How to be great
Content
How to
be Great
Play your way to a better you
by Grace Miles
.com
Table of Contents
Welcome . . ........................................................................................... 3 Step 1 - How to be Great ......................................................................... 4 Step 2 - How to be 10% More Motivated .................................................... 7 Step 3 - The Easy Way to Do Anything ........................................................ 9 How to Get More (Free) Techniques ......................................................... 11
2
Welcome
What if you could play almost any piano music, no matter how much time you have or how “good” you are? What if you could make your students practice more, by doing just one thing? (What if you could make yourself practice more with just one thing?) What about read notes more quickly and sight read better? Or get out of ruts? I’ll show you how, with psychology. I started looking for better, happier ways to play piano when I began to dread practicing: I would play the same piece for hours, the way my teachers told me to (and the way everyone else did it). But I’ve found better ways to do the same things, faster. I’ve tested tons of different ways to do these things and more... these are my solid, proven techniques. Here’s the 3-Step Goal. Enjoy! - Grace Miles www.artiden.com
3
1 - How to Get to It
We all have goals. We all want to be great. Forcing yourself to your goals isn’t fun... It’s not easy either. If you think of the most common goals, like “play piano everyday” or “lose weight”, or even “keep a clean workspace”... It just takes bit of doing. It sounds too easy: just do it, like Nike says. But making yourself play music by your least favourite composer (for whatever reason) or geting up to sprint at 8am isn’t easy. Think of the last time you tried to force yourself to do something and commit to it for a long time. How did it work out? Most likely, it’s the kind of thing that drags on forever, and we end up dreading whatever it is that we have to do. But that can change. That’s right: get the goals you want for the greatest you, without forcing yourself to do anything. I’m going to show you a quick little trick that breaks it all down.
How to Make it Happen Painlessly
It’s quite simple, actually. This is something I’ve done again and again—it works. When you notice a rumbling in your tummy, you’ll want to eat. That’s a cue. You want a cue and a ‘hook’. Once it has your attention, you want to do something about it. So, for example: I have my own stretching routines that combine yoga poses and dance stretches. I change the intensity based on how I’m feeling on a certain day. A while ago, I injured a hamstring (and I couldn’t stretch for a while) so I had to up my efforts to get back into the game. My goal was to get my flexibility back.
4
(It was more specific than that, but I won’t bother with the details right now.) I went running a few times every week and I stretched afterwards. Stretching my legs afterwards is a given because tight hamstrings were the very thing I was trying to improve. The running is my cue. I like running, but my cue to run, early in the morning, is to put on my workout clothes first thing after I wake up. Here’s the hook: sometimes, I’d feel exchausted after my run, and I’d myself that I’d only do a ‘small stretch’ afterwards—just the legs. And I would start out doing a bit of stretching, but it would feel so great to loosen up my hamstrings when I bent over to kiss my knees that I’d also stretch to the side, and do a back bend… pretty soon I’d be in downward dog and cobra. I’d ask myself, “Why not this stretch? And this? And…” I end up with some pretty intense stretching. There’s no forcing myself here—I made it so that I actually wanted to stretch.
That’s what the cue and hook does. Maybe I guilt myself a bit (“Why not? My muscles are warm…”) but it’s not tedious to stretch.
How it Works: Step-by-step
First, you want to make a cue that leads to your goal. Then you make a hook that draws you in a bit.
cue + hook = goal!
It’s the same thing with piano. My last example didn’t have anything to do with piano because I wanted to show you that the cue and hook works for everything. I’ve used this technique again and again. When students want to play scales in every key fluently, but they can’t make themselves practice scales, I start them off with something they like. Let’s say, they like arpeggios. They’ll practice one set of arpeggios, maybe in a certain key. That’s the cue: it’s technique time. I only give one set of scales, and that’s the hook. After playing the arpeggios, they think, “I’m practicing technique anyways, so I’ll just play that scale… it’s just one.” When I go through this week after week, students start to play more and more scales at home, even though I only ask them to practice
5
one set. During the lesson, I might ask them to play a scale we’ve done a few weeks ago. It doesn’t matter if I’ve told them to practice (for that week) the last scales or not; it’s embarrassing to fudge through something you should know, and most students get the hang of it quickly. When you look at the possible embarrassment during the lesson and the goal to play all the scales, isn’t that a pretty good cue and hook? Test different cues and hooks to find one that works best for you. Like most things, there’s a ‘one fits most’ but not ‘one fits all’. The trick is to find hook that’s small. Even if it’s so small that it seems ridiculous. I told myself that I was going to stretch my legs-- that’s all I intended on doing. My students were just going to practice that one scale. Psychologist BJ Fogg says he started out just flossing one tooth everyday-- now he flosses all his teeth everyday. Of course, there are ways to get to your goals faster than ever before. I’ll be showing you that later on.
