The other day, one of my students (let's call her Maureen because no American kid is named that in 2022 and it's funny), was working on a math problem that was really more of a number puzzle.

Maureen turned to me and asked a question that I was utterly prepared for: "Am I really going to need to be able to do this in my life?”

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How do you know exactly how much to practice a new skill or how long to spend preparing for a performance or speech?

You can go through the motions until things are pretty familiar; you can push yourself past the point of exhaustion through relentless repetition.

But the best approach is to carefully calibrate your effort to exactly what is needed, no more no less, using something I call the Comfort Score.

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It seemed straightforward: A grim chapter about the slave trade written at about a fifth grade reading level, followed by a handful of questions meant to assess learning and help the student make connections.

One of the questions could take a career or a lifetime to answer thoroughly: “What was the Middle Passage? What was it like?”

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When my choir first began learning Benjamin Britten’s “Rejoice in the Lamb,” I’m sure I wrinkled my nose — if not in disgust, exactly, then certainly in confusion. 

The angular melodies, abrupt changes in time, the seemingly nonsensical poem that comprised the lyrics — none of it made sense to this high school singer who had grown accustomed to 19th century opera choruses and quietly pretty folk song settings. This was weird and bold and sometimes defiantly ugly, challenging to the ear and the intellect. 

That’s exactly why I fell in love with it — eventually. It grew on me.

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I frequently draw on my experience as a music teacher to solve problems in other subjects.

In music, the effectiveness of various learning strategies and tactics can be quickly and easily heard. Therefore, as I experimented, it became obvious which ones to keep using.

One of the most straightforward of these was simple repetition. But the key, I discovered, was to repeat something until you saw results, compressing your effort into a short period of time.

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