Just saw this article on varying practice for progressing in music mastery. The article is by Noa Kageyama who’s blog, Bulletproof Musician, focuses on research-based tips to tackling everything related to music, from stage fright to efficient practice.

The article lists three tips:

1) Distributing practice - taking small chunks and practicing throughout the day
2) Variable practice - practicing a passage in different ways
3) Interleaved practice - take a few bits that need practice, and cycle them

This is all really interesting in the context of this project. A long long time ago, I discussed Distributing Practice under the guise of Pavel’s “greasing the groove.” I also touched on Interleaved Practice, but I called it “Microcycles” (here, here, and here).

Back then I was trying to attribute Distributive Practice to habit formation, and Interleaved Practice to regimentation. What’s interesting is that it really didn’t work for me. But I never thought to instead apply these to Mastery like Kageyama does.

The article recommends two books - The Talent Book, by Daniel Coyle, and Making it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel, two books I’ve already had on my to-read list.

Day 105 Record Keeping SRHI = 70
Day 73 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 70
Day 19 Burpee SRHI= 49 (1x6)
Day 119 Eating SRHI = 52 (2x6)
Ok sleep, ok wakeup.

Time Dialation, SRHI Hacking, and Theorized Additions to the SRHI

In THIS post I talk about potential hacks to the SRHI. I discuss certain aspects - like deliberately missing a habit to boost missed day questions in the SRHI or repeatedly doing a habit throughout the day (similar to how Pavel Tsatsouline increases ability in body weight exercises through a technique he calls “Greasing the Groove”).

I was just thinking of another potential method - in social dynamics time dialation is used to increase rapport. Meet someone at a cafe for 3 hours and you’ll (hopefully) have good rapport. Meet someone for coffee, then move to a restaurant, then move to a park within those same three hours, and later you’ll both feel as though you’ve spent much more time together.

What if this was the case with habits? Do them in multiple places throughout the day to dialate time in order to affect time questions.

Additions to the SRHI?

This leads me to the possibility of adding to the SRHI. The specific type of questions I want to add deal with sticking to a task despite changing conditions. I think we’ve all gained or lost a habit when we’ve gone on vacation or moved houses or whatnot. It’s easy to eat right when you’re at home, but when you’re inevitably dragged out, will your habit continue - our experience says no, because we haven’t trained with outside triggers.

A strong habit presumably is something that’s so ingrained that it ideally doesn’t change without trying to change it.

If that’s the case, then when you achieve a high number on the SRHI, it should be difficult to get the number back down - this isn’t the case from my experience. Leading me to conclude the SRHI could possibly need fixing.

But to get back to the original point, time dialation would also affect this theorized new habit because it forces you to be solid despite the surroundings.

Verplanken disagrees with me. He makes a fair point that the SRHI is a holistic exam - changing one type of question isn’t enough. My rejoinder is that it seems that hacking one aspect of the SRHI affects others.

When I do things repeatedly throughout the day, it not only affects my conception of time, how long I’ve done the task, but its automatacity AND frequency.

Now I have no concrete idea how doing this would actually look for using time dialation. For eating, perhaps you could go to as many restaurants as possible and order a salad and water when the waiter asks you for your order….though this wouldn’t be very good for your checkbook. You could attempt to exercise at a certain time in multiple places - but this would depend on your trigger.

I’m hoping after I get further along in this project I’ll be able to test these theories.

3 Practice Hacks Boost Learning | The Juilliard School →

Day 105 & Time Dialation, SRHI Hacking, and Theorized Additions to the SRHI