Your Homework
If you’re serious about your goals, then you can’t skip these last steps. Grab a pen and a piece of paper: 1. Write down THREE ‘now’ goals. Be SPECIFIC. (Not ‘wake up early’ but ‘wake up at 7AM and eat breakfast’.) Under each one, write a cue and hook. Keep this safe. 2. Tell a friend about your top goal. It can be anyone, as long as you tell someone. (Feel free to send them this book, too!) Leave a comment here to share your goal. 3. Test your cue and hook-- not every one will work. If it doesn’t work, tweak it and test it again, until you find one that works for you. This makes sure... (a) You’ll commit; research shows that most successful goals are written down and shared. It keeps you going. (b) You can celebrate and let us know when it happens (it makes victory that much better to share)! So: Click here to share your goal, cue + hook!
6
2 - How to Be 10% More Motivated in ONE STEP
Let’s face it: We’re lazy. Sometimes we just need a boost. It’s great that you’ve got the cue and hook, but here’s the next step. Maybe the cue and hook works great, but variation is good. And what if someone else needs a push? Here’s a new, proven way to get it back together. It just takes one step to increase anyone’s motivation by 10% (or more). Yes, you can motivate your students (even very young ones) to practice piano with this little hack. Read on and I’ll show you how.
When the exam ended, did you still feel like playing that piece? In fact, did you play that piece anytime soon after the exam? Probably not. Most people find the piece annoying by then. This has happened to me in the past (plus tons of students) again and again. It’s almost an inside joke amongst teachers and adjudicators: Anything that’s prepared just for an exam or performance will be “ruined”. It’s an unfortunate side effect of exams and performances. The grade that we get becomes the reward that we want.
7
Is there “bad” motivation?
In a word, yes. Chances are, if you’re unmotivated, then you’ve fallen to ‘bad motivation’. Most of us have been through an exam system of some sort, not just for music. Have you ever prepared a piece just for a certain exam?
Whenever there’s what I call a ‘reward motivation’ like that, we’ll work for the reward only. When the reward’s gone, there’s no reason to keep up that behaviour, so we’ll stop. That’s not good.
The Secret Is...
This study has been done more than 128 times, and the results have been consistent: Surprise rewards motivate people more than anything. And expected rewards unmotivate people.
How to Increase Motivation by 10% (or More)
In one study (Stanford and U of Michigan), they looked at kids who liked to draw (and spent a lot of time drawing). They divided the kids into three groups: > The first group of kids knew they were going to be rewarded a prize (certificate) before they started drawing. > The second group of kids were surprised with a reward as they were drawing. > The last group of kids weren’t given any rewards, and just drew. The kids who got surprise rewards spent 10%+ more time drawing than the kids who’d expected rewards. When the first group of kids expected rewards, their motivation for drawing became a ‘reward motivation’; the second group was encouraged to draw more with surprise rewards.
To increase motivation by 10% or more, just give a surprise reward. If the piano exam is the reward, then don’t prep your pieces just for the exam. Play them because you like them, and when the registration date comes along and you happen to be ready, then that’s a surprise reward. And give piano students surprise gifts, but don’t bribe them. Surprise rewards work for motivation of any type. Now, let’s make it easier to reach your goals, whether your goal is to lose weight or play a certain piece by Liszt.
8
3 - The Secret to Accomplishing Anything, Easily
So you’ve got your cue and hook, with motivation to do it, but what if it’s too hard? Do you ever feel hopeless towards a goal? Do you ever feel that you won’t get there no matter how long you work at it? Or do you just have goals to work towards? Whether your goal is sight reading, perfecting a piece, or even calculus homework, there’s a simple solution to accomplishing anything.
You need a thing that’s just right: Hard enough so that you’re entirely focused, but easy enough so that you feel like you’re improving and you don’t get frustrated. A challenge that’s too easy won’t need your undiverted attention, so you won’t go into flow. Let’s take a basic example that most of us have been through: You can’t get past the first octave of a scale (playing at a certain tempo) without your hands splitting up, yet you’ve been trying again and again with the metronome for the past hour. You’re not going into flow and you’re not improving much, if at all. It’s too hard and you know that you’re not getting better. To find flow, you need to make the job easier.
