I think we need to take a moment and talk about the masterpiece that is “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians.

One of the YouTube comments said it best: “I could listen to this a million times and want to hear it two million times.”

The song represents a series of artistic choices that I bet many of us would have second guessed, should we have been lucky enough to be blessed by the muse with such a gem of a song idea in the first place.

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This isn't school. You're a grownup now. Give yourself an A if you really want one.

You get out of it what you put into it — and you get to decide what that is going to look like.

There is no "I didn't finish last time," or "I can't keep up with everyone else." It's not a race. It's not a contest. There is no scorekeeper, and there's no score.

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My most useless time of day is thirty minutes before a meeting.

Even if I set an alert on my phone, I have trouble focusing. I keep looking at the clock, shifting from window to window on my browser, and feeling restless.

I am telling myself a story about how thirty (and now twenty, and now ten) minutes isn’t enough time to get anything done. But the problem isn’t time at all. It’s focus.

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My process for writing articles is pretty straightforward.

I sit down to write and simply wait for an idea. Within a couple of minutes, an idea appears, and I write.

You could say that’s pretty woo-woo, but I find it to be incredibly practical. Why shouldn’t an idea simply be there when I’m looking for it?

Where else would it be, if it’s not already in my head?

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Having spent over a decade teaching music lessons, I can say for certain:

Music lessons aren’t where you learn to play an instrument.

Sure, they help. But the real work is done without your teacher, by yourself, playing and evaluating.

If you are unable or unwilling to spend this time “in the woodshed,” you will not achieve your goal of playing an instrument, no matter how much time and money you spend on the lessons themselves.

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