Object Permanence
Lately I have been experimenting with hiding my phone so that I don’t obsessively check it. It’s not that I am overly concerned with messages; it is simply that if I walk past my phone, I will pick it up and then get sucked into whatever texts might be there: a message from a student, a flirtatious text from Matt, a reminder to make an appointment to get my teeth cleaned. I have discovered that if I don’t ever see my phone, I sort of forget about it and can better hope to be able to work longer without creating my own interruptions. In other words, simply hiding my phone seems to free up all sorts of space and clear a ridiculous amount of mental clutter.
“Perhaps,” my husband said when I told him of my discovery, “this is an example of how you lack object permanence.”
It is completely possible that I somehow failed to learn this important developmental marker. Or maybe I just need a good work hack these days. I’ve been reading Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity, which is another argument in a growing thesis of Newport’s that we need to impose controls and restrictions on technology if we are going to manage life without being a slave to its call. We have all heard the research that shows that every time we are interrupted by the ding of a message it takes at least 307 minutes to get our attention back on track. And yet, it takes an act of Congress to get us to hide our phones, or turn off our Apple watches, or shut down our computers.
September always feels like a reset, a chance to look at habits and work patterns with the optimism that—this time!—I’ll figure out a perfect rhythm. And with a whole new bunch of Little Ones I am thinking a lot about developmental markers of all kinds. Last week I held a special studio class for just the Little Ones. “What are we doing next week instead of your lessons?” I asked them. “Special class for just the Little Ones!” one child said. I like it that they, too, call themselves “the Little Ones.”
Let’s just say that I totally underestimated how valuable older students are in propelling the momentum forward in a group setting. Although I have no trouble maintaining the focus from moment to moment when teaching younger students one at a time, when they are together, they hijack the pace and tempo of the class completely. “Go get a drum from the table,” I would say and nothing would happen. “Drum,” I would repeat. “Go get drum.” The children would then stagger to their feet, and wobble across the room, bumping into furniture and each other as if they had no sense of how much body mass they took up in space or how their feet worked. Everything took ten times longer than I had anticipated. I repeated every instruction 25 times. “What I think I learned from listening to your class,” Matt said to me afterwards, “is that Jake needs to pick up his books and bring them to you.” Yeah. Something like that.
What I learn from teaching the Little Ones is to do one thing at a time, a valuable and profound lesson in any situation. If I succumb to my tendency to multitask—write assignments while I’m talking, give multiple instructions at a time, dart from concept-to-concept too quickly without good transitions—I will lose them. This is bad pedagogy, pure and simple, and I know it, but it is a constant and hourly challenge to control my busy tendencies, nonetheless. Nothing teaches one how to sequence and simplify and steady my attention like a Little One. They are the spiritual teachers; I am the humbled student.
Lately I have been thinking about this idea of Doing One Thing in my life at large. I resist this on principle, convinced that my time limitations require me to do five things at once: I should write practice notes while I’m listening to students playing their scales. I should listen to music I need to learn while I’m eating breakfast. I should call my sister if I’m out for a walk. But then I remember the Little Ones. Every single person in my life deserves my full presence, and not my distracted “just checking this message on my phone” attention. It’s hard to appreciate the subtle nuances of Beethoven’s phrasing if I am shoveling granola in my mouth. If I am talking to my sister Beth, I am not likely to notice the cosmos that have suddenly taken over every flowerbed in the neighborhood.
Maybe it is all about Object Permanence after all. Or doing the One Thing in front of me, which might be the same thing in the end. The dishes in the sink and the unmade bed. The blog post needing to be written and the tricky email demanding my response. Claire, who wants to tell me about her new puppy and how she figured out Twinkle Twinkle on the piano all by herself. Maybe it’s not really slow or unproductive. Maybe it’s just an honest and attentive way to move through the world.
And also, Jake should bring me his books.