9
It’s Flow
Flow is when you’re so absorbed in something that you lose track of time. You’re reaching your potential because all your energy is directed at one single activity. You’ve experienced flow before. Humans have been ‘flowing’ long before the psychologist Csíkszentmihályi came along and named it ‘flow’.
How to Find Flow
How, exactly, can you find flow, if it’s so great? The key to finding flow is balancing challenge. It’s not hard... I’ll show you how.
You can make it easier in lots of different ways, as long as it makes you feel that the goal is doable. For our example above, you can first play it slower and fix the fingering. When that gets too easy, you can then aim for evenness; you would play them with alternating accents at the same tempo. And when that gets too easy, then you can increase the tempo again-- in the end, you’d get your goal, painlessly! When you make it harder in small steps like that, you would be in a state of flow the entire time, not hours of frustration.
Quick Recap
1. What’s your goal? (Make it specific) The key to playing your way to the big goals (like getting to your dream job) is to break it down into small steps and then use this system. 2. Make up a cue and hook for it. 3. Test it. If it doesn’t work, try another cue and hook. Try a few to see which works best. 4. Stuck in a rut? Get a surprise reward. 5. Want to make your goal easy? Get into flow. Optional: Tell a friend about your goal. 6. And you’re there! Yes!
Flow Tip
Find out how you concentrate best. Distractions? Silence, neatness, or even white noise? Create conditions where you concentrate best, then you will flow. Even something simple like closing the door might help your concentration. I personally concentrate best when it’s quiet; that’s when I work best-- I find noise distracting. Test out different ways and find one that works best for you.
10
How to Get More Techniques (That Work)
I hope you enjoyed this guide to tips that can change your life! (They sure changed mine.) If you know anyone else who might benefit from this, feel free to forward this to them-they’ll thank you. If you’re interested in more great tips for playing piano, you can join my free newsletter where I send proven piano techniques and lifestyle updates to my readers. This is just a quick slice of what I share-- you’ll get insider updates on new techniques that you won’t find anywhere else. Here’s the link again: http://artiden.com/more-tips - Grace Miles
11
be Great
Play your way to a better you
by Grace Miles
.com
Table of Contents
Welcome . . ........................................................................................... 3 Step 1 - How to be Great ......................................................................... 4 Step 2 - How to be 10% More Motivated .................................................... 7 Step 3 - The Easy Way to Do Anything ........................................................ 9 How to Get More (Free) Techniques ......................................................... 11
2
Welcome
What if you could play almost any piano music, no matter how much time you have or how “good” you are? What if you could make your students practice more, by doing just one thing? (What if you could make yourself practice more with just one thing?) What about read notes more quickly and sight read better? Or get out of ruts? I’ll show you how, with psychology. I started looking for better, happier ways to play piano when I began to dread practicing: I would play the same piece for hours, the way my teachers told me to (and the way everyone else did it). But I’ve found better ways to do the same things, faster. I’ve tested tons of different ways to do these things and more... these are my solid, proven techniques. Here’s the 3-Step Goal. Enjoy! - Grace Miles www.artiden.com
3
1 - How to Get to It
We all have goals. We all want to be great. Forcing yourself to your goals isn’t fun... It’s not easy either. If you think of the most common goals, like “play piano everyday” or “lose weight”, or even “keep a clean workspace”... It just takes bit of doing. It sounds too easy: just do it, like Nike says. But making yourself play music by your least favourite composer (for whatever reason) or geting up to sprint at 8am isn’t easy. Think of the last time you tried to force yourself to do something and commit to it for a long time. How did it work out? Most likely, it’s the kind of thing that drags on forever, and we end up dreading whatever it is that we have to do. But that can change. That’s right: get the goals you want for the greatest you, without forcing yourself to do anything. I’m going to show you a quick little trick that breaks it all down.
How to Make it Happen Painlessly
It’s quite simple, actually. This is something I’ve done again and again—it works. When you notice a rumbling in your tummy, you’ll want to eat. That’s a cue. You want a cue and a ‘hook’. Once it has your attention, you want to do something about it. So, for example: I have my own stretching routines that combine yoga poses and dance stretches. I change the intensity based on how I’m feeling on a certain day. A while ago, I injured a hamstring (and I couldn’t stretch for a while) so I had to up my efforts to get back into the game. My goal was to get my flexibility back.
