It takes practice

Sometimes, you feel like you should already be at the top by now. (Image by Michael Gaida)

I count the time spent staring off into space (and some days, there is a lot of it) as work.

The rule is that as long as I'm not putting something else in front of myself to distract me or otherwise trying to escape the present moment, it counts.

I know that it takes me about forty-five minutes to write and revise a blog post and another ten minutes or so to format it. However, it might take me a half hour beforehand to figure out what I want to write about. Therefore, I include that, plus a buffer, in my time estimate when I'm organizing my daily tasks.

Here's the thing, though. I believe that it's mostly the actual time I spend typing—whether in the initial draft or the revision—that is helping me to become a better writer. That's where I work out the difficulties of word choice, structure, and so on.

The time I spend sitting there staring off into space makes the typing part possible, but it isn't part of the practice of writing. That's valuable time spent, but it's a separate practice.

I know people who need to spend hours trying to get past what Brendan Mahan calls "the Wall of Awful." After three hours, they still haven't climbed it or gotten around it. When they say that they've been trying and trying, that's true. But it's important that they recognize that this trying is not yet reflected in their results on the task at hand. They haven't made any visible progress in what they're trying to do.

Working through the emotional pain of a task is admirable and often necessary. When we can see this as a separate skill that we're learning and practicing, we don't have to be so demoralized about our slow outward progress. We're making a ton of inward progress.

I'll offer a practical example. Suppose a violin student is feeling guilty about not playing the violin. Every day, she spends a few seconds at a time feeling guilty before she distracts herself with her phone.

At the end of the week, she's spent a total of an hour feeling guilty and no time playing the instrument.

Now, what if this violin student allowed herself to feel the pain instead of distracting herself from it?

She might spend ten minutes or two hours experiencing a range of emotions like guilt, shame, anxiety, fear, and frustration. "Ugh, I should be playing! It's been so long since I played! I'm going to be so bad. I'm going to fail. I'm going to let my teacher down. I'm going to let my parents down. I'll never make it into the orchestra."

At some point, this interlude will end. Maybe it's time for dinner or sleep or a violin lesson.

But at a certain point in the days that follow, she might work through these emotions enough that she can get herself to open the violin case. She might take the violin out of the case. She might play a note.

At the end of the second week, she's spent seven hours feeling awful and ten minutes playing violin.

The awful feelings may continue. They may intensify. She may need professional help to cope with them. But day by day, she can keep picking up the violin. Once she plays, a new set of bad feelings may arise, but they don't have to stop her from playing.

A few weeks later, she's spending two hours out of the week feeling awful and five hours playing the violin. She's starting to pick up a little momentum because she's finally getting better at the violin.

It would be unhelpful for this student to assess her progress as a violinist based on the hours she spent feeling awful. "I practiced for hours!" No, you thought about practicing for hours. You only practiced ten minutes that week. Your progress is reasonable.

I tried for years to be successful as a singer/songwriter. But that's not really true. I dabbled inconsistently in the actions that it would have taken to be successful. The rest of the time, I fretted and felt bad. That time counts as work, but it’s a different work, and I didn’t push through it to the other side. I feel okay about that—I’ve learned from it.

It takes practice to learn something new. It takes consistent effort over time to reach a big goal. It also takes practice to deal with the negative emotions that may arise when we are undertaking a challenge. All of it is valid—all of it counts—but we should be clear on which is which. When we are able to do this, we can see our progress more clearly and have more compassion for ourselves. That part takes practice, too.

What are you practicing? What activities trigger your worst angst? What kind of support do you need to deal with it? Feel free to share.