Textbooks often present all the theory neatly in one place—even the parts not needed in the beginning. This tends to create confusion, as students go back and forth trying to apply abstract ideas to real-life physical practice.
The cycle of fifths feels very complete and perfect—but how useful is it for your current situation?
If you’re playing Indian music on the guitar, it has little to no use. That’s because the chords in Indian music aren’t really based on harmonic progressions, but rather emerge from the underlying melody.
Music and other projects:
Know exactly what is useful, even if they can’t be reduced to cute acronyms or overgeneralizations.
Text books: Instead of neatly organized but useless for the students, it’s more effective to:
- Understand the sequence in which a student actually needs concepts
- Help them manage the project and the discomfort of learning something new
- Compare where they are with where they need to be
- Understand the “growth gap” or “Learning stretch” and
- Break that gap into manageable steps—not overwhelming ones.
This approach may not look clean, neat, or structured. In fact, it might look chaotic at times.
But this is the reality—the real process through which people learn, make progress, and create results, rather than quit.
Remember the quote commonly attributed to Albert Einstein:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Trying to make things look neat and clean may serve a narrow, locally optimized purpose—but not the deeper goals or the real reasons that truly matter.
It takes much effort to identify what the real sequence of learning is. To avoid just in case Clutter as much as possible and to really focus and reduce to just in need. Finish the practical then come back for more in the correct order. It needs protective attitude reducing procrastination and meandering and instead realizing that in real world the kind of Freedom we live in none of the obstacles to clarity and real world outcomes are real.