4
(It was more specific than that, but I won’t bother with the details right now.) I went running a few times every week and I stretched afterwards. Stretching my legs afterwards is a given because tight hamstrings were the very thing I was trying to improve. The running is my cue. I like running, but my cue to run, early in the morning, is to put on my workout clothes first thing after I wake up. Here’s the hook: sometimes, I’d feel exchausted after my run, and I’d myself that I’d only do a ‘small stretch’ afterwards—just the legs. And I would start out doing a bit of stretching, but it would feel so great to loosen up my hamstrings when I bent over to kiss my knees that I’d also stretch to the side, and do a back bend… pretty soon I’d be in downward dog and cobra. I’d ask myself, “Why not this stretch? And this? And…” I end up with some pretty intense stretching. There’s no forcing myself here—I made it so that I actually wanted to stretch.
That’s what the cue and hook does. Maybe I guilt myself a bit (“Why not? My muscles are warm…”) but it’s not tedious to stretch.
How it Works: Step-by-step
First, you want to make a cue that leads to your goal. Then you make a hook that draws you in a bit.
cue + hook = goal!
It’s the same thing with piano. My last example didn’t have anything to do with piano because I wanted to show you that the cue and hook works for everything. I’ve used this technique again and again. When students want to play scales in every key fluently, but they can’t make themselves practice scales, I start them off with something they like. Let’s say, they like arpeggios. They’ll practice one set of arpeggios, maybe in a certain key. That’s the cue: it’s technique time. I only give one set of scales, and that’s the hook. After playing the arpeggios, they think, “I’m practicing technique anyways, so I’ll just play that scale… it’s just one.” When I go through this week after week, students start to play more and more scales at home, even though I only ask them to practice
5
one set. During the lesson, I might ask them to play a scale we’ve done a few weeks ago. It doesn’t matter if I’ve told them to practice (for that week) the last scales or not; it’s embarrassing to fudge through something you should know, and most students get the hang of it quickly. When you look at the possible embarrassment during the lesson and the goal to play all the scales, isn’t that a pretty good cue and hook? Test different cues and hooks to find one that works best for you. Like most things, there’s a ‘one fits most’ but not ‘one fits all’. The trick is to find hook that’s small. Even if it’s so small that it seems ridiculous. I told myself that I was going to stretch my legs-- that’s all I intended on doing. My students were just going to practice that one scale. Psychologist BJ Fogg says he started out just flossing one tooth everyday-- now he flosses all his teeth everyday. Of course, there are ways to get to your goals faster than ever before. I’ll be showing you that later on.
Your Homework
If you’re serious about your goals, then you can’t skip these last steps. Grab a pen and a piece of paper: 1. Write down THREE ‘now’ goals. Be SPECIFIC. (Not ‘wake up early’ but ‘wake up at 7AM and eat breakfast’.) Under each one, write a cue and hook. Keep this safe. 2. Tell a friend about your top goal. It can be anyone, as long as you tell someone. (Feel free to send them this book, too!) Leave a comment here to share your goal. 3. Test your cue and hook-- not every one will work. If it doesn’t work, tweak it and test it again, until you find one that works for you. This makes sure... (a) You’ll commit; research shows that most successful goals are written down and shared. It keeps you going. (b) You can celebrate and let us know when it happens (it makes victory that much better to share)! So: Click here to share your goal, cue + hook!
6
2 - How to Be 10% More Motivated in ONE STEP
Let’s face it: We’re lazy. Sometimes we just need a boost. It’s great that you’ve got the cue and hook, but here’s the next step. Maybe the cue and hook works great, but variation is good. And what if someone else needs a push? Here’s a new, proven way to get it back together. It just takes one step to increase anyone’s motivation by 10% (or more). Yes, you can motivate your students (even very young ones) to practice piano with this little hack. Read on and I’ll show you how.
When the exam ended, did you still feel like playing that piece? In fact, did you play that piece anytime soon after the exam? Probably not. Most people find the piece annoying by then. This has happened to me in the past (plus tons of students) again and again. It’s almost an inside joke amongst teachers and adjudicators: Anything that’s prepared just for an exam or performance will be “ruined”. It’s an unfortunate side effect of exams and performances. The grade that we get becomes the reward that we want.
7
Is there “bad” motivation?
In a word, yes. Chances are, if you’re unmotivated, then you’ve fallen to ‘bad motivation’. Most of us have been through an exam system of some sort, not just for music. Have you ever prepared a piece just for a certain exam?
