[aji]

the author invented a definition of "flow" which is different from another common definition which roughly means "getting in the zone" and the result is dangerously clickbaity imo

i do my best work when i'm in the zone and it has nothing to do with whether the work itself is challenging or not. in fact, the more challenging something is, the easier it is for me to stay focused if i feel like i'm making progress

[ska]

I don't think this contradicts what the author is saying.

The claim boils down to this: you will do your best work in a state of flow, but you will improve your capabilities faster outside of it. Flow is great for productivity but not for changing how you do things.

At a handwavy level at least, it seems to be true in my experience. It is certainly true that not all practice is equivalent, and you can put a lot of hours into "practicing" something without making any real progress in your skills.

[Jimpulse]

Flow requires difficulty that correctly matches skill. If it's too easy, it isn't a state of flow. Rather, it's just coasting on autopilot. Flow usually equates to deliberate practice.

[ska]

   flow usually equates to deliberate practice.

I don't believe this is true at all. If it's too easy, sure, that's not flow. But same is true if it is too hard. Deliberate practice intentionally and introspectively focuses on changing your approach. If done correctly, I think this will easily break flow.

Deliberate practice is never relaxed - but flow can be.

To reference the OP, there was discussion of intentionally focusing on and making the difficult parts of a piece harder as a form of practice. That doesn't bring flow, but allows the flow state later when you play the piece "for real". I think this generalizes well.

[ralphstodomingo]

No, the kind of state of flow you're mentioning lacks the necessary consciousness for it to be deliberate practice. The emphasis on deliberate: you can either focus on executing over a period of time (flow) or focus on being mindful about how you're executing things (deliberate practice). Sure, there's an overlap, but I think the concerns you'd have to deal with each are completely separate from each other.

[klodolph]

What do you mean when you say “flow”? I think your idea of flow might be quite different to mine.

[bumby]

What you're describing is more aligned with the thesis of the book "Flow"...namely, that flow occurs when we are at the outer cusp of our capabilities. In other words, when the task is difficult enough to be challenging but not so difficult as to become frustrating.

[Jeff_Brown]

I can't speak to the relative merits of flow vs. (what's the opposite? self-consciousness?), but I can testify that the vast majority of musicians practice dumb. They just recite, or jam; they don't target the hard part, or new ideas, although they might say they know they ought to -- and more cerebral work like ear-training or learning the combinatorics of music theory (mapping the possible chords and scales, and ways to combine them in serial or parallel) aren't even on the radar.

[TheOtherHobbes]

My partner is a professional pianist and she very definitely repeats the hard parts - over and over and over - until they're fluent.

This isn't rocket science, and it is something professionals are taught to do.

[baddox]

I think there is considerable value in the "dumb" repetitive mode of practicing a musical instrument. In my experience, it's pretty much the only way to commit guitar scales and shapes to muscle memory. This is particularly vital to playing fast or improvising. My guitar instructor (who was a phenomenal player) talked about playing blues licks over and over again "to get them into your fingers."

[Jeff_Brown]

While I agree that it has its place, I'm opposed to over-reliance on muscle memory. I believe it restricts you to what you've drilled, even to the exclusion of very close neighbors.

But I'm also not trying to play extremely fast. If my goal was recital rather than composition, I would use it more. My recordings[1] are mostly total improv, free jazz, with a vocals track (later deleted) that states what chord changes are coming up, and then improvise over the first instrumental track while listening to the chord announcements.

https://soundcloud.com/jeffrey-benjamin-brown

[fortpoint]

I'm nothing more than an amateur musician but I had the chance to study with Charlie Banacos and one of the things Charlie emphasized was avoiding relying on muscle memory.

All the exercises I received from Charlie forced me to be consciously engaged in the act of playing- never outsourcing things to muscle memory.

I think that largely this was to avoid falling into mechanically playing over changes and to be actively engaged in thinking about the music at the moment it was happening and responding to it creatively.

[pier25]

> what's the opposite? self-consciousness?

Flow (as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi) is between frustration and boredom because either the activity is too difficult or too easy.

[atoav]

As a musician myself I must say that flow isn’t important for practise, much more important are breaks

Going at something for 3 times half an hour with hours in between is more effective than going for hours straight. And this kind of focused time method also works well for programming. With programming it is harder to decide where to put the break.

Breaks don’t mean you have to do nothing, you just have to do something that is mentally different. When I take a programming break, making music, soldering or reading is quite a good programming break.