Written in April 2019. Submitted as a journal reflection to my professor of Suzuki Violin pedagogy, Carrie Reuning-Hummel. Some important insights which now guide my life– worth sharing!

WOW. What a week. 

As you read in my last reflection, I set out to do some drastic reduction of activity this week. I set out to focus all of my effort and energy on energy completion of single projects at a time rather than small steps forward on a million different projects. 

The idea was to manifest Suzuki’s ‘one point lesson’ concept into a ‘one point life.’ We can only really work on one thing at a time. The key is to keep sustained work on a project so we enact tangible change. The key is to cut through the noise produced by pinging between projects and to just reside within one until it is finished/understood/integrated.

By taking a few steps closer to the ‘one point life’ this week I feel like a different person.

The difference between completion based project work and small-task, to-do work with frequent context switching is the difference between being intoxicated and sober. I can’t tell you what it does to regulate emotion and anxiety, boost creative output, and ultimately (I think) get more done. It feels just as huge as (perhaps even more?) than the discoveries I made about sleep at the beginning of the year.

This is something I will continue doing because I can feel the ripples of difference it is making in my life. I can feel it. This is the way. 
So, after a week, here are my actionable thoughts about how to bring ‘one point life’ to life. 

ONE POINT LANDSCAPE. Anything that you come into contact with, should be reduced to a singular option. Or a non-option. Where you sleep, what you wear, what you eat, where you drive, what you drive, when you drive, what you see, what devices you use, what you watch/read/listen to should be determined to be only one thing. 

Now this doesn’t always mean exactly one item—though I’ve found serious liberation distilling down to them one item level. ‘One thing’ might be one category, or one decision, or one formula. For example, I believe your singular formula of black pants and jewel tones for clothes is really ‘one point.’ My oats+yoghurt+fruit+nut+spice breakfast recipe could have bananas one day and strawberries the next, but the delight is that I think of breakfast as only one thing.

I already live a lightweight, minimalist lifestyle. Choosing to only wear one outfit (blue pants+white shirt+denim jacket+danner boots) wasn’t too far of a stretch, in fact I had been wanting to do so for a long time. I already had routines around meals and possessing as few items as possible, which limited me to only one option anyway (my favorite pencil, my only backpack, my only headphones). 

The true change was information minimalism. I only listened to one recording of one piece for the entire week! I didn’t listen to any podcasts or any other music at all. I didn’t even use a meditation app. The effect on mental chatter is extraordinary! Now I can notice how much one meeting, or one phone call, or one email answering session disrupts the landscape of my mind. 

Whenever I had the urge to watch a video, I just watched a Mozart violin concerto recording. Whenever I had the urge to listen to the music, I just played Mozart on repeat. It became almost comforting to listen to. And I also became so accustomed to the recording that I also was just as happy to turn it off and enjoy silence instead. 

The silence now in traveling from place to place, or sitting in one place with no noise, is luxurious. Before I had the compulsion to charge myself with novel stimuli, new info, but now I sink into the moment with which I am already so familiar (because I’ve picked just one thing/no choices to weigh) with my mind and body, so my subconscious continues to chew on the one big project I’m focused on.

ONE POINT ACTION. You can only work on one thing at one time! You can only work on one thing at one time! You can only work on one thing at one time! And of course by ‘you’ I mean ‘me.’

I sometimes think I can write a reflection, and listen to music, and eat dinner, and talk to Chris at the same time. But I just can’t. 

Picking a place and a time to do the one thing that is happening is extremely special.

I plan to only teach Genevieve in the Suzuki room on early Wednesday afternoon. When I go into that Suzuki Room, I just set up for the lesson, plan the lesson, think about the lesson, and have the lesson. I don’t answer email, work on homework, write about Audrey, and look up YouTube videos about the PCT. Maintaining a singular course, in one place at one time, is the gateway to mental intensity, or a surreal sense of presence.

ONE POINT PROJECT. This also manifests itself in only working on one project at one time, and charging forward until it is completed.

I truly believed if I just worked on one thing everyday, with breaks to resist mental and physical exhaustion, I would progress exponentially at it. If I spent 16 hours doing just one thing, the reap of that work would be far more than if I did one hour of work on the same thing over the course of 16 days. Then imagine doing that thing 16 hours for 16 days. This would groundbreaking work. The foundations of your life would change. 

