Thomas J. West Music

It's the age-old story: a deadline is coming up, and once again you haven't really spent the time to complete the necessary tasks to meet that deadline. Your excuses are many, colorful, and varied, but when it comes right down to it, they do not matter now. The only thing left to do is to CRAM! The tasks must be completed by the deadline, despite how that may negatively affect the quality level of how those tasks are completed. Here is a thorough study of procrastination, including strategies to motivate anyone to not only meet deadlines, but to bring your best work to the finish line.

What Causes Procrastination?

Procrastination is an experience common to nearly every human being. The most common causes of procrastionation are:

• The task to be completed is deemed uninterseting, too easy, or pointless
• The task is deemed to be too difficult or take too much time and effort to complete
• The task is threatening in some way to either our physical safety or mental self-image

The root cause of all of these reasons has to do with one simple concept: Fear of Change. In order to complete a task in a certain time period, that task requires a person to invest time and energy in thinking, acting, and reacting to the task. They must be willing to change what they do and who they are in order to meet the goal.We relate to the world around us by interacting with it and assessing how those interactions make us feel. We then use our logical minds to construct explanations, or stories, for everything we interact with. Those "logical" constructions are based solely on our own perceptions and memories, whether or not those perceptions and memories are fully complete or totally ignorant.

When we procrastinate, we do so because there is in some fashion a threat to our sense of self. We don't want to go through the process of change because it is much easier, far more comfortable, and less threatening to forego the change and remain the same. When the deadline approaches and the consequences of missing that deadline become an inevitable result in our near future, we are forced to deal with the anxiety of change that we have been avoiding. That anxiety is increased by a magnitude because now there is little time left to make the change. The result is a highly stressful situation which inevitably leads to a resulting change of a quality level less than what we are truly capable of.

An important thing to note about this process is that the anxiety of changing is completely and totally self-created. We are our own worst enemies when attempting to change. Our logical mind actually searches out reasons to procrastinate. We look for people in our lives to validate our feelings and give us reasons to avoid the change. Many of us even purposefully, if sub-consciously, surround ourselves with people that perpetuate our reluctance to take on the challenges of changing. The anxiety and fear of change is completely self-created, and the result is procrastination at best and crippling phobias at worst.

A Case Study in Procrastination

The following is a case study of a theoretical music student in one of my classes. This student is ficticious and is a composite of several students I have worked with over the years. Their challenges, reactions, and results are a typical pattern in the procrastination game.

This student, Emma, plays the clarinet and is in 8th grade. She is shy and polite and enjoys interacting with her fellow musicians in the school band. She is a good student in school, earning all A's and B's. In music, her aptitude level is on the low end of what would be considered "average" and she plays at a proficiency level that would be considered 6th grade. Since entering middle school, she has been given 2nd or 3rd clarinet parts to play, and she is well aware that she is far from the best clarinet player in the band.

The concert music for the spring concert was just handed out, and right off the bat, there were several notations in the music that Emma had never seen before. There were also several passages in the music that were full of sixteenth note runs - passages that Emma knew were going to be really hard to play. As the band began to read through the pieces in January, Emma found herself reverting to her old pattern of playing very quietly and copying the player next to her because she wasn't exactly sure how some parts of the music were supposed to sound. The more they worked on the music, the more Emma disliked it. The other students on her part were making steady progress, and she was too, but she was definitely lagging behind everybody.

Emma is required to turn in practice sheets signed by her parents indicating how many minutes each week she practices at home. She did make an effort to practice once or twice a week. Normally, she would start at the beginning of the music and play through it several times, doing the best she could with the tough spots. Her music teacher had told her to isolate the problem spots and work on them separately, so she did that, but that didn't seem to help much. Practicing was frustrating and not much fun, and she found herself wanting to spend time doing other things instead. She wanted to be able to play her part well so that she could contribute to the band's performance, but it didn't seem like she was capable of doing it.

Emma's friend Carlie played flute. They were good friends who were a lot alike. They would talk about their friends in band a lot and would also talk about things that happened during band rehearsals. When Emma would ask Carlie about the tough spots in the concert music, Carlie would respond, "Oh man, I HATE those spots! I'll never be able to play them! I don't even bother trying to practice them, I'm just not good enough to play notes that fast and complicated." Emma felt the same way. Maybe she should just give up on those parts and fake it.

At the beginning of March, Emma's band director announced that there were going to be playing exams on their concert music in April that would be worth 1/4 of their 4th marking period grade and would determine her seating within the 2nd clarinet section. Now she didn't have a choice - she had to work on those tough parts if she wanted to keep her A in band and not have her parents on her case. Also, everyone in the band would know she had done poorly on the playing exam because she was sitting last chair. She increased her practicing from once or twice a week to three solid days a week, but still she did not seem to be making progress. The anxiety was building, and the more nervous she got about it, the worse she seemed to play.

She kept up her practices at three times a week for two weeks, and then just decided it was a hopeless cause. She knew she would never be able to play the part, and she'd rather spend her time on other things anyway. When she played her test, she was nervous and shaking and ended up getting a C. Her grade in band ended up being a B for the marking period, but an A- for the entire year. At the spring concert, she played the parts she could and faked the hard parts, allowing the other band members who were better than her to play them.

