I can ring a rainbow

In recent years #bellringing repertoire has begun to be referred to in different coloured zones. The green zone for those starting in rounds, call changes and plain hunting. The blue zone for those who have mastered plain bob, Grandsire and similar. The red zone for those progressing from Cambridge Surprise Minor, with the infamous black zone for the high fliers ringing beyond Bristol Surprise Maximus.

I won’t ever reach the dizzying heights of the black zone, partly because I don’t have the brain capacity, but also lack of opportunity, and if I’m honest, I probably just don’t want to.

I am comfortably in the maroon zone as I can ring some Surprise Minor and Major methods. On the way through I’ve rung in the green, cyan, blue and purple zones.

Last week a few of us were discussing methods we used to ring on a practice night when all the right people turned up. I’ve rung quarters of Superlative Surprise Maximus, Swindon Surprise Royal, Anglia Surprise Royal and London Surprise Royal. At the moment we can just about get through half a course of Cambridge or Yorkshire Surprise Royal.

I would like to get back to ringing other Surprise Royal and Maximus but need the right calibre of ringers to be able to do that. In the meantime I’m quite enjoying a spread of methods well in the maroon zone. A bit beyond Cambridge Surprise Minor and a few different eight bell methods.

Perhaps the definitions between the red and black zones need to be established. I think there’s too much of a gap between them.

The Ringing World produced The Little Purple Ringing Book for those transitioning from the blue to red zone. The ‘purple book’ has been fun to work through with my virtual #bellringing practice on a Thursday evening resulting in some quarter peals with firsts in methods for all.

It would be great if there was a follow up called The Little Maroon Book of Ringing. There’s often an assumption by the time you’ve mastered the red zone you should be competent to move onwards under your own steam. Personally, I’ll take all the help I could get thank you.

Whether Simon Linford’s new book The Core Seven and Beyond is an attempt to fill that gap I’m not sure, I’ve not seen its content. If you’ve seen it, let me know whats in it.

It’s a feature

I have various platforms for various activities and about half a dozen different email alias depending on whether its personal, work, local bellringing or national bellringing. Some are redirected through others and some are direct. However, what I’ve been noticing is that since using Office 365 and MS Teams for some of the bellringing activity, some emails aren’t getting through either at all, or arrive several days later, when of course I’ve missed whatever deadline was involved, or not provided feedback as appropriate.

I was on a call today where it was noted that I hadn’t given any feedback which was odd considering it was me that had raised the issue in the first place. I had to admit to not having seen an email with the relevant document at all. When I checked the various email accounts what I seemed to have had was other people’s responses, but not the original email with the attachment. Someone very kindly emailed it to me again via a different route and it did arrive.

What I’m not sure about is whether that’s because the redirects from some of the email alias’ aren’t working properly, or there’s a more fundamental issue with the setup, or whether it’s a “feature” of the system and something that I’ll have to live with. I’m not technically minded enough to be able to figure it out and due to the desired firewalls and spam blockers we have on our PCs at home, maybe some of it is getting lost in the ether.

So, if you’ve sent me an email and I haven’t responded it may well be that I haven’t had your message in the first place, unless I am actually ignoring it. I am also not permanently attached to my emails; I do have the occasional evening where I don’t spend it on the computer after a 9½ hour day at work sitting at a computer. I might just jump in an out to check that there’s nothing urgent or fire out a couple of other messages whilst I’m thinking about them.

Often, I set aside a time when I’m going to blast through emails. I’ll file the ones that need filing, respond to the ones that need responding to and maybe leave some others until another time to deal with. The other problem of course, is that to use any of the other email alias’ apart from the ones attached to Office 365 I have to use the main PC rather than my laptop, and that means waiting for C to finish whatever he’s doing.

I will get around to dealing with it eventually, but if it’s not urgent, or requires a response, I might not necessarily deal with it straight away.

Being in the Zone

I’ve just watched a 2 minute excerpt from a TED talk given by learning expert Eduardo Briceno on what he considers to be the key to high performance. https://www.ted.com/talks/eduardo_briceno_how_to_get_better_at_the_things_you_care_about?utm_source=linkedin.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social&utm_content=2021-3-18-cutdown

We all go through life trying to do the best we can, and equating that to #bellringing, we all turn up at practice night, or Sunday service ringing, or for a wedding or special practice, or quarter or peal attempt or, at the moment virtual practice, with full intention to do the best we can. To ring the method accurately. To strike our bell in the right place. But at a practice night we’re there to try to learn new things as well and extend our repertoire (if we want to).

Briceno offers that sometimes, despite our best intentions we might not always get any better at the things we want to achieve, despite working hard at them. What he learned from his research is that we should deliberately alternate between two different zones.

Learning Zone: here the goal is to improve. So we undertake activities that help that improvement. This could be attending a training day, reading around the subject, watching YouTube videos, asking others for advice, standing behind someone while they ring, asking for feedback and so on. Here, we spend time concentrating on what we haven’t mastered yet, and expect to make mistakes along the way knowing that we will learn from them.

Performance Zone: is where the goal is to do something as best as we can, to execute it. Where we concentrate on what we already have mastered and try to minimise the mistakes. This might be ringing for a special event or a peal attempt, or a striking competition.

Briceno suggests that we should be deliberately alternating between the two zones to purposefully build our skills in the learning zone in order to apply them in the performance zone. Being clear about when we want to be in each of these zones, with what goal, focus and execution in mind helps us better perform and improve. The performance zone maximises our immediate performance, whilst our learning zone maximises our growth and future performance. The more time we spend in the learning zone the more we will improve in the performance zone.

To be able to spend more time in the learning zone we need to believe that we can improve, we must want to improve that particular skill, we must have an idea about what we can do to improve. Just performing the same method over and over again doesn’t necessarily help us improve. Without the process of practice, making mistakes, getting feedback and revision we will tend to stagnate in our current “safe” zone; methods that are familiar and easy, that we won’t feel like we’d be ridiculed for if we go wrong. My favourite is “if in doubt, ring the Treble”, that way I’ll stand a better change of not going wrong, or mucking it up for everyone else. The trouble with that is, I don’t progress myself.

In our #bellringing context this could be the difference between learning the theory of a new method and practicing it on a practice night on using an ringing simulator, in order to perform it to the best of our ability of a Sunday morning, or during a striking competition, or a quarter peal or peal. I also know that I’m really bad at this too. Often I might turn up to a practice having not put enough effort into the learning part, and then hash my way through it, or do enough to just get by without making too much of a pigs ear, but I haven’t learned it properly and will immediately forget it because I’ve not gone back over the bits I find difficult, or asked for help.

My latest thing is to try to learn to ring handbells. I don’t particularly want to ring handbells quarters or peals, but I want to be able to hold my own if I were asked if I could ring something simple. It’s been nearly 40 years since I learnt to ring a tower bell so going back to the beginning to ring handbells, to unlearn some of the things I’ve learned on tower bells and learn them in a different way, has been, so far, really quite difficult. However, I must persevere if I am to reach a decent performance zone. I must make that effort and spend that time in the learning zone, read, watch, listen, practice, make mistakes, get feedback, try again and eventually I will improve.