Shiny Object Syndrome

Shiny Objects

Perhaps the following sounds familiar: You hear a new piece of music that sounds awesome, and so you start learning to play it. It’s rough at first, and there are lots of mistakes, but that song that you just fell in love with is starting to come out of your own instrument. What a rush! You’ll be shredding this tune in no time.

By day 5, however, you’re still stumbling over the most technical parts of the piece. You’re not nearly as pumped to sit down and practice it because the song is no longer new and exciting for you.

And then it happens: you hear another new song and this one is totally rad. This is the one you have to start practicing — now. You move the previous song to the bottom of the pile and start anew, determined to actually master this new song.

The problem is, we’re now in the same boat that we were in at the beginning, and the same cycle will likely happen.

Shiny Object Syndrome

This phenomenon has a name: The Shiny Object Syndrome — the disease that causes us to chase any shiny object once the previous object’s shine has worn off. We see the effect of this syndrome all around us — the seasonal trends of fashion, the entrepreneur who has “started” 14 different “businesses” , or Leonardo DiCaprio’s dating history.

In music, this syndrome rears its ugly head by making us want to start new things before we’ve really milked the juice out of the old things. The reason for it is simple:

it takes more time to master a thing than it does for the shine of that thing to wear off.

If the shine wears off in 4 days but it would take us 4 weeks to master it, you can do the math on how long we have to practice in the “shine-free” zone. While in the shine-free zone, we are vulnerable to attacks from any and all shiny things.

The Problem

Unfortunately, this is not a victimless crime. Why? Because the vast majority of improvement comes in the shine-free zone. Several days after starting a shiny new piece, the only things you’re still working on are the parts that are testing your technical abilities. In other words, all that’s left once the shine is gone is precisely the stuff that will make you better.

Some Solutions

Here are a few things that can help fight the symptoms of Shiny Object Syndrome (we’ll never be fully cured of it — we’re human after all — but we can fight it).

1. Expect it: Just knowing that you’re going to (rather quickly) enter the shine-free zone can already help. It gives our minds more realistic expectations. Shredding your new favorite tune is not going to be a shiny cake-walk, and that’s okay — it’ll make it more satisfying when you can!

2. Acknowledge the shine: If you’re in the shine-free zone and a new shiny object appears, take note of it. Write it down, put it on your to-do list, and post it on your wall or mirror so you can see it every day. That to-do list will become your motivation to get through the shine-free zone, not to leave it. Chances are, a lot of those things will be less shiny once you come back to them and you’ll be happy that you stuck with the now-not-so-shiny task.

3. Pause, but don’t stop: If you’re in the shine-free zone and really not having a good time, take a break! Give yourself an hour, or a day, maybe two. Play some fun things, or don’t play anything at all. Listen to the recording(s) of that once-shiny-but-not-anymore piece that got you excited in the first place. Let the shine come back a little, and even if it doesn’t, give yourself some time to remember that a lot of the magic happens in the shine-free zone.

4. Set timelines and assess them honestly: It’s one thing to set a goal for a piece, something like: “I’ll learn this in 2 weeks”. But it’s another thing to assess how those goals are working out and to change accordingly. It’s not a crime to set a goal for 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks, and it’ll better prepare you for the inevitable shine-free zone (similar to point 1. above). Repeatedly making the same goal-setting mistakes, though, will only make it harder to survive the shine-free zone.

We’ll be continuing to address various aspects of the shine-free zone, how we can prepare for it, and how we can get through it faster, so stay tuned! In the meantime, happy practicing!