How to lose yourself in focus when your mind won’t shut up
And the introduction of another Live Chapter — updated 13.10.16
I spoke a few weeks back about an experiment I tried while Jen gallivanted off to Thailand.
In that Chapter, I described how I’d tried my best to limit the amount of information entering my brain in the morning hours. It just wasn’t healthy, I concluded, and I wanted to make a change.
So I cut out all screen use until I was at least on the bus, and I’ve since tried to avoid (as much as possible) emails, social media and texts between the hours of 6:30am and 10am. Some days are easier than others, but it has largely been a success.
A little bit after that though, once I was in the habit of no-screen-mornings, I started to think about my writing routine.
Yes, I thought a lot while Jen was away.
I thought about information overload, and the music I’d usually play while I was writing.
Sometimes The Stress Buster…
Sometimes Deep Focus…
Sometimes Yoga and Meditation…
All good playlists, but look at the number of tracks in them all.
So many songs.
So much information.
Not ideal for writing.
I did a bit of reading, as I normally do when I’m intrigued by something. There was a Medium Story — I can’t find the link to it — which suggested that, when you’re trying to concentrate, listening to just one song over and over and over and over again is great for focus.
Sounds weird, I thought. Sounds boring, I also thought. But I’ll pretty much try anything related to mental clarity and focus.
So I did. And I won’t beat around the bush here, it worked.
I settled in to write, put Daft Punk — Make Love on a constant loop and got lost in the music. It became background noise after a while, a barrier to all other distractions.
Nothing is now more powerful in helping me focus. Period.
I’ve gone further, of course, done a bit of music discovery to add to Make Love. Below is a list of all of the tracks I (currently) recommend listening to on repeat if you want über-sharp focus.
- Daft Punk — Make Love
- City of the Sun — Everything
- Air — La femme d’ardent
- Bonobo — Kong
- U137 — Watching the Storm
As always with my lists, this will be regularly updated, so check back from time to time to see what else I’ve added.
Or, just let me do all of the dirty work and wait until I share this post again.
