The BeatlesDo It Again and Again to Get Better

 
I'm currently reading
The Beatles: The Biography,
by Bob Spitz. One of the keys
to the Beatles success, I feel,
was that they did the same thing
over and over again.

In this biography, Bob Spitz mentions
that the Beatles used to take a 2 or
3 minute song and turn it into a 30
minute song. They did this because
their time on stage was 5 hours or
more a night and they needed to keep
the song going so that they would not
run out of songs. This was in Hamburg,
Germany where the song sets were mercilessly
long.

Imagine taking a 3-minute song and
stretching it to 30 minutes. To do
this, you'd have to learn to play endless
variations on the same song. This must
have given them great creative license
and great creative insight.

Do a 30 minute version of a song night
after night and you are going to know
the song inside and out. That's one
thing that seemed to characterize the
group. They knew their songs very very
well.

I think this is one of the keys to success
in life. People become good at something
after they've done it over in over again.

For example, one of the metrics used to
measure pilots is how many hours of flying
time they have. Seems that experience
really counts when it comes to flying.

Same thing with driving a car. You are
a much better driver after you've driven
your first 100,000 miles than before you've
driven 100,000 miles. You get better at
responding to situations appropriately as
they come up.

So it is with anything. Do it over and
over again with any kind of care and concern
and you are going to get better at it. Of
course, not everyone does get better. Some
people relive the say hour or same day of
their lives over and over again. I'm not
talking about those people.

I'm talking about people who really and truly
wish to get a little better at something each
time they do it. When these people do something
over and over again, they truly get better at
it.

Stick with the same thing, really and truly
in your heart, and you get better at it.

Ed Abbott