Is This Music Learning Muscle Underdeveloped?

Now I want to offer credit for where the idea of this episode comes from.

And that's from a user on YouTube, a content creator, who does a lot of social commentary, goes by the name of According to Nicole.

I just started seeing her videos this week and I really like her takes on a lot of things.

But specifically a video that she had on something that she calls the incompetence epidemic.

Good luck saying that five times fast, incompetence epidemic.

So in a nutshell, what she's talking about is something that you can observe for yourself and you can talk to a lot of people especially people who have to teach, people who have to hire for jobs.

But in the past 10 to 20 years, overall, cognitive skills are lower.

Now, this explains a lot about young adults today, basically the generation, the first generation to grow up 100% with the Internet and to have all of their years of awareness be in the world of social media.

So in the past 10 to 20 years, young adults today are less likely to drive a car or even know how to drive.

They are far less likely to know how to handle a job interview.

And this one struck me.

They are also unable quite often to formulate answers without the help of an app or AI assistance.

So now she offered a couple of key points, and this is going to get back to the problem you might have, you might find yourself having when you're learning new music or a new technical skill such as scales, chords, or arpeggios.

The first point.

is that in this age of convenience where you can go on google and now especially with gemini you can find the answers and even get advice on just about anything you would type in in just a few seconds or less where so many things can be done for you Well that has caused a deterioration on the part of our brain that can deal with resistance.

It's an accurate stereotype to say that young adults today, again not everybody but a large percentage, is not able to deal with the cognitive resistance that comes from facing a problem and finding it to be difficult or finding that the answer just doesn't come right away.

The brain seems to want to shut down and we just abandon all further pursuit of trying to make progress on whatever area that is.

In other words, if it doesn't come easy, it's time to jump ship.

Because in 99% of the other things that we do, it is easy.

And if we determine that it's not, then we quickly cross it off the list and we go on to something else.

The second point is, while this video is quite a bit about this generation of younger adults, that doesn't mean that the rest of us can escape this reality.

You might be like me.

You might have grown up before the internet.

And if you did, let me ask you a couple questions.

First of all, how many phone numbers and birthdays did you have memorized when you were in school? And of the people that you've met in the last 10 years, How many phone numbers and birthdays do you have memorized now from those people? If you're honest, you're probably going to say a lot to that first answer and probably zero for the second.