At the beginning of every week, I write a quote on the whiteboard in my classroom. The quotes aren’t necessarily related to music or education at all. I just like quotes and they often generate discussions in my classes. This week, I wrote up a quote that I found this last summer while reading Getting Things Done.
“If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.”
David Allen, Getting Things Done
One of the girls in my class asked what it meant. Apparently she didn’t get it and had been stewing about it for the last few days. We had a good discussion about it as a class while we were doing our warm-ups and I realized that while the concept of asking why seems pretty obvious, it’s actually something that most of us don’t do very often and don’t really like doing.
Why We Don’t Like Asking “Why”
As I’ve talked to my students, family, friends, and colleagues about this lately, I’ve realized that the idea of questioning why we do things has a negative connotation for a lot of people. In my discussion with my students, for example, one of my students read the David Allen quote and said, “That makes no sense. If I don’t know why I’m doing something, I just don’t do it.” Many of us have this idea that if we have to question why we’re doing something, we shouldn’t be doing it at all. If we’re honest with ourselves, though, we would probably realize that we do all sorts of things every day without ever really knowing why. Why do you put your right shoe on first? Why did you just pull out your phone for the 27th time today, only to stick it back into your pocket? Why do you stick out your tongue when you’re concentrating on something? (What? Only I do that?)
So why don’t we think about our reasons behind doing things more often? Asking “why?” can be incredibly uncomfortable. Questioning the things we do means we may have to admit we were wrong. We may need to be open to change. We will definitely have to reach deep and think hard, because the real purpose behind our actions is often elusive. None of those things are easy or comfortable and as a result, we avoid doing it.
The Benefits of Asking “Why”
While asking “why” can be difficult and uncomfortable, it is absolutely necessary if we intend to make progress or improvement in any aspect of our lives. The better we get at finding the purpose behind our actions, the quicker and more efficiently we are able to improve.
Knowing What to Stop
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of asking “why” is that it shows us what we can cut out of our lives. If we don’t have a good reason for doing something, we should stop doing it. On the other hand, if we are doing something for a good reason but the activity isn’t really accomplishing the purpose, we either need to modify that activity or get rid of it altogether.
For years, I had my students attend a concert once a quarter and write a report about it. I had good reasons for doing it. I wanted my students to see different performing groups and evaluate their performances. Many – if not most – music teachers have their students do the same thing. After thinking about the reasons behind it, however, I realized that the assignment wasn’t really accomplishing the purpose. While concert reports might be a great assignment for another teacher, the way I was doing it was just busywork and hassle for both my students and me. I could better accomplish my purpose with different assignments. I cut concert reports out of my curriculum and there was much rejoicing. It’s one less thing for my students to worry about and my end-of-quarter grading load is a lot less than it used to be. We still evaluate performances, but we do it together so I can guide them to do better evaluations. I still encourage them to attend concerts, but they do it because they want to, not because it’s a part of their grade.
Knowing What to Keep Doing
Asking yourself why you do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll decide it’s a worthless activity. Many times the “why” will strengthen your commitment to a certain course of action. Finding your purpose can rekindle your motivation.
My high school does a musical theater production every year and the instrumental music students are expected to play in the orchestra and provide the music. I love conducting musicals so it’s something that I’m happy to help out with. This last year, however, was a bit of a disaster. We had very few students who were willing to commit to the production, and the students who did participate often didn’t show up to rehearsal. In addition, we ran into some scheduling conflicts with marching band trips due to some miscommunication, so our rehearsal time together was even more limited than it should have been. I definitely felt the stress of trying to put a production like that together when so many things seemed to work against me. At the end of the show, I wondered if it was worth it.
The day after the show ended, I wrote a journal entry about the experience. I started out writing about how frustrated and disappointed I was in my students. Then I started thinking through all the reasons why I want my students to have the experience of playing for a musical. After listing all the reasons and benefits of participating in a pit orchestra, I realized that yes, I believed it was worth doing. In fact, I felt like this was something I should try to get as many students involved in as possible. Sure, there were problems that we needed to overcome, but finding my “why” gave me a renewed sense of commitment to the activity.
Knowing How to Better Accomplish Your Purpose
“If you’re not sure why you’re doing something, you can never do enough of it.” I would add that once you know why you’re doing something, you only have to do enough of it to accomplish your purpose. Defining the “why” behind an activity allows us to see if that activity accomplishes the “why,” but it also allows us to streamline the activity to more efficiently accomplish the “why.”
I discussed this with my orchestra during our warmups. I have several bowing exercises that I do with them on a regular basis. These exercises can do wonders for developing better tone quality and bow control, but only if you do them correctly. Think of it like lifting weights with good form. The exercises aren’t particularly difficult and it’s easy to cheat on them, especially if you don’t know why you’re doing them in the first place.