Think of this in violin terms, and I think we can see the validity more clearly. If I worked on the function of my bow hand for 16 hours a day for 16 days— remember with breaks for necessary mental and physical recuperation— my bow-hand would undoubtedly transform.

Now for practical reasons (food, shelter, income, care of loved ones) 16 hours of sustained work one one thing is typically impossible. But the closer we are to the ideal, the closer we are to transformation. 

So when I’m looking at my week and faced with two options… work on four projects for four days or do one project each day, it becomes clear which has more transformative potential. I’m going to do one to completion, then the next to completion, then next to completion, then the next to completion. 

I think I knew this before, but the secret was in understanding the difference between habitual work and project work. 

There are certain things we have to do (in a non-ideal world). Perhaps we made commitments in the past we no longer believe in, but still must do. Or maybe you must do a certain type of shallow work in order for to make a living to financially supplement your real, life-giving work. That stuff should just be batched and scheduled. Check email in one big chunk at certain times. Do the TA work you must during class time. Do the prep for Suzuki and lessons and Youth Orchestra at fixed times which make sense throughout the week. Then all other times can be used for projects or free time. 

Then for project work I wrote down a handful of single projects I should do this week to prep for the end of the semester before I dive really, really deep into writing for the thesis. In order to not have to write the thesis and do small school projects at the same time, I put a lot of projects on my plate to finish which aren’t due for weeks. I typed these out and printed on a physical piece of paper which I then kept in my pocket. The projects were split into three categories: professional, zen center, and personal. I worked on professional during the day, and alternated personal and zen work at night when I got back to the zen center. Remember these are projects which needed to be finished, but weren’t part of my regularly scheduled work. For example, this written reflection wouldn’t go on the project list because it is already scheduled in the habitual work. So the project list isn’t really a to do list, but a fixed cue of effortful work set for the week. This week’s project list included things I’ve been procrastinating on for a while, or just chipping away at for weeks but making no real progress at. 

I completely finished the theoretical part of my “big project” for this year on Monday and Tuesday in probably 6 hours of combined work! I revised my website and wrote a month’s worth of blog posts. I cleaned a hazardous broken glass scene on the back porch which had been put off for months, created an inventory system of all of the tents on the property, and cleared all the branches at tree level on the pine trees by the driveway.

As I worked on the “big project” spanning multiple days, I found my subconscious AND conscious mind puzzling through aspects of the projects on car rides, or while sitting in class, or while in zazen. Whereas before those would have been scattered thoughts, little ideas about everything, now big ideas about one thing were bubbling to the surface. Also incredible is when I completed the project I stopped thinking about the project. It was like a huge mental load just hopped right out of my mind. Also interesting was when I had completed a project, and looked straight down the list to the next project, I would show up to do the work and have clarity on how to do it and how it would look when completed, even though I didn’t really expend any conscious effort in thinking about the project in advance.
Now I had plans to do extensive Comp exam prep and Suzuki notebook (observation+cards+notes) collecting/polishing, but a humbling part of completion based project work is you come face to face with how much work just one project takes. And how slow you are at doing that work. I’m a very poor estimator of my own work time. And I feel as I continue along with this type of work, I will become better and better at estimating my time output accurately. But I’m also okay with those plans shifting, because at the end of the day I got more work completed than I ever would have on the old system, and my quality of work is better.

Coming face to face with just how much work one project is also encourages me to take on far fewer projects. When I want to give my (required) comp prep and (so important to me) thesis writing judicious time, but am stuck blasting through a project I was once excited about but is keeping me from important work, I hesitate to take on anything else that would distract me. 
Before it felt like adding one more project to the swirl of soupy, unclear work was no big deal. Not it feels like a very real nuisance to be safeguarded against at all cost. 

The difference between two and two-thousand is less radical than the difference between one and two.

By the way, I believe there is even value in ‘one pointing’ free time. This week I used all free hours (even date with Chris and ‘coffee meeting’ with Henry) to go for a hikes all around the region. This week I visited upper buttermilk, lower buttermilk, cascadilla gorge, the natural space behind IC, and Treman falls. Equivalent ‘one point’ free time pursuits might be learn to learn new bicycle maintenance skills, play chess with fellow residents, organize and go on a really big camping trip, or just read one novel or watch one TV show. Note I’m not doing all of these at various times throughout the week. I picked just hiking, and didn’t really do any other free time activities. Once I tire of it, or feel I’ve seen all there is to see, perhaps I’ll moving on to only doing bicycle maintenance in my spare time. Or maybe even just watch old episodes of the West Wing in all of my spare time for weeks on end — imagine that haha. 

