[j-g-faustus]

> Why do we assume that we need "free time"?

Two reasons:

* For better or worse, humans are not machines. We can only keep doing the same thing over and over for so long before we go crazy, somewhat like Chaplin in Modern Times [1]. Creative work is somewhat less tedious than assembly line work, but there's still a limit.

* Because "non-free" time is time you spend making somebody else happy: Your boss, customers, friends or family, or society at large, e.g living up to expectations that you ought to be successful. Somewhere in there you need to make room to make yourself happy as well, it's not possible to live a life merely by attempting to live up to other people's expectations.

> I take it as implicit that the one thing the elite players are not doing in their "free time" is playing music or that would obviously be a form of practicing.

That doesn't follow. The kind of practice that makes you better is the boring stuff - playing scales and working on your technique. Doing fun stuff like playing your favorite tunes may be part of the training, but it's not the kind of training that improves your skills.

To keep learning, you need to keep pushing yourself into new unfamiliar territory, and to stay focused on mastering it while you're there. And we generally can't stay that focused for more than a couple of hours at a time.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wENE7O-Y6ME

[rohern]

I see where you are coming from and your response is of the form that expected to receive, but I am not convinced by your objections. Part of the problem, I realized while writing an initial response to you, is the split definitions of "free time". On the one hand, there is free time that we take because we find our performance declining, and so we stop our activity for efficiency reasons. And then there is free time that is really The Time. Free time of this sort is what life is all about, it is why we work.

My query was intended to refer to the second definition.

Neither of your objections have much to do with the first definition, and they do not satisfy me with regards to the second form of free time. If you consider the case of someone like a physicist, for whom their great love is also their form of achieving "success". For people of this type, and for ambitious people who discover fulfillment through worldly success, work is exactly the sort of activity that brings them happiness.

So perhaps that's the split. People of these types concern themselves with free time for efficiency, and the rest concern themselves with the second sort of free time. Perhaps this is also the split between the elite players and the music teachers.