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“Well, it’s Groundhog Day… again.”
So goes a famous line from the 1993 movie, when meteorologist Phil Connors finds himself locked in a time loop… waking up every morning (at 6:00 A.M., to “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher) in Punxsutawney, PA. Over the course of countless, repetitive days (Writer/Director Harold Ramis estimates that Phil was stuck in the time loop at least 10 years… if not longer). In that time, he learns to play the piano, becomes an expert ice sculptor, and generally becomes a less selfish human being.
Some who have written on the lessons of Groundhog Day point to the 10,000 Hours Rule, made famous by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers. Based on the work of Anders Ericsson (who himself has disputed the 10,000 hours ‘rule’), it has an intuitive appeal: more practice equals more results… and it takes time to get really, really good at something. One lesson we could take away is that change takes time, and Phil has lots of time! Yet, this research has been complicated, and even the movie complicates this simplistic reading: Phil doesn’t just practice. Hhas a piano lesson EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. until he becomes quite accomplished (By way of explanation, Phil notes, “Well, my father was a piano mover, so…”). With these daily lessons, Phil is likely to have engaged in deliberate practice, goal-oriented and filled with feedback.
As a music student in high school and college (and graduate school and, if I’m being totally honest with myself, still today…), I wanted so badly for there to be a cheat code, a surefire way to get from where I was to a certain kind of expertise and its attendant success. It made me very dissatisfied with the progress I did make. It’s only over time (and in becoming a teacher myself) that I’ve come to appreciate what it means to be a patient learner. Wanting to do/get better, but understanding that people grow at different rates. I still have musical goals, but it’s easier to remind myself that, in a phrase so annoying that it just sounds like your parents would’ve said it, “It will take the time that it takes.” As teachers, we can provide the patience that students might not give themselves, being transparent about how long it took for us to develop our own skills.
So, if it ‘takes the time that it takes,’ how do we persist in the middle? A few weeks ago, I gave a shout out to the work of Ayelet Fishbach, and she points to the idea that we need to tend to these middles to sustain long-term motivation. Thinking about near-term goals (how much I want to do this week rather than this year) can shorten the distance between initiating a goal and finishing it, shortening that dreaded middle. At the same time, another movie I watched recently, Look Back, makes the case that the time we spend in the company of others is part of the creative process: two aspiring mangaka strike up a friendship that provides a source of real meaning. Emphasizing the communities that we form in learning about and making art seems like a way to make waiting better.
Early on in Groundhog Day, Phil uses this ‘stuck’ time to pursue diversions: he memorizes the answers to an episode of Jeopardy, he gets really, really good at throwing playing cards into a hat (“Six months, four to six hours a day, and you’d be a pro…”), and, Rita, played by Andie MacDowell, quips, “So, this is what you do with eternity?” I’m not here to quibble with anyone’s diversions, but things take time whether they’re meaningful to us or not. Meaningful tasks such as learning how to communicate through an artform (be it writing, painting, animation, or music) is, thankfully and frustratingly, a long-term commitment to growth and exploration. Change may not happen overnight (though it may not take 10,000 hours), but we can encourage our students to find community and celebrate the progress they make along the way to their long-term goals.