This is the third in a series of reflections I am writing on the ideas of How to Calm Your Mind by Chris Bailey.
This passage of How To Calm Your Mind particularly caught my attention:
One of my favorite things to ask someone when I meet them for the first time is this: What do you savor the most? In asking dozens of people this question, I have been surprised at how many people just don’t have an answer.
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This also holds true for the most successful people I know: the question leaves them dumbfounded and speechless, often for several seconds, as hey process the question and gather their thoughts.
I tried this out with a few friends and family and found the exact same result.
The book recommends identifying things I already enjoy, prioritize them, and dwell on the positives. That’s all fine and good, but the idea resonated me when applied slightly differently: Making an active effort to savor the activities I do regularly but often don’t enjoy.
Bullying Myself to Practice
What comes to mind is my piano practices, which I try to do twice a day (once in the morning before work and again at night). I found this twice a day frequency to be necessary in order to make adequate progress in my skills, but it’s ambitious and most days I don’t actually practice two times leading me to end the day feeling guilty and unproductive.
The solution I’ve tried is to bully myself into sitting down and practicing, including rigorously planning discrete practices and setting timers. This has worked somewhat, but with the downside of making my piano practices less fun and creative. In turn, that makes me less motivated to practice and makes it more difficult to force a practice the next day.
Savoring the Practice
Over the last few weeks, I incorporated this idea of savoring into my piano practices and it’s made a huge difference.
I started intentionally appreciating as much as I can about these practice sessions: the feeling of the comfortable chair, the sound of the hammers hitting the strings, even the privilege of the opportunity to learn a creative skill deeply. It feels silly and artificial to do this, but typically after a few minutes I can observe a subtle but important shift in my mindset. The whole practice is more pleasant and captures my attention more fully. And when it comes to starting the second practice at the end of the day, it’s easier to get started because it’s a more pleasant activity.
Savoring Versus Flow
In the past, I’ve chosen to focus on flow, and I’ve tried a bunch of timer apps and techniques to force myself into what can feel like a mythical state of mind. Finding flow is really hard in the same way that meditation is difficult: I don’t really understand how to actively not do something.
I find savoring to be way easier because all I have to do is just take a moment and notice the pleasant things about an activity. Doing so makes me more engaged, which is largely the same goal I was striving for by pursuing flow.
Barriers to Savoring
The book outlines two main barriers to savoring, both of which I need to keep in mind:
- Distractions (especially digital ones). Our brains naturally gravitate to novelty, so a notification on my phone will naturally overpower my thoughts on more subtle pleasantness.
- Time management. I sometimes feel guilty when spending time single-tasking, always considering everything else this time could be spent on.
I’m guilty of both of these, which I knew made me less productive, but I had never quite considered that both could hinder my satisfaction with doing something. Conveniently enough, reducing distractions is something I’ll discuss in my next, and probably final, post about this book.
