I'd like you to do something for me.
I'd like you to give yourself permission to Practice in 2011. No, more than that; if you're going to 'Resolve' anything let it be this: I resolve to try, and fail, and try again, a different way. I will give myself permission to do things poorly for as long as necessary, until I start doing them better. I promise to practice.
Sixteen hours into Keith Richards' autobiography, Life, one fact rings clearer than any other: the man practices. He plays. He tries things. "Let's move the guitar amp over here," he says, "let's try it like that." "Okay, now let's turn the drum amp around, record it on cassette tape, and play it back over the guitar." While the Stones are famous for recording Brown Sugar in two takes, it would be easy to make the argument that they succeeded on their first try, after ten thousand 'practice' attempts. At one stretch, while using a particularly high-grade cocaine, Richards played nonstop – without sleep – for nine straight days (his 'record.') Keith was a massive drug abuser- the book revolves around his heroin problem – but every time he shot up, he was with other musicians, playing. Take a typical twelve-year-old; replace their game controller, television, hockey stick, cell phone, and girlfriend with a single guitar. Give them four hours of sleep per night. Multiply over sixty years. THAT'S practice.
Implementing this idea called Ignite! over the last several months with Tyler, we've had plenty of epiphanies. We've been forced, by necessity, to break down the learning process into its component parts, and that's messy. We break through walls in the Education System, and we're often left with a sticky grey dust. But occasionally, we see things through the holes that we've made. And one of them is a lack of practice.
Take math: "It goes like this," says the teacher. "Here are some homework questions that duplicate the theme without context. Do this by rote, in this narrow window of time, every day." Ask a teenager what they dread most in a math exam? "Word problems." In other words, broad application of what they've learned. They fear anything taken out of the controlled environment of the textbook, because they haven't had the opportunity to PLAY with the numbers. They haven't done math on THEIR terms. No one has shown them that math, for all its authoritarian appearance, is really their puppet. What if their task was to find problems to which the processes they've learned in school could be applied? How much 'test anxiety' could be relieved if the kids realized it was all JUST practice, after all?
Now, another example: public speaking. It's hard to imagine a skill more important than the ability to project confidence to others. In a world where the computer has turned inside out, and 'social media' now means MORE time alone, our passive-aggressive Lizard Brains are nourished. Hide in this cave, it's warm. Don't go outside. Thar be monsters.
Once per year, each child is placed, full of anxiety, in front of all their friends. They're told to memorize – perfectly! Or else! – their script; to speak for precisely two to five minutes; to do it for a grade; and smile, smile, smile, dear! Frankly, it's traumatic. Put that child into an interactive environment every day, however…..and you've got a citizen, instead of a terminal-operator.
I spent over a decade being coached to play hockey. I went to practice twice per week, took my turn in the rotation in games, and learned how to stickhandle. "It goes like this," said the coach. I tried it, and we moved on to something else. Years later, as a farm-community teenager, hemmed in by distance and heavy snow, I had nowhere to go but the rink. Three hours, every night. Five or six guys, shoveling and flooding the ice between games. I wore out a set of blades that year. But I learned HOW. TO. DEKE. Stickhandling? That's in the textbook. Dangling? That's not. "When did you get good at that?" a much-admired friend asked in a game the next year. "Oh, it's easy," I said. "It goes like this…."
It's never too late to be a student. Practice is light, airy, and fun. Yes, it's frustrating….but if you consider it practice, you'll be more likely to enjoy it. In 2011, please play around more. Try to do things differently. When we say, "It goes like this…." try it. Get it down. Then fool around. Play with your clean; tease out a heavier front squat. Move your feet. Try it with louder music. Try it at 8pm. Try it with people watching, and then alone.
"The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights." – Muhammad Ali