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Is Learning to Rap Useful?

2021-03-17 · Vlog or day in the life · Ali, Michael Gendler, Gavin, Sheen · recording, 14:25 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying (also: Mindset, motivation and happiness) · mode: Demonstration and walkthrough · tags: Evidence-based framing, Feel-Good Productivity thesis, Sponsor segment present

Ali spends his second 30-day challenge learning to freestyle rap, coached by Michael of Ultra Speaking and Gavin of FlowFam, and draws four lessons: stay in the zone, trust the brain's autocomplete, break through the cringe response, and crack open the black box of a skill that seems out of reach.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Why Ali decided to learn freestyle rap

  • ★★ Ali recently decided to learn freestyle rap, something he had never thought of doing; as a doctor and productivity nerd he always wanted to be the next Ed Sheeran. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Videos by Chris Turner and Harry Mack, discovered a couple of months before, made Ali realise that freestyle rap is the coolest thing ever if you can do it properly. — 00:00:00

00:00:31 — Day one: first coaching session with Michael from Ultra Speaking

  • ★★ On day one Ali has his very first freestyle rap coaching session with his friend Michael, one of the founders of Ultra Speaking, who has been freestyle rapping for over eight years. — 00:00:31

00:01:06 — Week one: practising in the shower, self-consciousness and Michael's rhyme exercises

  • ★★ In the first week of the rap challenge Ali tried to practise ten minutes a day in the shower but felt super self-conscious, though only his housemate could hear, and found the week really hard. — 00:01:06 · Sheen
  • ★★ Michael Gendler: Michael tells Ali that part of freestyle rap cannot be shortcut in 30 days, because it comes from the experience of reps, rhyming the same words over and over again. — 00:01:06
  • ★★ Michael Gendler: To practise freestyle rap, Michael advises flooding the brain with rhyme, forcing it to make the sounds on the spot. — 00:01:35
  • ★★ Michael Gendler: Michael tells Ali that the only difference between the two of them as rappers right now is self-consciousness. — 00:02:04

00:02:32 — Day 12 and why he is doing this

  • ★★ On day 12 of the rap challenge Ali feels things becoming easier but knows he needs tons more practice; the next day he has a session with Gavin from FlowFam, a community that helps rappers get into flow. — 00:02:32
  • ★★ Ali is learning freestyle rap mainly because he thinks it is cool and he is a fan of learning cool stuff, even though he will never become a freestyle rapper or make money from it. — 00:02:32

00:03:07 — A 2012 study of the brain during freestyle rap and getting into flow

  • ★★★ Ali's mental model for deciding whether to do something: does it seem like it would be fun, and would it be an interesting journey to go on? — 00:03:07 · feel-good productivity (concept)
  • ★★ Ali cites a 2012 study: during freestyle rap, brain activity increases in areas for motivation, action, language, emotion and motor skills and falls in regions responsible for supervision and monitoring, which normally limit spontaneous creativity. — 00:03:07
  • ★★ Ali gives one potential theory: freestyle rap forces the brain to find unique words, rhymes and combinations, which forces us to be more creative with language. (hedged) — 00:03:37
  • ★ When these factors interact and the stars are aligned, Ali says, freestyle rappers get into the flow state, which he worked on with Gavin. — 00:03:37

00:04:06 — Gavin from FlowFam explains the flow cycle; scatting exercises

  • ★★ Gavin describes the flow cycle, four stages called SRFR ("surfer"); the first, struggle, is a challenge a little harder than your skill, so you exert effort and it becomes a positive feedback loop. — 00:04:06
  • ★★ Gavin: In Gavin's flow cycle, release comes next: the parasympathetic nervous system engages, you relax and judge yourself less, which triggers the flow state, called transient hypofrontality, when parts of the prefrontal cortex for decision-making and planning shut off. — 00:04:35
  • ★★ Gavin says the prefrontal cortex is also where the inner critic comes from, asking what if I fail, which keeps us in our heads. — 00:05:05

