Presence versus Productivity

It is October in the piano studio. This means lots of cheerful seasonal talk: There are conversations about Halloween décor and costumes. We discuss leaves turning colors and balloon fiesta adventures, compare notes about carving pumpkins and roasting seeds. We explore scary compositions using the “silent ghost effect.”* And of course, there are plenty of rounds of “Pass the Pumpkin.”

Pass the Pumpkin, you might remember, is a singing circle game passing a small pumpkin (duh!) to the beat. At the end of the song, the person holding the pumpkin on the word ‘Boo!’ is out. Or as I heard one Little One explain to another Little One, if you have the pumpkin at the end, you are “discarded.” Discarded? That choice of verb made my afternoon. Actually, my whole week.

I would like to discard a few things. Trump could be discarded. The construction around town could be discarded. That difficult situation with a pushy parent could be discarded. Life would be sweeter if the generalized stress and anxiety we are all feeling was discarded. I’d like to discard a few items from my to-do list this month. How about discarding all the greed and anger and power struggles that seem to be dominating the world these days?

If only it was that easy. If only life was a game of Go Fish with plenty of opportunities for discarding unwanted cards. “How do keep your equanimity when everyone around you is falling apart?” a friend asked me recently. That’s the question to sit with and wrestle with, for sure. And until the answer comes to me, I practice.

Lately on a friend’s recommendation I have been reading the book Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian. It is full of smart, practical and well-researched information about how the brain works and how this knowledge might help musicians learn music more productively. Basically, it is my educational psychology degree contained between two covers. It is a long overdue book for musicians and teachers that could help debunk many cherished myths and sacred cows in our profession about practicing and how it works. (Perfect Repetitions Done Exactly the Same Way Many Times~Wrong!) Over and over again, I found myself nodding and saying, Yes! Yes! Yes! Every musician needs this book on their shelves.

But what about practice as a place of spiritual discipline? As a space to show up and practice beginning again, regardless of performance goals? What about using our time on the piano bench to sort ourselves out on a daily basis, to wrestle with our shortcomings and breathe through our struggles?

I don’t know what the author would say about any of that. Because this book is all about productivity, efficiency and good work habits. All of which I support by the way. None of us needs to waste our time.

But I’m suspicious that clever time management is not the whole answer, and that the most efficient path from one thing to another isn’t the only thing that matters in the end. Which is the paradox, isn’t it? This is the place where our practice could become holy ground if only we stopped rushing long enough to pause and listen.

Then as if to test my resolve and equilibrium, at the end of a long Tuesday, just when I was finishing up the dinner dishes and heading to bed, I tipped over an entire pitcher of iced tea into the bottom of the refrigerator.

The next morning, I cracked an egg, not into the intended bowl, but onto the floor by my foot. A floor that had been mopped the previous evening thanks to the iced tea debacle.

Later, re-reading a student’s assignments, I discovered that I had not simply written confusing half-baked sentences (a common thing, I’m afraid), but in my haste the week before, I had actually scribbled half words, syllables that trailed off into nothingness.

All of which reinforced the need to slow down, stop my endless multi-tasking and start paying attention. Clearly my superpowers of productivity are not serving me particularly well at the moment.

This is not a new lesson or insight. Merely a return to an old intention, a reminder that presence matters more than productivity, maybe especially in these times of waning attention spans and jarring interruptions.

And in these shortening days of autumn, when time is at a premium and it is tempting to succumb to a fast-paced, no-nonsense march through my daily responsibilities, finding a gracefulness around being present and awake is the lesson I most need to hold close. Ironically, this means that lately I have made best friends with the old kitchen timer.

Turns out, I am less obsessed with efficiency and more detached from a specific outcome if I have a safe container for my practices. If I set the timer for two hours at the piano, I’m much less focused on checking off specific tasks and much more willing to try out new ideas (and Gebrain’s book has plenty of practice suggestions to explore!). I solve that conundrum about how I’m going to manage that tricky page turn or fix that gnarly fingering passage if I have a chunk of time rather than simply a stack of music to get through that day. I take the extra minutes to figure out the key structure of a chord progression or give a couple of minutes to working out a problem spot when I have a committed length of time versus a list of tasks. Two hours later, I can walk away, my work done for another day.

Of course, working against the clock—quite literally!—takes some creativity and resourcefulness. I don’t always have time to practice everything I had intended, some things are left on the table, goals must be tweaked or recalibrated. But that’s a practice too: learning to accept that we will never accomplish everything we want to during this lifetime, that our plans must be constantly evaluated and adjusted, our schedules accommodated to fit an ever-shifting reality. It’s taken me half a century to understand that the common, everyday kitchen timer holds not just minutes or hours, but sacred space to let one’s thoughts settle and the next organic direction to emerge naturally.

The practice is to show up and begin again. Day after day after day.

Kitchen timers are a trick—a work hack if you will—that keeps me present and accounted for, but what is much more significant is how the practice of presence might translate to the piano lesson or to my relationships with the people in my world. And at the end of the day that’s the real practice. To not interrupt a student’s final note with my eager feedback. To stay with a long and meandering story by a six-year-old about his trip to the pumpkin patch. To listen with attention when a friend tells me about her dying dog or my sister needs to talk through a problem with a colleague. “Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity,” wrote Maria Popova recently on her website The Marginalian. “Ours is a culture that measures our worth as human beings by our efficiency, our earnings, our ability to perform this or that. The cult of productivity has its place, but worshipping at its altar daily robs us of the very capacity for joy and wonder that makes life worth living.”

There is much to discard in this crazy world. But the art of presence, the practice of attention, the held space to begin again? Those things are worth hanging onto for dear life.

*Piano Teachers! The Silent Ghost effect is such a hit in the weeks before Halloween and an easy way into some creative improvisation time at the keyboard. Simply press a handful (or armful!) of notes down on the lower half of the piano and then play freely with the right hand and let the “ghosts” out of hiding!