For the next ten minutes

Back in 2018, I wrote a blog about "distributed practice" versus "massed practice" based on an article by voice pedagogue John Nix. For the article, Nix took a look at research in exercise physiology and motor learning to see if there are any parallels with voice training. In his conclusions, he highlighted that long practice sessions (massed practice) are needed when we are building stamina for a long performance. On the daily, however, multiple short practice sessions (as short as 10 minutes) that are spaced throughout the day will generally have more benefits to our skill-building. Shorter sessions are also less likely to cause fatigue or injury than one long practice session. 

This is one of the reasons why it's better to practice a little bit every day throughout the week rather than a huge practice session the day before your voice lesson or before you have to perform in class. Besides the risk of injury, you don't really have the same opportunity to embed skills in one practice session (even a long session) as you do when you spread that practice out over multiple sessions. 

There is another fascinating element of shorter versus longer practice sessions that is worth exploring. Like Nix, performance psychologist Noa Kageyama took a look at existing research for possible tie-ins to music practice. In his blog, titled "The Bulletproof Musician," Kageyama looked at a 2009 study where subjects engaged in “spaced learning” versus “massed learning” when studying vocabulary words with flashcards. Go figure, spacing was more effective than both massing and “cramming” (defined as massing study on the last day before the test), even though all subjects studied for approximately the same cumulative number of minutes. But he also revealed the following: 

“[T]he spaced group underestimated how much they had learned from their study session, while the massed group overestimated how much they had gained from their study session. So something about massed practice led to the illusion of effective learning. Whereas spaced practice led to more actual learning—even if it didn’t feel like it at the time.”

So, we may be conditioned to believe that massed practice is the most effective. Of course, we should be most interested in what Kageyama describes as actual learning rather than the illusion of effective learning. 

As many of you may know, in Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, the character of Jamie is hesitant to jump into a full-blown marriage proposal. Instead of asking Cathy for a life together, he asks for only 10 minutes of commitment, in the hopes that it will lead to a second, equal interval: 

“Will you share your life with me for the next ten minutes? For the next ten minutes: we can handle that. We could watch the waves, we could watch the sky, or just sit and wait as the time ticks by, and if we make it ‘till then, can I ask you again for another ten?”

Now, things don't end all that happily for this doomed couple. Still, as it relates to practice, Jamie may have been on to something (at least in THIS case). Instead of thinking of long-term commitments of extended practice sessions, maybe all we need to do is dedicate 10 minutes to practice. And then, later in the day, another 10. And then another. 

How has your practice been going? Would shorter, more frequent practice sessions work with your schedule? 

Now go practice. 

Efficiency, Inherent Laziness, and Patient Persistence

One of the goals of singing training is to identify and eliminate inefficiencies. Oxford Languages defines efficiency as "maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense." As I sometimes describe it, we want to use the fewest number of muscles doing the least amount of work possible for any given task when it comes to physical efficiency in the voice studio. For instance, if it takes two muscles to do something and we are using five muscles, we are not being as efficient as we could. The result is that we're working harder than we need to because we're giving energy to three muscles that are not needed for the task. In addition, those unnecessary muscles may start to interfere with the job that the two primary muscles are trying to accomplish. 

In a recent Journal of Singing column (Sept/Oct 2024), voice professor Lynn Helding presents a quote by psychologist and author Daniel Kahneman from his book Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman expands the idea of efficiency to include our brains and not just our bodies: 

"A general law of least effort applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature." (p.35)

I guess it makes sense that, if we are always trying to find less effortful ways to do things, it could indicate we are all inherently lazy. Whether we refer to this inclination as laziness or simply seeking efficiency, it's good to acknowledge that it is in our nature to choose the path of least resistance and to look for the easier way of doing things. 

Of course, effort is a key requirement for deep learning and skill building. If we want to become better singers, we need to log lots of hours of meaningful practice—there is no easier way around this reality. That understanding, however, can be overwhelming, since there is always more we can do. At no point will we ever reach the pinnacle where our voices are perfectly capable of executing everything we could possibly want. And even when we do reach a high level of accomplishment, it still takes a lot of practice to maintain those skills. It's sort of like exercise for general health. None of us will ever be able to say, "I've finally exercised enough to last for the rest of my life." If we want to continue reaping the health benefits of exercise, we have to keep doing it (especially as we get older). 

But, that realization can actually paralyze us in our practicing, since there is no easier path (and we are programmed to look for the easy route). At times, we may conclude that there is just too much to do, so we might as well not even bother. To address this feeling, Helding encourages what she describes as an attitude of "patient persistence." Instead of being intimidated into inaction (knowing that "Laziness is built deep into our nature"), or taking the opposite approach of trying to do too much at once, she offers an alternative: "Choose a patiently persistent mode of acquiring new habits by starting with small, yet feasible steps" (JOS p.10). 

Consistently choosing to do just a bit of work—through patient persistence—can lead to big gains over time. 

How do you encourage yourself to take small steps toward improvement? How do you motivate yourself to be more persistent in your practicing? 

Now go practice.