00:05:43 — Halfway check-in and what his housemate Sheen thinks of the challenge

  • ★★ Ali says the scatting exercises Gavin gave him, though they sound strange, helped him lean into the discomfort and find flow far more quickly. — 00:05:43
  • ★ Halfway through the rap challenge Ali is starting to notice words and phrases he can lean on, such as "driving with my homies and chilling downtown". — 00:05:43

00:07:02 — The next 15 days; lesson one: always stay in the zone

  • ★★ For the next 15 days Ali practised freestyle rap wherever he could, even on the podcast with his brother, fitted in more sessions with Michael, and found getting into flow a little easier as things started clicking. — 00:07:02 · Taimur Abdaal
  • ★★ Ali's first lesson for freestyle rap: stay in character and keep the flow going; when you can't think of anything to say, just keep going, because that is part of the game. — 00:07:34

00:08:03 — Lessons two and three: trust the brain's autocomplete; break through the cringe response

  • ★★★ Ali's second lesson from freestyle rap: the brain has a surprisingly good autocomplete function, and we should trust it. — 00:08:03
  • ★★ In social situations where he is not comfortable, such as talking to a pretty girl, Ali says he always monitors what he says so as not to seem bad, creepy or cringe. — 00:08:32
  • ★★★ Through learning freestyle rap Ali realised he needs to be more often in a nonjudgmental state, trusting his brain's autocomplete to say something reasonable: when he does not think too hard, things work out. — 00:09:02
  • ★★★ Ali says getting through the cringe response, the judgment of others and of ourselves, is a transferable skill: getting over the fear of being cringy makes you more okay with taking risks and doing fun things that might look weird to others. — 00:09:50

00:10:20 — Lesson four: freestyle rap can be learned; crack open the black box

  • ★★ Ali's fourth lesson: freestyle rap can be learned; with zero experience it seemed a black box, and though he is nowhere near Chris Turner and Harry Mack, a little time working on it cracked the black box. — 00:10:20 · cracking open the black box

  • ★★★ If something you want to learn feels like a black box, Ali advises not to be afraid of it: crack it open and you will probably find well-trodden paths inside. — 00:10:49 · cracking open the black box

    “don't be afraid of the black box. Just crack it open”

00:11:11 — Day 30: Blind Slideshow freestyle in a live stream with Ultra Speaking

  • ★★ Ali's final rap session is with Michael and Tristan from Ultra Speaking in a YouTube live stream, playing Blind Slideshow, a game of rapping about random images as prompts. — 00:11:11

00:13:08 — Final thoughts and Skillshare sponsor read; sign-off

  • ★★★ After 30 days of trying to learn freestyle rap, Ali says he is obviously still not very good, but it is a work in progress. — 00:13:08

In the description and comments

  • ★★ Learning to freestyle rap was Ali's second 30-day challenge; he found it a really enjoyable journey and made some progress, though he does not think the pros have anything to worry about yet. — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Told on day one to spit bars like fire, Ali is stuck at once — 00:00:31

    “I don't know what even rhymes with fire.”

  • Michael has Ali practise rhyming on "Fortnite" — 00:02:04

    “because i'm playing fortnight and it's a port fight”

  • Asked whether Ali has a potential career as a world-famous rapper, his housemate Sheen answers — 00:06:33

    “Career is a strong word.”

  • Asked what it would take for Ali to get the street cred to rap, Sheen replies — 00:07:02

    “Another lifetime?”

  • Mid-freestyle about a childhood memory, Ali corrects his own lyric — 00:12:27

    “it's not a pc it's my mac and you know that i don't believe in windows”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: cracking open the black box · Flow state · Gavin · Michael Gendler

Also: People: Chris Turner · Ed Sheeran · Harry Mack · Sheen · Taimur Abdaal · Tristan de Montebello

Organizations: FlowFam · Ultra Speaking

Concepts: feel-good productivity (concept) · lifelong learning

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