audiot

so small beats large, eh? didn’t i talk about that already? well, this time it’s more like short beats long and i’m talking about periods of time. did you know that it’s impossible for us to really concentrate on something longer than a few minutes?  it’s true, although i don’t know the source of that information anymore. we think we could do something for hours and being focused the whole time but we can’t. by the way, this might be the reason that the ideal length for a song, which is played on radio, is somewhere around 3:00 minutes – keep that in mind when you record your next 70s-sound-alike-mammoth-intro…

anyway, learning is most effective if you do it for short periods of time – about 5 to 10 minutes and then take a break. there are two reasons for this: first, the above mentioned ‘concentration-span’. and the second reason: remember the puppeteer-and-datahighway-building-guys? those fellows are quite assiduous people. when you start learning, they start building – nothing fancy here but when you stop learning, they go on building for at least a few more minutes. ok, if you’re learning for five hours and then you win 5 more minutes, it’s nothing. but if one of your learning units is only 5 minutes and you still get a 5 minute bonus, that means – well, you do the math. depending on how long you need to dig in, learning periods of 10 minutes might be better, you need to check this out for yourself.

so go ahead and make up a plan by first breaking down the task into small pieces (that can be done in 5-10 minutes…), then do one at a time -  slowly and focused and after each of those periods give your brain a break, so the tiny workmates up there can finish up. you don’t need to doze off into standby mode, just do something else you don’t need to focus on. for example, you’re working for 7 minutes on that new arpeggio, playing it slowly and focused up and down the guitar neck. then, as a ‘break’, you crank up the amp and thresh your favorite punkriffs out to the universe. and after that mr. brain is ready to take another bite…