FIND NORTH
Three questions for the minutes before you perform.
The last ten minutes before a performance are a poor time to learn anything. Whatever you intend to do with your attention, you should already know how to do it.
FIND NORTH is a short orientation that takes about ninety seconds. You can run it standing in a hallway holding your instrument, sitting in a warm-up room, or waiting for your name to be called.
It is not a calming technique. Your heart rate is going to do what it is going to do. The purpose is to decide where your attention goes while that happens.
North — What matters here?
Under evaluation, attention drifts toward the judging: the panel, the outcome, the comparison, what this will mean. That is a reasonable thing for a nervous mind to do and it is a useless place to put your attention, because none of it is a thing you can execute.
Name what this performance is actually for, in a sentence you could say out loud, describing something you can do.
Play the second movement the way I've been hearing it since June. Give them a clear first entrance and let the phrase go somewhere.
Not play well. Not get the job. Those are verdicts, and verdicts are not instructions.
Noise — What is pulling at me?
Name what is competing for your attention. Not to argue with it — to know it is there, so it stops steering from behind you.
My hands are cold. The person before me was very good. I should have started this three months earlier.
The instinct is to make these go away before you play. That is the wrong job, and attempting it usually makes the noise louder and consumes attention you need. You are not trying to arrive at the door calm. You are trying to arrive at the door oriented.
Next — What do I do now?
One move. Not the performance.
The breath before the first note. Walking to the chair. The first four bars at the tempo you chose. Setting the reed.
Under pressure, the mind reaches for the whole thing at once, which is exactly the load that produces hesitation and overcontrol. A single next action is small enough to actually execute, and executing something is what returns you to the performance.
What FIND NORTH doesn’t require
You may have been taught that you have to feel a certain way to perform your best, but FIND NORTH turns this idea on its head. It is not relaxation, and it does not require you to feel ready. It will not make an underprepared performance go well. While its not a substitute for having practiced under conditions that resemble the ones you are about to walk into, It IS a way of deciding where your attention goes in the last few minutes, made in advance, so that the decision does not have to be made under the load of the moment.
How to practice it
Run it in the practice room, not only before performances. Use it before a difficult passage, before a lesson, before a run-through, before a recording take.
A framework you have used twice is not available to you under pressure. A framework you have used forty times is.
Where this fits
xFIND NORTH is one piece of a larger question: what happens to trained ability when it is being evaluated, and what can be done about it.
Read: Why Musicians Often Play Worse in Auditions Than in Practice →
Take FIND NORTH with you
Get the printable FIND NORTH guide for your next audition, competition, presentation, test, or other high-pressure moment.
Pressure has a way of exposing where attention, confidence, and performance habits break down. Breakthrough coaching helps you build a more reliable way to perform when it matters.