From NPR, this is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

A few years ago, Emily Balchetes was fresh out of space in her life.

She was overseeing an enormous research project.

Her son was just a few months old and barely sleeping.

And she had the opportunity to write a book.

If Emily's life had been a hotel, it would have had a no vacancy sign out front.

And that's when I decided, you know what, I also need to become a drummer.

I needed something that was just for myself.

I needed to explicitly and intentionally carve out time

to let my own brain do the thing that it wanted to do just for me.

Emily decided she'd learn to play a single song.

I wanted to play one rock tune on drums but like really learn how to nail it.

But might seem like a modest goal, but besides being short on time,

Emily had another thing working against her.

Playing drums is like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time.

You have to strike different drums at the right moment and use one foot to hit a pedal.

Such coordination was not Emily's strong suit.

I'm very uncoordinated.

I have been my entire life.

In the fourth grade, I was on a basketball team and I pushed my own teammate out of bounds

when she was carrying the basketball because I tripped on my own feet.

I wasn't invited back to the next season of play.

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