No, no, take your time

And so we're back in the land of academia.  Where free time is at a premium and 6 hours a day of playing my horn feels...just about average.  I love school, always have, probably always will.  I like to nerd out and make schedules and talk with professors and throw myself into the student life.  But this year, it's felt harder for some reason.  I may just be busier than I've ever been before.  And by busy, I don't necessarily mean hours occupied in my day so much as various projects that all demand my energy and all seem worth it.  Thus the lack of recent blog postings.  Or trips to the gym.  Or ukulele practice sessions.  Or phone calls to long-distance friends.  Etc.

So today, I write about the conundrum of efficiency.  I'm rather obsessed with efficiency.  I organize my grocery lists spatially so as to never have to backtrack an aisle.  Some may call this over the top, but it's honestly how my brain works, so why not just roll with it?  But the problem with time tables and schedules and organization in general is...learning doesn't care.  Your rate of learning new skills has nothing to do with the amount of time or money or energy you have allotted for it.  I notice this most often, of course, when practicing.  I give myself 45 minutes to work out problem x, and dammit, 2 weeks later, problem x is still right there.  Every once in a while, the opposite happens: I give myself 2 days to learn a piece of music, and miracle of miracles, I've learned it in 30 minutes.  Generally, however, it's the oppostite. 

The solution, as far as I can gather, is not to set longer time tables.  It's to stop trying to live within a time table.  Sometimes, even the decision to try to "make the most" out of a given period of time is enough for our brains to freeze up.  I think the fastest, most lasting kind of learning (and therefore, the most efficient) happens when we are not aware of time at all.  Many social scientists have studied this elusive "zone"- where we are just flowing, just concentrating without strain or concerted effort.  We've all experienced this in various areas of our life, some of us even consistently.  But how can we put ourselves in this zone reliably, by our own will?

I can't really answer this question or else I'd write a book about it, but I think I get closer when I stop looking at my clock (or cell phone) and stop thinking about how much I've gotten done, and just...do.  Just do that thing, for as long as I want to be doing that thing, and stop when I no longer need to be doing that thing.  It feels both counter-intuitive and completely right at the same time to stop caring about the when and only care about the how.  And it's a luxury which most of us don't have as much as we'd like.  But, I think we have much more time than we think we do.  If only we'd stop trying to maximize every minute of our day.