ONE POINT DIRECTION. All of this, my environment, doing one thing at a time, and doing one project at a time, is nested under the larger picture of only moving in one direction. If I were to attempt to become a medical doctor while attempting to master violin teaching, I would do worse than half a job in both pursuits. 

 Clarifying the ‘one point’ I’m headed in is not limiting, but liberating. I want to cultivate non-duality in my life. And not only is violin teaching a practice which encourages non-dual thinking, it is one which allows me to invite others into this less painful way of existing. 

I want to teach students that they are the universe, as I think Suzuki worked to do. I don’t need to waste time performing gigs, or doing higher level admin work, or getting another degree in performance if it doesn’t serve this one point. This point satisfies all of my needs. It feels like what I need to do, right now. It is enough. 

I’m reminded of a metaphor Katy Bowman uses to encourage people to think carefully about choosing the actions they do in a day. Most people acknowledge their body needs certain things. It needs food, shelter, exercise, time with other people, skill building, and either making money or reducing the cost of living. Rather than going to the gym, then picking up fast food, then doing free lance work to make ends meet, then going on a hike in the woods, then carving out an hour to meet up with friends over the weekend between soccer games and violin lessons which all take up massive chunks of time individually, to instead stack all of your needs up together into as few activities as possible. Instead invite friends to join you and your family blueberry picking at a community farm for a few hours on a weekend morning. In just three hours you are getting movement, outside time, quality time with family and friends, serving a larger community, and spending less money getting food on the table. This is a stacked rather than splintered life.

The same must be true for our career’s or overarching mission, right?

I’ve chosen a path which allows for mastery, connection with children, meditation, continued learning, creativity, and clarity of thinking/speaking/doing. I can make money from this, I can travel through this, I can make great friends doing this. The work is scalable, I set my own hours. The work is also so varied and nuanced I could do it for decades without tiring. It is something I already have considerable expertise doing.
This one decision, this one point, satisfies so many of my needs and desires for a life of quality, healthy work. It is the one bucket I can use to hold all of my life experiences. I can pull in one direction, define myself as one thing, understand my journey one a single path. 

If I want to change I can. And I really think I could. But I don’t want to. Not right now, at least. This is the single, stacked, one-point lesson I need right now.

ONE POINT LIFE APPLICATION TO VIOLIN TEACHING (again).

And… we come full circle. From Suzuki’s original idea of a one-point lesson, which I’ve extrapolated to one point living, I now bring us back to how this applies to the students I will work with. 
I’m just going to jot down ideas to explore later…

1. Environment
   • One room
   • One student at a time
   • One parent at a time
   • One way of doing things (admin, billing, practice chart, parent talk (cup of tea))
   • One sequence of repertoire
   • One way of practicing review
   • One system for preview, working, polishing, review
   • Student has max three activities, with priority on health (sleep, body movement, distraction free living) and space to process. Also helpful if the parent names the reason the student is doing activities in general so the student can understand activities as learning one thing instead of multiple. 
2. One thing at a time
   • In the lesson, stick with one clear task until switching to the other
   • NEVER mess with electronics or other papers or my violin while engaged with a student or parent
   • My mind stays inside the lesson, their mind stays inside the lesson
   • Extraneous activities or discussions are saved for before/after talk
3. Projects
   • Habitualize work to maintain (review, technique builders, posture checks), but then isolate on project at a time to change their playing
   • Pick one point to work on
4. Direction
   • Only teach violin, but use it to work on everything

I want parents to have the sensation that we are actually reducing the number of things on their plate. They don’t need to seek out various forms of musical enrichment, in a addition to intellectual training, and hard work, and coaching on stress reduction or navigating anxiety. This is ONE pursuit which will satisfy MANY of their needs.

Every decision I make is one that said yes to hundreds of options before landing on the one option. For example, the feeling of adding A review system should really be interpreted as the feeling of reducing the hundreds of others I could have shared with parents to do. The environment we’re setting up is clean, clear, crisp, and focused. It is obvious what we are doing and when we are doing it. For the health and satisfaction of our mind and bodies, I think this effort is necessary.

By the way, I sat down and wrote this reflection in about an hour and haven’t edited it at all. It could use revision, but significant I think is the fact that my mind  is focused enough to just get all of this out on paper in one sitting. I think this is a stellar demonstration of exactly the kind of intensity of thought available to us if we pursue one thing at a time.