Funny how much sheer pleasurability and inspiration matter for habits. Ever since I got a new piano, my old practice time goals (which I often struggled to meet) feel comically low. Now somewhat effortlessly 3 months ahead of target… gotta ratchet up the goal!
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Making the habit more pleasurable is an oft-suggested strategy. I think it'd be pretty enabling to assemble a wiki-style database of per-habit pleasure/inspiration-increasing strategies!
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Something about this feels wrong. Like: why should I come up with ways to make myself to want to play the piano more? Shouldn't I just naturally want it?
Yet: deliberate practice is unpleasurable! (Ericsson et al '93) *Playing* is, but need much of the former to get the latter.
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Eh, re-reading Ericsson, I want to backpedal a bit on that. The musicians studied found solo practice less pleasurable than playing for fun, but more than, say, chores, music theory, etc. The "effort" term is maybe the important element (8.0 vs 3.3 practice vs play for fun)
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Reminds me of the comparison makes to a starter motor/finding a pleasurable framing for the activity as a “bootstrapping” step. Eventually you reach a skill level where other forces supplement (feeling of success, ability to improv, narrowing the Ira Glass skill/taste gap)
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Motivation is a skill. Wanting things is not something you can just “do” beyond lollipop level at age 3. You have to learn to zoom in on the thing that vaguely attracts you, with enough precision that the motivational feedback loop kicks in. Like a starter motor.
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When starting (drawing, piano, swimming), I hadn’t yet experienced a connection between drills and better performance, so I remembering doubting if it was worth it. It was important that practice be a useful end (even without leading to improvement) during this incubating phase.
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It reminds me of running. Practise can sometimes be boring. But I love to go to races, but to do well I have to practise.
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Coming up with ways to want something more *can* mean doing it artificially (or forcing yourself), but it can also mean creating new fun — i.e. the most natural thing in the world.
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As for practice, it reminds me of a friend who hated practicing scales until he discovered improvised jazz piano: there’s a pattern you can improvise over (I think it’s 2-5-1), scales get infinitely more fun when combined with that.
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Here lies a chance to succumb to the zen that is plateau. Per George Leonard's Mastery.
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Yes this feels wrong. In my experience the trick is not increasing the pleasure but lowering the stakes. Money, prizes, exams, certifications, survival needs, meeting parental expectations. When you pick up an activity in later life typically all those stakes have dropped away.
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FWIW I feel the opposite. Picking up something like an instrument later in life when everyone around me has either given up on it or is effortlessly amazing... Every bit as high stakes as trying to learn as a kid!
(But I'm only 29)
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The deep laziness paradigm of is another way of looking at it. You’re just enhancing a behavioral center in your life! ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/06/dee
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