M2M Day 77: There’s a lot on my mind
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For January, my goal is to solve a Rubik’s Cube in under 20 seconds.
Today, there’s a lot weighing on my mind. And, while I appreciate the fact that some days are just like this, it definitely makes it challenging to solve the Rubik’s Cube as fast as I know I can.
In other words, in order to solve the cube quickly, it’s important that I get fully in the zone, and today, my brain doesn’t want to do that. Instead, my mind is wandering in the middle of solves.
How to fix this?
Of course, the best way to fix this is to address the underlying problem, which I’m working on.
In the meantime, I came up with a clever little hack that’s been helping, which requires a small explanation:
In November, my goal was to learn how to memorize a deck of cards in under two minutes, which also required complete concentration. Thus, while I trained, to help eliminate external distractions, I would listen to a combination of white noise and rain sounds in my headphones. After a while, the white noise became a trigger for me to get in the zone.
Basically, every time I hear the white noise, my brain automatically gets into the associated fully focused state, ready to memorize cards (or in this case, solve a Rubik’s Cube).
So today, even though the noise is coming from inside my own head, the white noise actually helped. The trigger is still strong.
I can’t continue relying on this hack for too long. Otherwise, I’ll probably override the trigger or at least lessen its effect.
But, for today, it’s working for me.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
