Slow Down To Speed Up Midlife Learning So You Can Get It Right...Each And Every Time!

Episode 63 | (00:00):
Hey there, friend. Slow down to speed up. Is that a little counterintuitive? Because just writing that title was a little counterintuitive for me!

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Today I'm going to be talking about slowing down to speed up your midlife learning so you can start getting it right each and every time.

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When I explain to you the reason it works, I'm pretty confident that you're going to say, "Oh yeah, okay. That makes sense. Yeah, I can see that. All right, I'm going to give this a try."

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So get ready to listen, get ready to learn. You don't even need anything to write this down, how's that? It's so simple and so easy. All right, let's do this. Let's get going!

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Hey there, Easy Ager. If you are not already on the Easy Aging® Insider list, go to TheEasyAgingShow.com right after this episode and sign up today.

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I have to tell you, I love me a good life hack. If I can find a way to make things easier or simpler in midlife, you can guarantee, baby, I'm in. I am all in. Count me in for easier and simpler. Because by midlife , we deserve a little break.

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We need to be using our brains to work smarter, not harder. Because working harder, eh, that's for the youngsters. That's for those kids that are just completely inexperienced at life, and they can have it.

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As far as I'm concerned, I want simple. I want easy. So that's why excited to be introducing you to a life hack that is perfect for learning new things.

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Anytime you learn something new, you can apply this and you'll be surprised at how effective it is. So here's what you do: You practice what you do perfectly.

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Now, you may be asking, "But if it's practice, how can it be perfect?" You know the phrase, "practice makes perfect"? That is absolutely true right here.

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Howard Roberts, a renowned jazz guitarist, said to never practice a mistake. In his essay, "On Learning Music" he says:

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"Once you make a mistake, stop, go back and slow it down to a tempo that you can play accurately without making a mistake. Then slowly increase the tempo and speed with accuracy will come naturally."

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So basically, when you're learning something new, stop, go back, slow it down so you can get it right and you don't have any mistakes. Then slowly increase the speed...

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And as you're increasing the speed, because you made the effort to slow things down and get it right, speed is just going to happen naturally.

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When I used to perform on stage, I did this without even knowing I was doing it. If my scene partner and I were having some trouble with lines, first, we would read directly from the script to make sure we were getting all the words right.

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Then we would put down the script and run the lines with each other slowly. Then we'd kind of speed it up a little bit more until we were finally at normal time.

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And if we really wanted to secure these things in our brains, we would do it at a crazy fast pace. And that helps you. When you're moving as fast as possible, that helps you remember the lines as well.

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The main reason I loved this so much is because it always felt good to know that it was right before we moved forward, before we moved on to the next scene or to the next section that we were rehearsing.

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If we didn't do that, something always felt a little off. And when things feel off, on some level, I think it erodes your confidence a bit.

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When you're not confident, you're going to be a little more timid. You're going to be pulling back. You're going to have a lower energy, and that's the last thing you want to do on stage, right? ;)

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You can apply this to learning anything new because when you learn, your brain creates new neural pathways to retain the information. Every time you perform this new task that you're learning, you're creating a new neural pathway in your brain...

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And every time you repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, you're deepening that memory path. That's why when you perform it perfectly, your memory path is going in the right direction.

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But if you perform it with an error without correcting it and you're deepening that groove, you're just deepening a memory path that's incorrect.

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Does that make sense? So you want to make an effort to slow down and get it right so you're deepening that little rut. It's like a little rut on a road, where the wheels go.

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Here's an interesting fact: In this crazy busy, always-on-the-run, time-starved world that we live in, it would seem that stopping, going back and slowing down would require more time to learn...

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But just the opposite is true. If you do it right each and every time, you are creating only one memory path, and that is the correct one. It's that correct path that moves you forward faster in the long run.

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You know, recently I found my old harmonica and instruction book. I took a class, oh, I don't know, a million years ago, maybe 2 million, I can't remember.

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I thought, "You know what? I'm going to give this theory a try. Little fun-sized actions. I'm only going to practice for a couple of minutes a day and focus on perfecting each note."

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When I took the class, I was kind of in a hurry because I like seeing results really, really fast. And I said, "Oh my goodness, how fast can I learn Happy Birthday or the Eyes of Texas, or whatever?. I just want to learn a song really, really fast."

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So I thought slowing down would really be tedious for me, but it wasn't. And I've kind of surprised myself because I'm a person who likes to take action, who likes to see fast results. The slowing down has been surprisingly fun for me.

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It's only been a week, but I am delighted and I take a great joy in hearing the notes come out singularly and beautifully.

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And not that mess of back and forth, back and forth that I was doing. Just a bunch of messy notes, blended together with a little bit of a tune in there.

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I'm really enjoying the slowing down part of it, and I figure if I stay focused on creating one correct memory path for all of this, I will be much further ahead at the end of the 30 days, don't you think?

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No matter what you're learning, give it a try. Whether you're learning to draw or sing or play an instrument, or maybe you just want to improve your form in a sport, or you're learning a new language, give this a try and let me know what you think.

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Because I'm thinking it's going to end up being much faster to retain this information and to move forward than I had originally anticipated. Even though I thought it was going to be kind of tedious.

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It's actually kind of fun. Just saying. ;)

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That's it for today. Once again, if you are not already an Easy Aging® Insider, go to TheEasyAgingShow.com, and sign up right now. I will see you in the next episode and until then, peace, love and blessings to you and yours. Take care. Bye-bye!