I’ve been teaching some online songwriting classes for kids.

It’s been a lot of fun. We’re making up silly lyrics about tacos and learning to jam a little bit.

These kids have varying levels of participation. Some of them are all in, chanting rhythms and offering little bits of melody. Some will sing along when they’re on mute but refuse to turn on their mics to share what they are doing. Some will propose some lyrics or answer questions in the chat. And some won’t contribute at all — their participation is limited to observation.

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It takes a few weeks for some students to get used to working online.

Ernie, who hates to ask for help, claimed to have worked six hours one day in his first week online, when the evidence showed clearly that he poked his head up at 2 PM, dabbled in some schoolwork, and then went back underground 30 minutes later. When he showed up on Zoom calls, he was listless.

These kinds of avoidant behaviors are normal at first, even when life isn’t in complete upheaval. If we have always been monitored closely, we have to figure out how to get work done when no one’s looking. We have to gather our own motivation. And once we’ve done this, instead of waiting for help to arrive, we might be determined to find a way through a problem ourselves.

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Years ago, I was training a new employee. She wanted to improve a particular skill, so I recommended a book on the subject. 

Weeks later, she asked a related question. “What about that book I recommended?” I asked. 

“I’m reading it,” she said. 

In that moment, I learned something important about communicating my expectations. I had thought she would spend an afternoon or two reading the book to quickly learn and implement the material; however, she was actually reading two or three pages a night before bed. 

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It’s the time of year when resolutions and self-improvement are in the air.

Unfortunately, most of us will have abandoned our goals within weeks. Why is it so hard to follow through?

Here’s what I see as a teacher and a coach: We beat ourselves up for struggling with difficult things, and then the discomfort is so intolerable that we take the easy way out. It’s all pain, no gain.

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During my career as a music teacher, I would usually demonstrate things very slowly, at a tempo that my student could match. However, sometimes, I would demonstrate a passage at speed (meaning, at the performance tempo) so that they could hear how it would eventually sound.

When I did this, my student would often forget about the “eventually” part. It sounded cool, and they wanted to try. They would attempt to replicate it at the same tempo, with poor results. If it didn’t work, they would try again several times in quick succession, leading to a stuttery, messy sound.

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