There is one question above all others that I believe to be the single most revealing question that one can ask, or indeed have asked of one. A question that strips away all the nonsense, all the confusion and conscious interference that people suffer from when considering any subject, decision or thought process. This question gets directly to the heart of what you are REALLY doing in any given situation, and exactly why you are doing it. This question produces tangible and permanent changes in people more rapidly and permanently than other sentence in the English language. 

What difference does it make to you?

Take a moment to take that in. 

Every action you perform, every thought you have produces a reaction. Your emotional and physical environment changes constantly, and most of the time without you even noticing. These processes are unconscious and mostly automatic. But they are directed. 

Think back to the last time you argued on the internet. What difference did that argument make to you? What difference did it make to you to win? What difference did it make to you to lose? Pay attention to the sensations your body produces. Do you feel anxious when asking this question?

Think back to the last time you procrastinated? What difference did it make to you to procrastinate? Pay attention to the sensations your body is producing? How did you feel? Good or bad? 

Your emotional state directly affects your actions. If you don’t know what difference something makes to you your mind will simply decide for you. 

What difference did it make to you?

You are taught from a very young age that failing is not an option. That you must not get anything wrong and if you do so you are a failure.

This is bullshit.

At school, if you get something wrong, you are shouted at. If you fail your GCSE’s your life is over. If you fail your A levels, well forget university and doing well, because you have failed. Not academically minded? Well tough. Don’t want to go to university? Well you are just failing yourself now aren’t you?

Also bullshit. All of it.

The human brain is a very simple machine at its core. It is a reactive survival mechanism that constantly evolves and learns from its surroundings.

It learns by failing.

Let’s repeat that.

It learns by failing.

You only learn by getting things wrong. Why else would the brain bother to learn? If you can already do something there is no need to adapt.

Once more:

If you can already do something there is no need to adapt.

Adaptation to new stimulus IS learning at its very core. And the brain simply does not do it unless it needs to.

Failure and repetition. That’s all there is.

I will get to repetition next time. For now I will leave you with this:

If you aren’t failing most of the time, you simply aren’t learning.

J.F.D.I.

Build it and They Will Come

Today at a networking meeting, in between cups of coffee and pleasant work based chats, I began discussing the Drumnosis project with on of my friends. We were discussing the need to get funding for our current and latest candidate for the Drumnosis year long course. As we are a new company and we rely in the main on grant funding and sponsorship there is a large delay in actually getting the funding into our company account. 

My solution to this is simple. We start training our candidate anyway and acquire the funds as we go along. If we wait for the funding to come in, we could spend a lot of time sitting on our hands doing very little. This can (and most likely will) lead to a sense of powerlessness, which in turn will cause anxiety. Anxiety will lead to all kinds of unpleasantness (it is after all “The Only Problem”) . 

And so we have elected to move ahead regardless. My colleague and friend at the aforementioned networking meeting said it best: “Build it and they will come”. 

I have my own neat little version: Do it now, fix it while you are going. 

Too much time is wasted planning (worrying) for things that might go wrong, instead of dealing with things that could go right. This is not to say that we don’t plan. But ultimately as the old military saying goes, “No plan survives the first shot of battle”

So dive in! 

J.F.D.I.  

Last Friday, Simon successfully completed his first recording for his drum channel. The aim of the channel is to help him get work as a session drummer. 

The session went very smoothly and the song was completed in one take. Compare this to Simons previous attempt, which took several hours and yielded no good takes. What did we do differently?

Simon set his kit up the evening before, after he had finished work. This gave him plenty of time to focus on getting the kit set up properly, tuning the drums and getting the kit microphones in place. 

Because he had plenty of time, Simon was relaxed, calm and looking forward to the session. 

We then took a leisurely hour and a half checking levels and making sure that all the drums were in the right place for Simon to play easily. One cymbal was too far out, so we adjusted the position. Missing cymbals is stressful!

All this took about two and a half hours. 

Because he had plenty of time, Simon was relaxed, calm and looking forward to the session. 

Simon decided during the week to focus on punk and alternative rock as his chosen genre to pursue. Because he was playing music in a genre he loved, he was calm and relaxed and looking forward to the session. 

Simon arrived at the studio at 10am and had an hour to run through and warm up. 

I arrived at 11am and by 11.45 we had a take in the can. It was the first take of the day. 

Why did he get it right first time?

Simon was relaxed, calm and looking forward to the session.

Take your Time.