Mar 15

Stick With It: Week 3- Go with the Plateau

What is the 'Stick with It' Challenge all about? 

Our Director Natalie Savery, has taken on a challenge which will help us to explore what we know about learning, leadership and all things related. 

She's chosen a song to learn from scratch, and from now until the end of March, she’ll be documenting her progress each week and reflecting on what helps us learn and grow. 

If you want to know more about the challenge, check out Natalie's Linked In post here 

View the video for week three opposite! 
Write your awesome label here.
Learning something new can be exciting—until you hit the plateau.

This week, I found myself there. No big breakthroughs, no “aha” moments. Just slow, frustrating effort and the creeping thought: Am I ever going to improve?

But the truth is, plateaus are a natural and necessary part of learning. They don’t mean we’ve stopped progressing—just that the progress has become less visible.

Speeding up to slow down

One of my goals this week was to practice at full song speed (135 BPM) to see if slowing down again would feel easier. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, but it wasn’t good either. I could just about keep up, but I was missing kick drum notes everywhere in the rush to stay on time.

So, did this experiment work? Sort of. While slowing down again didn’t feel dramatically easier, I did notice my usual speed has naturally increased—I’m now comfortable around 125 BPM instead of 110 BPM.

This aligns with the concept of over-speed training used in skill development. In sports, for example, sprinters sometimes run downhill to force their legs to move faster than normal. This temporarily overwhelms the brain and body but makes regular speeds feel more manageable over time.

How can we use this idea to help us learn in the workplace? 

In work, there are moments where we have to operate at a higher level of intensity than usual—whether it’s delivering a high-stakes presentation, making decisions under pressure, or managing a crisis. These moments can feel overwhelming, just like playing at 135 BPM did for me.

A useful approach is to intentionally "over-train" in a controlled setting before the real challenge hits. For example:
  • Practicing decision-making under time constraints so that when real pressure comes, it feels more manageable.
  • Running high-pressure simulations or role-playing difficult conversations so that actual interactions feel more fluid.
  • Shadowing or stepping into higher-level roles temporarily to experience the demands before officially taking on new responsibilities.

Don't you forget about me

Another challenge this week was learning an improvised ending. I don’t feel confident enough to improvise off the cuff, so my tutor suggested something for me to try. I played it a few times in the lesson but by the time I went to practice, I had completely forgotten what he suggested. I knew we had worked through something, but without reinforcement, the details had slipped away.

This is a classic example of The Forgetting Curve (Ebbinghaus, 1885). Research shows that within 24 hours, we forget around 50% of new information, and after a week, we can lose up to 90% if we don’t actively reinforce it. That’s exactly what happened here.

How often do we leave a training session, coaching conversation, or strategy meeting feeling clear on what we need to do—only to forget key details by the time we put it into practice? Without reinforcement, learning fades.

To counter this, I’ll be trying a few strategies next week:
  • writing down key takeaways immediately after my lesson
  • recording myself playing new sections so I can refer back to them
  • rehearsing within 24 hours to help solidify the new material. 

Getting Past the Plateau

Beyond struggling with forgetting, I’ve also hit a major motivation dip. My lack of visible progress made me less motivated to practice—which, of course, makes progress even harder.

When learning feels slow, it’s easy to assume we’re not improving at all. But looking back at my Week 1 recordings reminded me how much has actually changed. My playing was so slow, awkward and disjointed back then, and even though it still doesn’t sound like the song, there’s no denying that I’ve improved.

When we experience learning in real-time, it can sometimes feel frustratingly slow. But when we take a step back and compare where we started to where we are now, progress becomes much clearer.

Keeping a journal or recording your progress in some form - can really help you to identify what you've improved and can really highlight the leaps you've taken.  Watching my videos back from the first session to the most recent has highlighted that I am actually getting there - however slowly. 

NEXT WEEK: 
I'll continue to practice transitions, as they are still causing some problems for me. I'll also now continue to record at full speed, so I can judge progress against this week.