My group and I discussed the idea of input vs output, and how modern media is designed to activate dopamine hits to retain your attention. Video games, TikToks, notifications, and even texts are all designed give the user a pleasurable experience, and make them come back for more. This creates a culture where we only do things that make us feel good, and we never try anything outside of our media bubble.
There’s a mental and physical learning curve to playing an instrument, especially in the beginning. People don’t want to fail at playing the piano over and over and over for two hours, when they could scroll through twitter instead and see images and tweets that are modeled to their personality like a glove. People are hesitant to make that leap, afraid their time and effort won’t pay off, they only take-in information, but have no way to expel it creatively, and therefore forget it.
The main idea of our discussion was to set small goals for yourself to take in the same amount of input for something as you output; an example being watching a video on writing for ten minutes, then writing for ten minutes with the knowledge you just acquired. It sounds simple, but most people will start the video, realize they don’t want to try writing because their’s might be bad (even with the video they’re watching, ON WRITING), then close the video and play a mobile-game with flashing lights and colors to give them pleasure. George Lucas once said, “Joy is something you can recall, pleasure you can’t.” You can watch all the TikToks in the world for pleasure, but practicing guitar for an hour every day for two weeks straight, then FINALLY being able to play smoke on the water? Yeah, that’s joy.
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