I heard the dancer Bill Evans describe technique simply as “the efficient use of force or effort.” It’s brilliant. It really is what you’re going for! You have a goal: playing a scale smoothly and quickly, or cutting up an onion into evenly sized pieces quickly (and safely!). You figure out the physical motions that will get you there in the most efficient way. Usually these are based on your tools, biomechanics (an understanding of how your body is built to do those motions/which motions it does well), and focused use of only the muscles necessary (a release of tension). If you don’t use efficiencies, you often won’t achieve the goal. I should amend that; you won’t be able to achieve the goal quickly and with minimal fatigue. I picked the onion example on purpose, because I cook with onions a lot, and I’m ok at chopping them, but I don’t have great technique. I was telling my brother once that I wanted to get faster at chopping, and his response was great. “Why? I mean, you’ll spend a lot of time trying to get better at it, probably cut yourself, and save yourself, like, 10 seconds per onion, which would be a big deal if you were a sous chef in a restaurant chopping 100 onions, but pretty meaningless if you’re chopping one or two every few days.”
This goes back to my post about my schedule and how efficiencies are important. What I neglected to say is that the problem with efficiencies is that they take a lot of effort to get in place. It’s hard to work to figure out how to pass your thumb under your fingers in the really smooth and relaxed way. It takes a long time. And with some technique, you’re not really certain what the end result is going to be. There are things that we simply can’t measure. If I really focus on increasing the efficient transfer of oxygen through my capillaries as I run, will that actually work? Will 20 minutes of meditation every day for three weeks actually result in clearer thinking and increase the effectiveness of all my other practicing? Well, it’s going to take 7 hours of effort to find out. On the other hand, three weeks, in the grand scheme of things, is nothing, so why not try it and find out if it really is going to be immensely worthwhile? Choice paralysis? Because, I mean, I also want to strengthen my abs and muscles around my back and ribs to keep my back and body healthy with all the playing I’m doing. And I want to run. And this and that and a million other things. So choosing what techniques you really want to put the effort into honing is a very tough thing.
I’m about to start a group experiment with some people that is basically attempting to develop techniques around our use of social media and our devices. An information diet. This is helping to decide on what efficiency I work on because it is tying it into a social activity (getting together at a bar to talk about how to be intentional about e-mail/facebook/computers). It should be fun. I think one member of our group is going to write about it, so I’ll make sure to link to that.
Mental effort. How does technique work if you’re a computer programmer? Efficient use of mental force seems like an under-considered topic. We would take it as a given that some people naturally have better physical technique at certain things. Is being “smarter” in a certain subject or field just a natural ability to have better thinking technique in that area? Lets think about something (efficiently!) like addition. 1598723+983256. Go.*
What determines speed and accuracy in that? Knowledge of methods (line it up vertically?) that will get the answer faster and easier. Is that same as efficient use of mental effort? Focus – not thinking about other things. Intense concentration on the task at hand. Pattern recognition: the ability to know that 7+3 is 10 without counting 7, 8, 9, 10. When you think about, that’s totally a technique efficiency that took you a lot of time to implement, but you did it when you were so young that you don’t actively remember the work.
It’s important not to have too strong a focus on efficiency to the exclusion of “play.” There’s a great suggestion in the Seymour Fink piano technique book that all technique work be done with lots of focus and intent, but a minimum of desire and stressed-out intensity, as though you are a dispassionate observer.
I am terrible at being dispassionate.
*I think I was pretty efficient – I highlighted the text (numbers with addition sign in between) and pasted it into the search bar at the top of my browser. Answer in really just about two seconds. However, I never actually read the answer…