi-tasking. And there’s troubling evidence which suggests that our habit of trying to process multiple inputs simultaneously is making us worse at single-tasking.
And why is this a problem?
Divided attention in the practice room
Ever notice how sometimes practicing is easy? And you quickly settle into a groove where you’re efficient, effective, and surprised at how quickly time flies by?
Of course, then there are days where you might find yourself being constantly interrupted by random thoughts or worries about emails that need to be sent, bills that need to be paid, and your friend’s cryptic Facebook status update.
These are the times when practicing might feel scattered and ineffective.
It’s like trying to study in a room with a mosquito that sporadically flies by your head, making that annoying sound that mosquitos make, and totally wrecking your ability to focus on the task at hand.
We know that trying to process all of these extraneous inputs and outputs in the practice room is unproductive. But how can we quiet our inner mosquitos and be better single-taskers when we need to?
Parking your worries
A psychology strategy called “parking your worries” can help.
The idea is that we tend to worry about, or have recurring thoughts about the same things during the course of a day at times when we are not in a position to do anything about them.
For instance, you may be worrying about an argument you had with your partner, and trying to figure out how to smooth things over. This may be super important, but are you in the best position to make decisions about this or plan next actions when you’re in the middle of working out a new fingering?
Or you may remember that you have to pick up eggs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Elmer’s glue before returning home at night. But are you in a position to do anything about that at 1pm when you’re trying to do some score study before a 3pm rehearsal?
Open loops
The problem with these unresolved actions or “open loops,” is that they tend to keep circulating about in our heads, which is distracting and gets to be really stressful after a while.
It’s like rushing in to grab something from the store while double parked. We may only be gone a few minutes, but it’s super stressful to worry constantly about being ticketed or towed.
Contrast that with going to the mall, parking your car in the garage, and having the peace of mind to shop while knowing that your car isn’t going anywhere, and you know exactly where to find it when you need it.
Close the loops
What we have to do is close these open loops, so we can put them out of mind and get to a more quiet, focused state where we can practice in peace.
Note that we don’t necessarily have to resolve these open loops, we just have to close them. How, you ask?
It’s worry time
Back in the 80’s, researchers at Penn State (Borkovec et al., 1982) were searching for a way to help us worry less. In particular, they wondered if worriers could develop more control over the intrusiveness and uncontrollability of these thoughts.
Rather than developing a strategy for opposing these worries directly, they decided to test a strategy for redirecting these worries.
Instead of talking back to that voice in our head or trying to eliminate worry entirely, they taught folks how to do the opposite. To worry on purpose – but only during a specific and limited period of the day.
A 4-step technique for managing worry
51 habitual worriers (those who reported worrying at least 50% of the day) were asked to fill out a daily worry questionnaire for a week to get a clearer picture of what their worry looked like, and how much of an impact it was having on their life.
Then, they were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was taught a 4-step worry-reduction “stimulus control” technique, while the no-treatment group simply continued filling out the daily worry questionnaires with no particular strategies to try.
What was this 4-step technique? Essentially, it involved having the participants defer any worries to a designated 30-minute period of “worry time” when they were free to worry as much as they wanted. Here are the details:
- Learn to identify worrisome thoughts and other thoughts that are unnecessary or unpleasant. Distinguish these from necessary or pleasant thoughts related to the present moment.
- Establish a 1/2-hour worry period to take place at the same time and in the same location each day.
- When you catch yourself worrying, postpone the worry to the worry period and replace it with attending to present-moment experience.
- Make use of the 1/2-hour worry period to worry about your concerns and to engage in problem-solving to eliminate those concerns.
Four weeks later, the researchers analyzed the results to see if “batching” one’s worries had any impact.
Batching works!
At the outset of the study, both groups worried about the same amount. The treatment group spent an average of about 40.31% of the day worrying, while the non-treatment group spent about 41.72% of the day worrying.
And at the end of the month, the no-treatment group’s worry time didn’t change; they still worried about 40.08% of the day. But the group that practiced batching their worries reduced their worry significantly – from 40.31% of the day to about 24.81% of the day (about a 40% reduction in worry).
So how could you put this into action?
Take action
For the next week or two, try the 4-step technique and see if this could help you keep those intrusive worries from interrupting your practice and study time.
- Schedule, say, 10-20 minutes of worry time (but not too close to bedtime, because that’s not a great way to end your day 😅)
- During the day, when negative thoughts, worries, concerns, and other non-task-relevant thoughts pop into your awareness, quickly jot them down so you can revisit them during worry time. And try to redirect your attention to the present moment, and whatever is actually in front of you.
- When it’s worry time, go nuts and engage in all the worries that you’ve postponed.
- But do devote some of this time to generating potential solutions too. Worried about not being able to have a piece memorized in time, for instance? Plan out the remaining days before your performance/audition by putting in some milestones, identifying some memorization strategies, and scheduling time to apply these strategies to the piece, and test your memory well in advance. This may not eliminate all of your worries of course, but hopefully it does reduce your worry and help you to stay a little more focused when you need to!
