I’m concentrating right now on building happiness by establishing good habits within the limits of my character. This emphasis has grown out of Gretchen Rubin’s new book that I wrote about yesterday. I’ve been sharing my struggles to put accountability structures in place that will work with my obliger tendency, but I’m realizing that for some habits I’m just going to have to use some other prod or prods. I’ll be writing about these ideas over the next posts. I love putting my mind to a problem and finding a solution once I realize that there is a problem.
So here goes:
To start with, a very basic concept: If the main reward for the good habit is its result, then be very sure that you’re actually doing what will get you that result. This idea sounds a bit confusing, but it’s one of those obvious-but-overlooked principles that can be very helpful once it’s understood. Let me use an example that I talked about last week: my desire to work faithfully on the choral part of Beethoven’s Ninth, and indeed all of the music we’re singing in my community chorale, and to have it all memorized by the time of performance. But what would I tend to do in my practice time? Mostly I’d listen to the selections and try to follow along in my music. I thought of sitting at the piano, plunking out my part, and actually singing to be too much hard work. I’m tired, I’d think. I’ll just sit on the bed with my laptop and listen to the pieces. Plus, I was a little self-conscious about singing out loud in front of Gideon, who’s often sitting right there in the same space since the piano and his recliner are up in the loft. (That space has become his de facto office.) Won’t I disturb him if I’m singing? The problem with all this, of course, is that you don’t learn music by listening to it; you learn it by practicing it. I wasn’t seeing much in the way of results, so I wasn’t very motivated to be consistent in my efforts. If I were working on a piano piece (which thankfully I don’t do any more), I wouldn’t fool myself into believing that I’d be able to play a Chopin nocturne by listening to someone else play it. Somehow, though, I’d gotten into the trap of thinking that I could learn to sing a piece without singing it myself. So this week, after coming to this astounding revelation, I’ve indeed been sitting, plunking, and singing. Guess what? It’s working. The results are starting to show themselves. I can see that there will be a logical progression here: first the plunking sessions, then singing along with the recordings and following the sheet music, then singing along without the music. How very, very obvious. But its obviousness didn’t strike me until this week.
The failure to work directly toward a goal is a fundamental mistake, and it’s linked to another one: not identifying the problem clearly. If you don’t know what the problem actually is, then how can you possibly solve it? Lots of time and effort that are being wasted on unproductive strategies can be put to good use if we realize what we’re doing and where we’re going. If there’s an issue that keeps coming up in your life and there doesn’t seem to be any resolution to it, maybe you need to re-think the problem. Maybe I need to re-think my whole use of time/scheduling problem. Have I really identified the problem? Probably not, since I’m still struggling with it. More to come on this fascinating and important topic!