So what does daydreaming got to do with practice?
Well, daydreaming is testament to the brain’s subconscious ability to hold many many many thoughts.
What this means, is that your brain is actually replaying many events throughout the whole day.
I’ve said a lot about practice. Practice makes perfect. And let’s be honest, nobody can skimp on practice and expect to be good at anything.
I don’t know how much practice is actually required, but I do know that clumping up practice just doesn’t work.
Just think of the time between practice – your brain is in fact practicing subconsciously between sessions!
I’m convinced that there is a threshold for how long each practice session should be. This will vary from people based upon the skill to be learnt, the individual’s level of focus, energy on that day, etc.
But one rule can be applied: If you have 3 hours to practice, never do it all on one day. Instead, break it up into 1 hour/day for 3 days.
This invariably leverages the brains ability to subconsciously replay events and thus establish the proper connections necessary for the execution of the skill in interest.
The explanation revolves around several concepts:
- Your brain learns while you do everything else (including sleeping)
Specifically for the guitar, the way we learn is to establish new mind-to-finger connections. These connections can be built while we are doing the laundry, doing homework, sleeping, etc.
Furthermore, we subconsciously replay events that we have recently experienced. This means that this subconscious practice may last for a day after the practice, but no longer. Hence, more frequent practice is better
- You just get plain tired
3 hours of straight practice is just crazy! 1 hour per day over 3 days is much better.
- You may limit the things you try in a single sessions
Sometimes we get stuck in patterns during a single practice session. We may keep trying to nail that certain chord or scale and always miss it. We may not want to try something else because we are struggling with this scale. Hence we don’t try others.
When something like that occurs, either call it a day and stop, or try something else and then come back to it later.
Coming back to a particular scale later allows for the subconscious ‘practice’ to occur. Try it! You will be pleasantly surprised.
This applies to basically any skill, including studying. Eg: Studying a subject for 3 hours straight on one day is certainly less effective than studying it for 1 hour a day over 3 days.
And thats it! Break up big blocks of practice, practice more frequently and slack while your subconscious does the practice for you!
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