References
Borkovec, T. D., Wilkinson, L., Folensbee, R., & Lerman, C. (1983). Stimulus control applications to the treatment of worry. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 21(3), 247–251. https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-7967(83)90206-1
I simply must use your concept of using a journal to write down open loops. I often have a very difficult time convincing my head to leave my head alone (there’s a Dave Matthews Band reference in there somewhere).
Great post – thanks for the tip
(BTW – I got all nine magic mentions, and 5 of the picture/names – not bad eh?!)
That is pretty impressive indeed. My brain got overloaded and threw in the towel about 10 seconds in…
Our failure to multi-task well is yet another argument in favor of slow practice, too. It’s much, much easier to keep track of the million and one things we need to do to play a piece well if it’s happening slowly enough to keep us from having to juggle too many balls at once.
Important to realize that learning a musical instrument is already multi-tasking, when one lists everything that must be mastered both technically & expressively. Another idea to keep focused is asking the question “Is this relevant to the current practicing?” We all work on improving focus, and some years ago, while doing lots of regular reading & a sort of meditation (a benefit of being an at-home mother!), the idea of monitoring one’s inner thoughts, and table-ing (or however it’s spelled) the irrelevant, worked well.
I think this concept comes from David Allen’s Getting things Done, no? I liked the book so much, I bought both the hard copy and audio book. After listening/reading together, my wife & I keep them both handy for reference. More indepth productivity systems here: http://www.davidco.com/
Hi Jamie,
Yes, absolutely! I’m a fan of the GTD approach as well.
Yes! Finally affirmation that multi-tasking is bad.
I don’t mean this comment as a wet-blanket, but can one spend too much time on “how to stay focused” and organizing methods, when that time can just be “getting on with it” and doing what needs doing. My husband (now retired) used to comment on how much time some at his office used to keep their lists and planners updated, when that time might have been more efficiently used actually doing their work. (OK, I’m ready for the pros & cons, as these systems obviously benefit many people.)
Hi Mary Jo,
Great point – you’re absolutely right. I found myself spending hours upon hours trying to get my productivity system to be “just right”, until it became totally unproductive. Two things helped me with this – (1) stopping when the system was “good enough” and giving up on the idea of productivity perfection, and (2) setting a limit on the amount of time I spend organizing it every day.
Nowadays, I generally just start off the day with a 5-minute (generally less) review of the things I have on my list, and rank order the 3-5 most important things, and try to knock those out before I tackle anything else.
There are a bazillion different approaches and systems out there, but the simplest, easiest, fastest, low-maintenance one that works for you at a good-enough level is the best one, I think.
I’ve definitely known people who were on that spectrum — they’d spend all morning or even all day organizing their mile-long to-do list, then take a break because they had “gotten so much accomplished.” No, you haven’t gotten anything accomplished. You’ve set yourself up to accomplish things, but unless you start doing and crossing stuff off your list, you haven’t accomplished anything.
*eek* Sorry, but it was frustrating to watch for a very long time. 🙁 I swear people like that are allergic to actually doing stuff because it’s so much more fun for them to organize a 500-item to-do list than a 25-item one. I mean, if they did something on their list, then the list would get shorter!
Yes! That’s the point!
*agh* Shutting up now …
Makes sense, Noa. We all need to find productive ways to think it all through and prioritize. I like the “good enough” common-sense idea.
This technique is great! It echos how the Pomodoro Technique (for time management) deals with interruptions, and I’ve found it very helpful for improving focus. I also will take a few minutes to ‘data dump’ when I have something angsting around my brain, just to get it out of my head.
Thanks for the video–quite the reminder that I can’t do 12 things at once 😉
I agree, based upon direct experience, that list making, and task organizing can be a major exercise in itself and may indicate ‘psychological’ issues well beyond getting things done in a timely and reasonable fashion. These habits may be a distraction pointing to the need to reevaluate ones goals or priorities. That said, I find it necessary to periodically create a comprehensive list of things I would like to accomplish or just explore. The key is to differentiate between long and short term goals. Many people have a vast range of interest and confuse, or other mix up immediate goals with other less immediate interest, and form lists with goal, interest, ideas, projects, and so on, when an agenda somewhat detailing the requirements of the day, or perhaps even a week of so is adequate. Stepping back and evaluating one’s habits may very well work to untangle the threads. Often the intervention a friend, counselor, or co-worker is necessary to fully raise awareness and help the individual get on a more productive track. BTY, some people who spend a lot of time creating these comprehensive list harbor a desire to write but haven’t identified this need, or given, thematically speaking, form and structure to such. Thanks.
[…] A Simple Strategy for Worrying Less and Practicing More Productively (Bulletproof Musician) – Some fantastic tips for how to focus on music practice when your mind is filled with other stress and worries. […]
I’ve been following you for years now…this tip about scheduling a “worry time” has a humorous edge to it! I love it!
Scarlett in Gone with the Wind said it already: “I can’t think about that right now. …”