Attention Conservation
Saturday, January 15, 2011 at 10:16PM Attention is finite. To the degree that you can focus, you can conserve your attention in order to accomplish what matters.
In the image below, a flashlight is trained upon a page of sheet music. It's illuminating most of the page, dimly.
Now, we move the flashlight closer to the page:
As you would expect, the beam of light gets both brighter and smaller. The flashlight bulb puts out a consistent amount of light, so as it covers a smaller area it is more highly concentrated.
You can see where I'm going with this: your attention behaves the same way. The more focused you are, the less attention you waste, making you more effective. It's called concentration, get it?
This may seem like a no-brainer, but many players do not behave in a way that reflects an understanding of this concept. They start at the beginning of a piece of music and hack through it until it's over or until they run out of steam, whichever comes first. And then - horrors! - they might just go back to the top and try again.
A better approach: focus all of your precious attention on a tiny section and polish it until it shines. If you're doing it right, you'll be totally exhausted well before you learn the whole page. That's okay - there's always tomorrow.
Attention: A limited resource that you can make the most of by improving your ability to focus.
Can you think of any applications of this concept beyond learning a piece of music?
Reader Comments (3)
Honestly, I've never thought about applying that to the rest of my life. I'm totally used to sitting down at the piano and obsessing over just a couple of measures - really turning those rough edges into something pretty. Now you have me thinking deep thoughts on a Saturday.. I don't know what would happen. Maybe this will be my project for March..
A great reminder, Casey. I like the flashlight analogy! Seems I could apply the same thing to my attempt to de-clutter my house this year - one drawer at a time.
Aaahhh... Truly helpful way of looking at anything that needs doing. Concentration. Focus. Attention. Turn off the tv, put down the phone, stop multi-tasking, and THINK. or clean the table. or talk to your kid. Far too easy to drown out what must be done with a bunch of extra layers of noise and activity for the sake of getting more done faster. Thanks for this.