Tag / Malcolm gladwell

by Nathan Coumbe

Make an exercise out of the hard parts

Something I learned to do as a musician was the idea of “deliberate practice.”

What this meant for me—like when I was learning a concert snare drum solo—was to take individual measures or a small group of measures, and turn them into exercises.

Examples:

  • A difficult passage that had a hard dynamic transition or sudden change
  • A complicated rhythm I needed to drill before I could play it

I would take these passages, slow them down, get them perfect, and work my way up to “normal” playing speed. Then I would add back in the music that surrounded these difficult sections.

This is how I was able to learn difficult music.

There’s a lesson to be learned here for every aspect of life.

Doing the things you can already do easily won’t make you any better at anything.

You’d got to practice the hard parts until you can get them right.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Perfection is the problem

If you are an artist – a person who seeks to create beneficial change in the world – you are probably a perfectionist.

This is why you never hit “publish” on your blog, why you don’t post your photos on Instagram, or why your songs aren’t on YouTube and SoundCloud. It isn’t because the work you did is bad: it’s because you think if you do just a little bit more to it, it will be perfect.

You’ll never get there.

“An artist’s job is not to be perfect, but to [always] be creating.” – Jeff Goins

The more you create, the more practice you get. You’ll hit that 10,000 hour mark we’ve all heard about. The more practice you get, the better your work will be.

Create something today.

Ship it – today.

Repeat tomorrow.

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