One of the exercises is intended to practice bow control through the entire length of the bow, from the frog to the tip. If the students are mentally engaged and working to use their entire bow throughout the entire exercise, they can make a lot of improvement in a short amount of time. I’ve seen students make drastic improvement after only once or twice through the exercise. Many of the students just go through the motions, however. They don’t fully understand why we do the exercise, so they don’t fully commit and engage. Those students gain almost nothing from the exercise. Their tone quality and bow control doesn’t change hardly at all, even after doing the exercise for weeks.
The same concept can be applied to almost anything we do. If we understand the purpose behind our actions, then we can focus our efforts on the things that will bring the best results in the shortest amount of time.
Asking “why?” can also help turn a failure into a success. I often experiment with new activities in my classes, like a new game or some sort of technology I haven’t used before. Trying something new means things can fail completely, and often they do. I’ve learned not to just give up on them after the first failure, however. If something doesn’t work out the first time, I ask myself why it failed. What went wrong? If I still see some value in the activity or technology, I can address the problems and try it again. I’ve had several experiences where something didn’t work well the first time through. After some tweaking, those things became really useful.
Key Times to Ask “Why”
I believe we should take the time to ask ourselves “why” as often as possible; however, questioning ourselves can be a time-consuming and tiring task. It isn’t convenient or even always productive to constantly question the motive behind every minute and mundane task. There are key times when the question “why?” will be the most helpful to us.
Beginnings
New beginnings are a great time to think about the whys. I love doing this at the beginning of a new school year, or even at the beginning of a new quarter. At the beginning of every school year, I spend some time thinking through my ideal vision for my classes. What procedures do I want to put into place? What do I want to grade on? What do I want my students to know and do by the end of the year and how am I going to get them there? All of those questions are great and they address the content and procedures, but they don’t address the purpose. I’ve found if I don’t think through the whys behind my ideals, they don’t work out long term. That great system I planned out for taking the hall pass? Lasted about two days. That cool new curriculum for teaching music history? Fizzled out about halfway through the year when I got more concerned with preparing for our festival concerts. If I don’t have a strong purpose behind my plans, the plans don’t withstand the test of time.
I’ve also found it helps a lot to share my whys with my students. Teaching is not a solo career. Yes, I’m the one making the decisions and driving the process, but I have at least 150 other people who have to buy in and participate or we aren’t going to get very far. I might have the strongest, clearest purpose in the world, but if I don’t share that with my students, they aren’t going to know or understand why we’re doing something.
I strongly believe that working on technique is one of the best things I can do for my students. Unfortunately, working on technique becomes repetitive and boring pretty quickly. Playing music is fun; playing scales, not so much. For years, I got a lot of push back from my students about our technique exercises. They complained about them on a regular basis. I have to admit, part of the problem was that I while I knew that the exercises were important, I didn’t always have a good procedure for doing them, so they were even more tedious than absolutely necessary. Once I figured out the specific whys for each exercise and started discussing those whys with my students, not only did we make a lot more progress, I also got fewer complaints. This year I realized just how successful this was when I read a comment on one of my students’ assignments. She wrote, “I guess I’m getting better because now I force myself to do warm-ups at the beginning of my practice sessions most of the time.” Ah, sweet success.
Endings
I find it very helpful to do a review after finishing a large project, activity, or event. It helps me to take notes and write what went well and what didn’t. I also like to redefine my purpose behind the activity and reflect on how well the activity accomplished the purpose. I often find ways to streamline the activity and accomplish the purpose more efficiently. Writing all of that down and then referring back to it the next time I do that activity has saved me a lot of trouble and mistakes. I keep a document in my Google drive that I constantly update throughout the year with thoughts and ideas on how things went and how to make them better. Then the next year I can look back on it and remember what I wanted to change and why.
When You Are Feeling Discouraged
” Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.”
James Clear
Everyone gets discouraged. For me, it usually happens right around January to February. That’s the point when my best-laid plans seem to unravel. I’m tired and grumpy and my students are stressed out. I get to work before the sun rises and sometimes don’t leave until after it’s set. I miss sunlight. Those are the days when I feel like quitting. Those are the days when I feel like a failure. We’re just trying to make it through and survive, let alone make any significant progress.
On the days when I’m feeling the most down, when I am frustrated with my students’ lack of commitment and progress, I sit down and write out my whys. Sometimes it’s my general purpose for teaching. More often it’s the purpose behind specific activities. Often I find it helpful to try to think through the reasons why something isn’t working. I try to put myself in my students’ shoes and think through their whys so I can better understand their complaints. After a few minutes of this, I almost always feel a little better. James Clear says, ” Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity.” Taking a few minutes to think through my whys gives me that clarity and subsequently the motivation to keep going.
Today’s Challenge
I challenge you to take five minutes today to think through your reasons for doing something. If you are feeling burnt out with your job, write down why you decided to take that job in the first place and all your reasons for staying with it this long. If you just did an activity with your students that didn’t go as well as you had hoped, write down the purpose you had behind the activity as well as all the reasons why it didn’t work. Even better, keep this on file so you can look back on it later. You may be surprised at how much of a difference it can make.