PIANO LESSONS TO THE RESCUE!

IT'S ALL ABOUT DISTRACTION: Yesterday I posted a rather pitiful video on Facebook of me playing the piano keyboard after a week of online lessons for dummies.

Well, don't cry for me Argentina --there is an underlying benefit for me in stretching my aging capabilities and it is not all about a heretofore unexpressed love of music.

My on line piano mentor Dr. Ryan Kelly points out that most of us don’t realize it, but distraction can be a silent killer. A killer of our time, a killer of our happiness, and even a killer of our brain cells.

He suggests that in an age of twitter, cat videos, google news alerts, and Facebook notifications most people find themselves constantly distracted.

The consequence of this distraction?

"We rarely get in a flow where we think and feel deeply. We don’t get lost in fulfilling work because we are constantly checking our email.

We don’t connect deeply with our those close to us because notifications are always distracting us, causing us to waste away our time together glancing at our cell phones.

The result of all this distraction?

We are less happy.

We are dumber."

And in more ways than one we don’t live up to our potential. (P.S. These thoughts were all prompted by some recent reading of “Deep Work,” by Cal Newport.)

So how do we retrain our brains and recover from this technological disease?

In truth, for me, the distraction-in reverse that I "needed" was to get away from far too much time spent on the computer every day with my writing, research, study -- and just plain social media nonsense.

Hence, piano playing lessons to the rescue!

Sitting down at the piano for an hour and memorizing your favorite song is actually a fantastic way to rebuild different concentration muscles.

The focus it takes to sit and play is enormously beneficial, both for your intelligence and your emotional state. Almost like a breath of fresh air.

I am convinced that you are never too old to learn something new, providing you can handle a little humiliation along the way...And I'm used to that!