Awaken Your Genius by Ozan Varol

Author:Ozan Varol [Varol, Ozan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2023-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

7

Unleash the Power of Play

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

—UNKNOWN

The problem with deliberate practice

Peter was tired of playing the electric guitar.1

His band had been on tour for 10 years. They were a decent indie band from a small college town in the South, but they’d never had a mainstream hit. They were all in a rut—including Peter. He had been strumming the same melodies on the same instrument for eight hours a day.

On a whim, he traded his electric guitar for an acoustic mandolin, an instrument he had never played. Playing the mandolin forced him to do chord changes that he wouldn’t do on the guitar. He set up a musical sandbox, experimenting with new scales, trying new chords, and creating new riffs—all with the playful mindset of a curious child.

Other band members joined him in the sandbox. The bassist switched to keyboards, and the drummer picked up the bass. The lead singer, who normally wrote lyrics with political themes, began to play around with other topics.

One of the riffs on the mandolin struck a chord with Peter. He played it during a band practice, and the rest of the group loved it. The drummer and the bassist joined the game and added more oomph to the acoustic melody from the mandolin.

The final player to go on the field was the lead singer, Michael. As the band played the new melody, he picked up his Dictaphone and began walking around the room in a meditative state. The lyrics slowly poured out of him.

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