In this case study, the major issues are:

1. Emma has a slightly below average musical aptitude, which means that she will need to successfully play the music a higher number of times than the majority of her classmates. She is aware of this and takes it personally, labeling herself as "untalented" or "not as good as everyone else."
2. From the onset, Emma analyzes the music and based on her previous experience decides that the music will be "too hard" for her to play, which sets her up for failure later and for procrastination throughout the process.
3. Emma's desire emotionally to master the music is not as strong as her self-image that she can't do it. Because of this, she is not willing to put in the time and repetitions necessary to master the music.
4. Emma's friend Carlie serves as a further justification of her own self-defeating image of herself. She may not be able to play the music well, but at least she's not the only one.
5. The deadline is the playing test in April, and the consequences of not performing well on the test is the lowering of her band grade. Emma values her grades mostly because her parents have raised her to believe they are important. She knows that her parents will not be pleased if she ends up with a B in band. The seating within her section adds additional stress to the situation because part of Emma's self-image is invested in what her peers think of her.
6. In the end, Emma's self-image wins the battle and she chooses to give up on mastering the music, which further solidifies the self-image that she is a bad clarinet player and is less of a person because she can't do it.

It is easy to see how self-image and Emma's perception of herself colors every decision and even what she perceives of the people and situations around her. She thinks that her peers will treat her poorly if she is sitting last chair - a belief which may have some experience to back it up from her past. She is capable of playing this music, but because of her aptitude level, she will have to work harder and invest more time and energy in it than her friends will. This too becomes a self-defeating point. Her belief that she is not good at her instrument prevents her from reaching her potential. The distance between who she is now and who she would have to become in order to play the music is too great to overcome on her own with the knowledge and skills she currently possesses. To be able to play that music, she literally has to become a clarinet player who possesses the skills necessary.

Strategies for Change

In order for Emma to become the clarinetist that can perform this music, she needs a little help from her music teacher. Emma needs to learn a few important things before she can become successful:

1. First, she needs her music teacher to explain that the music is not impossible for her to learn, but she will need to play more successful repetitions of the music than other students in her section. That's not a mark against her ego, it's just a simple fact.
2. The music teacher needs to help Emma detatch her sense of self from her performance. This is best done by first learning one simple concept: Do not take failure personally. Failure is part of the process of changing and becoming the person who can be successful. Failure usually becomes another reason for the negative self-image to quit trying. The music teacher will need to remind Emma of this simple fact and give her positive reinforcement throughout the process. In the word of celebrity fitness trainer Tony Horton, students should "Do your best and forget the rest."
3. Emma needs to learn some practice strategies that are more effective. Isolating trouble spots is only the first step of improvement. She needs to learn how to identify musical errors and apply strategies to perform those problematic passages correctly multiple times. Even something as simple as playing the problem spots at a slow tempo that enables her to get it right is effective. In band class, the tempi are too fast for her. At home, she can take her own tempo and make progress. Her music teacher needs to provide that knowledge and reinforce it throughout the spring.
4. Emma needs to learn that the only opinion about her as a person that matters is her own. That is a tough lesson that many adults struggle to learn themselves. The best way for Emma to learn this lesson as a member of a band is for her band director to take a role in making sure that she is successful, or more importantly, that she perceives herself as a success.
5. Emma needs regular feedback from her music teacher throughout the spring to help her assess her progress and keep her moving towards becoming not only a successful clarinetist, but a more self-reliant person.

What IS the Final Goal?

One of the amazing things about music education is that music is a worthwhile pursuit in itself, but it is also a means of transforming a person from the ground up. The life lessons that can be learned through music or any of the performing arts is many and varied. Young people literally become better human beings by going through the process of change necessary to perform ever more challenging and aesthetically expressive pieces of music. The mission statement of Youth Education in the Arts is a good summation of the power of the performing arts: "The mission of Youth Education in the Arts is to support the development of young people into magnificent human beings through participation in the performing arts." There is no doubt that music is one field of study that challenges and asires the student to become something new.

For many schools, the final goal is to have the highest quality performing ensembles possible no matter what the cost may be to the individual. These programs tend to provide a fantastic transformative experience for a select few - the elite. What is the final goal - taking a small group of students as far as human limits can reach, or taking a student body as far as they can reach within themselves?

Procrastination - a Final Thought

Procrastination is a manifestation of a person's self-imposed limitations. When a person begins to wake up to that fact, they discover that everything around them is colored by their perceptions and beliefs, and that those perceptions and beliefs are based solely on what we have learned in theory and experienced in fact. Much of what we belief is taken totally on faith because people we trust told us it is so. When a person begins to go within themselves for the answers rather than reacting to the world around them, procrastination begins to diminish and the person begins to grow into their full potential.

This article (c) 2008 Thomas J. West. If you wish to reprint this article on another website or offline, please contact the copyright holder before using.

  


If you find this website helpful, please leave a donation for Tom so you can enjoy the spirit of giving as well.