112322 — Blog — Rulerless

Three ways to tell you’re getting better

I have had an uneven tennis season.

I started back to the sport at the end of February and benefited from being in Atlanta, a tennis mecca if there ever was one. I had lost most of my tennis friends when I moved away shortly before the pandemic, but I worked my way up to playing five or six days a week through a combination of clinics, flex league matches, and casual play with friends and family.

Casey von NeumannJuly 15, 2022081122, 082522, 101122, 112322, 120722, 012023, 030623, 030423 Comments

A couch-to-5K plan for your project

It’s good to steal helpful tactics from anywhere you can find them.

So many of the interesting solutions I’ve come up with were adapted from other industries or disciplines for application in my own.

One example is the “couch to 5K” concept that gets beginning runners into action to the point at which they are able to run and walk continuously for long enough to complete a 5K race.

Casey von NeumannMay 18, 2022062022, 062222, 062722, 072022, 072722, 091522, 112322 Comments

Stay in your comfort zone

People love to tell other people that they need to get out of their comfort zone.

It's all over the content and comments in musicians’ circles online: To get better, you've got to push yourself to constantly play harder stuff, play when you don't want to, challenge yourself to get onstage, play with musicians who are better than you are, and so on.

Casey von NeumannMarch 30, 2022040822, 042222, 112322Comment

Until the water runs clear

The secret of my success in my early days as a piano teacher was a simple tweak that motivated my students to practice more, made them sound great, and caused them to stick with the instrument instead of quitting. On the strength of this basic framework, I built an entire music school.

This tweak can be applied to learning virtually anything, at any age, to create massive results in a short period of time. However, in order to accept it, we need to give up our desire to be the hero and resist the temptation to tell ourselves unhelpful stories about our progress.

Casey von NeumannJuly 19, 2019080119, 010421, 032221, 052021, 112322Comment

The challenge of ease

As students, the hunger for achievement and approval leads us in strange directions.

Some of us are ashamed of doing material that feels like "review," even if it isn't actually mastered.

We'd rather push through, no matter how uncomfortable and frustrating it is, than slow down, take our time, and master whatever it is that we're working on.

Where does this come from?

Casey von NeumannMarch 21, 2019080119, 080519, 092520, 121020, 033122, 112322, 010223Comment