Whenever there’s what I call a ‘reward motivation’ like that, we’ll work for the reward only. When the reward’s gone, there’s no reason to keep up that behaviour, so we’ll stop. That’s not good.
The Secret Is...
This study has been done more than 128 times, and the results have been consistent: Surprise rewards motivate people more than anything. And expected rewards unmotivate people.
How to Increase Motivation by 10% (or More)
In one study (Stanford and U of Michigan), they looked at kids who liked to draw (and spent a lot of time drawing). They divided the kids into three groups: > The first group of kids knew they were going to be rewarded a prize (certificate) before they started drawing. > The second group of kids were surprised with a reward as they were drawing. > The last group of kids weren’t given any rewards, and just drew. The kids who got surprise rewards spent 10%+ more time drawing than the kids who’d expected rewards. When the first group of kids expected rewards, their motivation for drawing became a ‘reward motivation’; the second group was encouraged to draw more with surprise rewards.
To increase motivation by 10% or more, just give a surprise reward. If the piano exam is the reward, then don’t prep your pieces just for the exam. Play them because you like them, and when the registration date comes along and you happen to be ready, then that’s a surprise reward. And give piano students surprise gifts, but don’t bribe them. Surprise rewards work for motivation of any type. Now, let’s make it easier to reach your goals, whether your goal is to lose weight or play a certain piece by Liszt.
8
3 - The Secret to Accomplishing Anything, Easily
So you’ve got your cue and hook, with motivation to do it, but what if it’s too hard? Do you ever feel hopeless towards a goal? Do you ever feel that you won’t get there no matter how long you work at it? Or do you just have goals to work towards? Whether your goal is sight reading, perfecting a piece, or even calculus homework, there’s a simple solution to accomplishing anything.
You need a thing that’s just right: Hard enough so that you’re entirely focused, but easy enough so that you feel like you’re improving and you don’t get frustrated. A challenge that’s too easy won’t need your undiverted attention, so you won’t go into flow. Let’s take a basic example that most of us have been through: You can’t get past the first octave of a scale (playing at a certain tempo) without your hands splitting up, yet you’ve been trying again and again with the metronome for the past hour. You’re not going into flow and you’re not improving much, if at all. It’s too hard and you know that you’re not getting better. To find flow, you need to make the job easier.
9
It’s Flow
Flow is when you’re so absorbed in something that you lose track of time. You’re reaching your potential because all your energy is directed at one single activity. You’ve experienced flow before. Humans have been ‘flowing’ long before the psychologist Csíkszentmihályi came along and named it ‘flow’.
How to Find Flow
How, exactly, can you find flow, if it’s so great? The key to finding flow is balancing challenge. It’s not hard... I’ll show you how.
You can make it easier in lots of different ways, as long as it makes you feel that the goal is doable. For our example above, you can first play it slower and fix the fingering. When that gets too easy, you can then aim for evenness; you would play them with alternating accents at the same tempo. And when that gets too easy, then you can increase the tempo again-- in the end, you’d get your goal, painlessly! When you make it harder in small steps like that, you would be in a state of flow the entire time, not hours of frustration.
Quick Recap
1. What’s your goal? (Make it specific) The key to playing your way to the big goals (like getting to your dream job) is to break it down into small steps and then use this system. 2. Make up a cue and hook for it. 3. Test it. If it doesn’t work, try another cue and hook. Try a few to see which works best. 4. Stuck in a rut? Get a surprise reward. 5. Want to make your goal easy? Get into flow. Optional: Tell a friend about your goal. 6. And you’re there! Yes!
Flow Tip
Find out how you concentrate best. Distractions? Silence, neatness, or even white noise? Create conditions where you concentrate best, then you will flow. Even something simple like closing the door might help your concentration. I personally concentrate best when it’s quiet; that’s when I work best-- I find noise distracting. Test out different ways and find one that works best for you.
10
How to Get More Techniques (That Work)
I hope you enjoyed this guide to tips that can change your life! (They sure changed mine.) If you know anyone else who might benefit from this, feel free to forward this to them-they’ll thank you. If you’re interested in more great tips for playing piano, you can join my free newsletter where I send proven piano techniques and lifestyle updates to my readers. This is just a quick slice of what I share-- you’ll get insider updates on new techniques that you won’t find anywhere else. Here’s the link again: http://artiden.com/more-tips - Grace Miles
11
