WEBVTT

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Thank you so much.

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When I was first approached
to perform at TEDxRexburg,

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I had every intention of sitting down
and playing my piece,

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taking a bow and being finished
and not saying anything.

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As an instrumental musician,
I prefer to let my hands do the talking.

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But when I heard
the theme of TEDxRexburg,

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which is "Rethinking the Ordinary,"

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I decided that I wanted to talk to you all
about the most ordinary thing in my life,

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which is practice.

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I did a little bit of estimating,

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and in my lifetime,

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I've spent 6,440 hours, approximately,

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on the bench, practicing.

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Now, we've all been told
at some point in our life,

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"Practice makes perfect."

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Well, I'm here tonight
to burst the bubble.

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That's not true.

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Practice does not make perfect.

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Perfect practice makes perfect.

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And tonight I want to share with you
my three-step process to perfect practice.

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Now, as a quick disclaimer,

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I know that perfect
is kind of an intimidating word.

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I like to think of the Russian
figure skater Evgeni Plushenko,

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who, after he withdrew
from the Winter Olympics,

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said in an interview, in broken English,

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"I'm not robot."

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I'm not suggesting that we should try
to become perfect robots,

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just that we should strive

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for the highest level of excellence
that we each can possibly achieve.

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That just doesn't roll
off the tongue quite as nicely

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as "Perfect practice makes perfect."

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So, the first step
in this process is consistency.

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I had a lesson, a piano lesson,
during my freshman year.

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It was really discouraging for me;

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I felt like I was making 
a lot of mistakes,

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and I was just not really getting
to where I needed to be,

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and I sat down with my teacher
and said, "I'm so discouraged.

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I feel like I'm doing so badly."

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And he said, "You just need
to increase your sitting power."

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I was, like, sitting power?

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He basically said, "Sitting power
is you're on the right track,

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you're doing the right things,

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but you're not doing them enough."

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When we develop sitting power,

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we develop the patience
and the perseverance

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to sit down and work at something.

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Now, as another aside,

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I recognize that most of this audience

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is not going to go home tomorrow
and practice a musical instrument.

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I know I'm in the minority.

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However, this applies to anything
that we do in our lives

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that's commonplace or ordinary.

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And when we rethink
the way we do ordinary things,

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like me practicing,

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our results become extraordinary.

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So, sitting power.

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I did a little bit more calculation.

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In the past year,

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I've spent 828 hours
at the piano, practicing.

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The bare minimum practice requirement
for music performance major at BYU-Idaho

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is three hours a day,

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six days a week.

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Now, admittedly, I am a millennial,

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and we like our information
short and to the point.

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We are notorious
for our lack of investment

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and our penchant for getting bored easily

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and not investing in things.

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However, excellence was never achieved
within the length of a tweet,

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and this is why I think
sitting power is so important.

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When we are able to do things
that we don't feel like doing,

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sit down and put in the work
and put in the time,

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that's when we're able
to get more work done.

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So the next thing is evaluation.

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Sitting power by itself is not enough.

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I could sit at the piano
for eight hours a day,

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and if I was practicing mistakes,

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it would actually be doing
more harm than it does good.

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My teacher - I refer to him,
affectionately, as a crazed perfectionist.

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At his most picky,

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I once spent an entire lesson
on the same three chords.

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I would play them for you,

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but I don't want
to step down and back up -

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it's a little precarious up here.

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I will never forget those three chords.

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It was a hard lesson.

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But this is where perfection
and striving for perfection in my practice

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really comes into play

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in this evaluation step.

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I could sit down every day,

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and if I played,
from end-to-end, my piece,

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inevitably made a few mistakes,

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then patted myself on the back
for, you know, getting 80% of it right

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and then did it over
and over and over again

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until I met my allotted three hours a day

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that's required
for me to get course credit,

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that would never really benefit me at all.

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Instead, you have to split
your activities up.

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So there is stuff that I know is good,

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stuff that I can do,

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and I put that in the "I don't need
to practice this as much" box.

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Then there's also stuff
that's not so good.

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And in this step of evaluation,
I ask myself two questions.

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The first is, Was that perfect?

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Now, there's that word again.

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But, essentially,
Was that right? Was it correct?

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Did I play what the composer intended?

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This can apply to any of us.

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You know, Did I get
the answer right on this test?

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Did I do this task
that I was given correctly?

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If the answer is yes,

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the next question
you ask yourself is, Was that easy?

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Did I get lucky?

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Was I white-knuckling it
around the corners,

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or did I actually do it well

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and it was natural for me and it was easy?

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Now, if the answer
to both those questions is yes,

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you can take that thing that you're doing

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and put it in the "I don't need
to work on this so hard" box.

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However, if the answer
is no, that leads us -

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which it often is -

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that leads us to the last step
of the process,

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which is repetition.

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Now, when I was young,

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my teacher would give you
what she called "skill spots."

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She would go to the music,

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and she would pick
a measure or a small section

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that she knew was tricky or challenging,

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and she would put a little
smiley-face star sticker on it

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and then send me home to do repetitions.

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Her required number?

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My age.

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So, 5 repetitions was not a problem.

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12 repetitions I can handle.

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16 repetitions, you know, 
whatever - it's not that many.

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I've gotten to the point in my life

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where 21 repetitions
doesn't cut it anymore,

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and so I developed a system

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that makes me kind of accountable
for my repetitions.

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And this is just a scan
that I took of one of my pieces,

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and you can see
these numbers on the sides.

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I basically divided
every single piece of music that I play

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into, you know, 50 or 60 skill spots.

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It's just that I use the whole piece now

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instead of just a little,
small part of it,

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like my teacher used to.

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Then, once I've done this -

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I know this is a little bit small -

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but I make a spreadsheet

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and across the top you have the date

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and across the bottom is sections,

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and I go through,

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and the number of repetitions
that I do, I keep track of it.

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So, if I was playing something
50 times a day, incorrectly,

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I'd be enforcing a bad habit.

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However, when I play something
multiple times a week -

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45 or 50 times a day -

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and I'm playing it right,

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I'm building, in my personal case,
a tactile foundation.

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I'm training my muscle memory
how it feels to do something right.

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So when I get in a situation
where I'm nervous

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or when I'm playing faster

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or if I have a memory slip,

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I can fall back on this tactile
foundation that I've built,

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and I know how to do something right.

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Now, let's apply this to an athlete.

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Someone who skis

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does not think about every little
anatomical shift that they have to make

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in order to execute a turn.

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They just do it because it's natural.

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So, essentially, whatever it is
that you're doing every day,

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rethink it.

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Get in touch with
your inner crazed perfectionist,

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like my teacher.

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Increase your sitting power.

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Work a little bit harder.

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And train your instincts
to do something excellent.

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Just remember that
in everything that you do,

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practice does not make perfect.

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Perfect practice makes perfect.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)