From Effortful to Automatic, Why Chunking Works.

From Effortful to Automatic.

Have you been searching for the best way to practice

Have you been searching for the best way to practice, to maximize the use of your time? Here’s a great explanation of the method called “chunking” – taking smaller bite sized bits of music so that you can learn more quickly and easily.

Steven Kotler from the Flow Alliance writes:

“The brain has limited executive function to allocate, and willpower draws heavily on that system. Discipline is metabolically expensive because it requires sustained override from the prefrontal cortex—which is not inexpensive.

Consistency is cheaper. Shrink the task until repetition becomes automatic. Fifteen minutes. Ten even. Small enough that the basal ganglia can start encoding the behavior as habit, lowering the need for conscious control.

Do it enough times and the behavior moves from effortful to automatic.

EMOTION EATS WORKING MEMORY

Working memory can handle only a handful of concepts at once. Emotion can consume all of them.

When you’re carrying unprocessed emotion—anger, anxiety, guilt—it doesn’t sit quietly in the background. It occupies the same cognitive real estate you need for focus and problem-solving. The result is hijacked attention that blocks you from dropping into flow.

The solution?

Externalize it first. Five minutes of journaling. A voice memo in your car. Anything that moves the emotional load out of working memory and into the world.”

My suggestion: Do a few minutes of gibberish!
Here is a guided meditation with music that I made specifically to release unprocessed feelings. Let it help you get started:

From Chaos to Peace:
https://youtu.be/qsVVp6LWvGE