A Tip for Practicing Acts of Dexterity

This is something I stumbled on when learning guitar, I believe. And since then I’ve applied it to learning other instruments, juggling, and picking up some sleight-of-hand techniques. This may be something that only works for me. Or it may be something that is so obvious it’s written up in 100 other places. Or it may be somewhere in-between.

So it started when I was learning a song on guitar that was slightly ahead of my ability and I wasn’t quite getting it. And, for some reason, I began to think about how stupid I would look trying to learn this thing if anyone was watching. My face was scrunched up and my jaw was tense. So when I attempted the fingering I was trying to learn again, I focused on releasing the tension in my jaw while I did it.

And there was a noticeable improvement in my ability when I did that.

So I tried it with other songs that had been hard to play in the past, and those went smoother too.

Somehow, unclenching my jaw was helping me learn guitar better.

After 20 minutes or so, my jaw was unclenched and I didn’t have to focus on it anymore.

And my ability took a step backward. Things got tougher again. Even though my jaw wasn’t tense.

Then I realized that it wasn’t my jaw being loose that had helped me.

It was the act of focusing on my jaw that had helped me.

The natural instinct, when learning something new—especially an act of dexterity—is that you want 100% of your focus targeted on that activity like a laser-beam.

But what worked for me was splitting my focus. Not with something that required a lot of thought, but on something uncomplicated: relaxing my face. The amount of thought I was giving to the fingering and the strumming of the guitar was just enough to mentally address those things. My primary focus was on my face. I’d sort of scan around it and ask myself how it was feeling and note different areas and if they were relaxed or not. So now I was trying to learn the song while devoting less thought to it. And for whatever reason that worked very well for me.

I’ve since used this technique when learning other instruments as well as sleight-of-hand like false shuffles and false deals, and other skills of dexterity.

Obviously you need to understand the fundamentals of what you’re learning before you can use this. Like you need to have your head around what you’re trying to do and be able to do it in a simple or slow fashion. But after you have reached that level of competency, I suggest trying to improve from that baseline with less conscious thought by focusing on something else simple stimuli.

Again, I have no idea why this works, or if it will for others, but you might want to give it a shot. It has helped me a lot.

Like, before yesterday I’d never even tried surfing.

But look at me now!