Get Everything Done

As I remember, there are a few musicians, like myself, on this forum. I have been listening to an online lecture by a musician who has training in both neuroscience and music, and some of the advice mirrors what Mark Forster has recommended over the years.

The name of the lecturer is Dr. Molly Gebrian. I am impressed by her communication skills, and teaching skills, and her ability to apply scientific studies and give practical tips based on them.
She has a Youtube channel, a website, a newsletter, an online course, a book, and an audiobook (I was hoping that she would be reading because she has an excellent speaking voice, but someone else is reading).

She discusses taking breaks -5 minutes every half hour; micro-breaks, what is a good break and what intervals.

She picks three spots in the music, sets a timer for 3 minutes, and then rotates practicing each spot, for 3 times (for a total of 27 minutes.)

She advocates interleaved/random practice - constantly switching between tasks, rotating pieces for 5-10 minutes.

She advocates using randomizers. She numbers the section of a musical piece, and she uses Google's random number generator to decide which section to play, and then plays it.

She gives very specific advice.

However, this flies in the face of what people have been told: that is good to practice for an hour at a time, to focus on one thing until it is mastered, to go for an hour without taking a break.

It appears that she is applying general principles of learning, which can be applied to other subjects, and applying them to music.

Oops! I spelled "neuroscience" incorrectly.

My comment on this:

I am confused about what sounds like conflicting opinions, and it seems like each side quotes science to support their side.
This sounds like task switching.
But some say that is not good for the brain,
that we need to have attention, focus.
Some advocate working in blocks of time for 90 minutes, even longer, on one thing.
Cal Newport probably has longer blocks.

I don't have an answer for this.
So this author that I am referring to says it is better to practice for 10 minutes a day, (I like that) than a hour once a week. That does sound good, but we only have so many minutes every day, so we can't everything for 10 minutes every day. Some things just aren't practical to do every day, and we run out of time on a daily basis.

I have just come across the author, so I don't know if she addresses the criticisms of task switching.

However, some of her advice nicely blends with what Mark Forster says.

I am listening again to the lecture, and an example of blocked practice would be to practice one piece for 30 minutes, the second piece for 30 minutes, and the third piece for 30 minutes.

An example of random practice would be to practice the first piece for 10 minutes, and rotate each piece until you've practiced each piece for a total of 30 minutes.

Interestingly, she cites as support a study of baseball players who were given to hit pitches in blocks, and pitches at random. She claims that there are hundreds of studies confirming random practice.

I asked ChatGPT to compare interleaved practice with Mark Forster's systems. It answered that these function in different domains, simplified into learning-doing. Although there is similarity in the use of micro-iterations, they are different in goals, philosophy, etc.