How to solve problems (how to learn)

If you want to solve a problem, it has to be your problem to solve.

This is almost a tautology. However, we are literally taught to figuratively participate in the solving of other people's problems.

Take the piano student. In most cases it is the parent who takes on the problem of "how do I make sure my child learns piano" and the teacher who takes on the problem of "how do I make sure this parent believes their child is learning piano" and the child who is tasked with assignments that have no relevance to any problem they are currently trying to solve except "how do I get my parents and my teacher off my back so I can focus on the things that are more important to me?"

The piano is an impediment to the child solving their own problems, which is why the child spends as little time at the piano as possible.

Which, okay, fine, we all know this.

We also know the various tools parents and teachers use to make piano practice the child's problem, from "no video games until after you practice" to "you have to prepare this piece for our upcoming recital."

And what happens is that the kid shoves a bunch of stuff into their short-term memory and does whatever they have to do to get by and a week later if you ask them to play the piece they just played at the recital, they can't.

Because it was never their problem to solve – and so they didn't learn anything.

Obviously some kind of progression happens during these hours of mindless drilling. The child does become more adept at the keyboard, just like they eventually pick up some semblance of numeracy after drilling times tables or making hundreds charts or however kids are being taught math these days.

But – and once again, we all know this – mindless drilling is mindless.

(It's also inefficient and an incredibly bad habit to get into.)

At this point I should start the essay over and tell you what I've learned about problem-solving.

If you want to solve a problem, it has to be your problem to solve.

It also has to be the most important problem you are currently trying to solve – because if it isn't, you won't be able to give it your full focus.

Ideally, you need as much uninterrupted, open-ended time in which to solve the problem as possible.

You also need any prerequisite knowledge necessary to solving the problem, although you may be able to pick it up along the way.

Most importantly, you need to solve each stage of the problem in full before moving to the next stage – otherwise, you won't have the prerequisite knowledge to proceed and you won't be able to give the next part of the problem your full focus.

It took me forever to figure this out – 42 years, give or take – in part because school taught me that learning was about drilling and flashcards and spaced repetition and sticker charts and tests and grades and recitals, none of which have to do with solving real problems.

At this point I should start the essay over and define a real problem.

If you want to solve a problem, it has to be your problem to solve.

The fact that it is your problem makes it by definition a real problem, although I feel like I ought to define a fake problem just to provide a counterexample.

Memorizing the Bach Invention in C Major in an afternoon so I can a) earn money by playing it on the organ and b) steal bits of its structure for this musical I'm writing is a real problem, with real stakes, and so I put in real work and got it done.

Being tasked with the same piece of music, by a teacher, for some purpose that can be best defined as "pedagogical" is a fake problem. You'll put in fake work, which is to say you'll do just enough to hit 90 percent of the notes 80 percent of the time, and you'll forget what you've done immediately afterwards.

It's worth noting, while I'm on the subject, that I kind of had to memorize the entire thing in an afternoon (last Saturday afternoon, plus those fifteen minutes I shared with you last Friday). If I hadn't been able to set aside that open-ended time, which turned out to be about two hours, I wouldn't have had the mental space to really think about how to solve the problem efficiently – and I would have run the risk of having a more urgent problem take its place.

Because that is always the problem, with problems.

At this point I should pause the essay and tell you which problems I am currently solving and in which order.

I am most immediately solving the problem of writing this essay, although it is not anywhere near my best work because it is not the problem I actually need to solve today.

In some ways this essay is an obligation, since I haven't written much bloggy stuff this week and feel like I ought to, and also I paid Ghost $300 to host nicolediekerfinley.com for a year so it would be wasted money otherwise????

I wrote two freelance articles this week, both of which solve the problem of earning money (a real problem, with real stakes) but I ended up spending most of my time this week learning music and preparing for the "Acting the Song" class Larry and I are going to begin teaching this evening.

This class is technically solved, as a problem, because I know what we're going to do when it begins:

• Ask everyone to introduce themselves and share what they hope to learn during the class (I always ask people what they hope to learn, in part so I can help them learn it)
• Explain the class structure
• Vocal warm-up, physical warm-up, my very favorite choral warm-up that requires people to listen and blend and move up and down in pitch
• 10-minute masterclass per student (I'll have to keep the time)

Which means the next problem on my list is learning the audition song and monologue I'm preparing for the "Audition Perfection" class that I was supposed to be accompanying but not enough people needed accompaniment sooooo I was all "why don't I just take this class" and they were all "does that mean you want to be onstage again" and I was all "I never didn't want to be onstage, they just kept putting me behind the piano, also it probably means that there's a problem in how I audition if they value me more as a pianist than an actor/singer" and anyway you can see why there are real stakes in that, and why learning an audition song for an audition class is a real problem and why learning a French art song for a vocal lesson is a fake problem.

(And for the audition class the next actions are to record myself doing the song and monologue and identify one element that could be fixed and then fix it, and then re-record and repeat and etc., slowly transforming Nicole into the character, this is the only way I know how to do this and it may not be the most efficient way and it may not even be the right way, but it's the way I can do today.)

And then basically as soon as I said "I never didn't want to be onstage" this opportunity to sing "Now/Later/Soon" at a cabaret emerged, and I went in and took "Soon" to my voice lesson and we were all "okay, you are doing things with your voice that you couldn't do a week ago, let alone a month ago," and first of all there has to be an aspect of drilling-related technique to this that somehow fits in, I don't want to discount drilling altogether, but the truth is that I actually wanted to learn this song and so I actually learned it, I figured out where to seat the notes and how I would have to breathe to sustain them, even past the point at which I learned that Handel aria a week ago, because even though I'd rather study musical drama than art song there were no real stakes there, I was never going to sing Semele.

(Also I went in and said "hey you know those biometrics we talked about for Handel welllllllll I'm going to use them for Sondheim instead" and guess what that's fine.)

And at this point, when you add in the organisting – because I gotta learn the Sinfonia in C Major before Sunday Nov 10 – I'm putting in three or four hours per day of practice, which is what everyone was after me to do when I was a music student but I wasn't ever doing because it wasn't my problem.

And so I'm not writing daily blog posts because I have real problems to solve as a musician, finally –

(do you know how hard it was to get up the gumption to practice when everything I was playing was fake)

and real problems to solve as an actor, and also money to earn and this musical to write –

Except, of course, that the musical is now the lowest of the priorities in terms of urgency and immediacy.

Which is a problem.

In fact, I was telling Larry last night that it was probably my biggest problem to solve, now that I have all of these other problems to solve.

But they'll all get solved, in some way –

Because they're all my problems. ❤️

AT THIS POINT I SHOULD END THE ESSAY AND GET BACK TO WORK

(p.s. I'm still thinking about what I told my voice teacher yesterday, which is that she had taught me how to use my instrument in ways I was incapable of doing six months ago, which is true – but does that mean one has to do the pedagogical stuff, or did that learning really take place during the 30-minute sessions, 25 of which were dealing with immediate problems in scales and arpeggios and breathing and tone and 5 of which were singing the art songs? I want to be fair to pedagogy if one ought to be, to the idea of learning something for no other reason than because somebody with more experience says it's part of a progression. This may also be my problem to solve, especially since I'm doing more teaching these days.)