While I don’t want to get into a debate as to whether Mozart makes you smarter, music can affect your mood and your attitude. I have been using music for mind hacks for a long time now. If I have to do something I have little enthusiasm for, I play music that makes me want to dance. If I have to deal with someone I’d rather not have to confront, I play music that calms and soothes me. Sometimes I rely on self-empowerment anthems to deal with harrowing situations. It sounds cheesy, but it works. I use these “musical pep talks” to get me into the right frame of mind starting at least 20 minutes prior to the activity. That might mean starting at home, or listening to music on the way there in the car, or via my MP3 player on the bus. The right music is part of being prepared.
Give Each Task a Soundtrack
Most people can get into a frame of mind based on physical surroundings. When you’re in your office cubicle, you have a different mindset than when you’re in the boss’s office, or in a conference room for a weekly meeting. Sitting in the physical space of science class is likely a bit different than sitting in English class, if only because the teachers and the students you sit next to are probably different. Because I telecommute to work and to school, I spend most of my day in front of a computer screen. While I try to break things up spatially, moving from the desktop computer in my office to the laptop on the kitchen table and outside the house to coffee shops and library branches, that means I’m not always in the same physical space for a given task. It would be great if I could always be in a particular cafe when working on Project A, and always sitting on the floor working on the living room coffee table for Project B, but that’s not practical.
What I do instead is define the space in my head using music. Thanks to Pandora stations I’ve set up and Spotify playlists I’ve created, each task or block of tasks has its own soundtrack. When I was taking an American History class recently, I listened exclusively to Johnny Cash while researching and writing papers. Don’t ask my why I picked Johnny, because I’m not entirely sure myself. The only time I listened to Johnny was when it was time to work on history. When I was done, Johnny got turned off. That music cue helped me snap into the frame of mind I needed to focus solely on doing my history assignments. When I’m preparing to run our current Pathfinder game, I put on psychobilly. That’s what we’ve been playing during the game, and it’s what I’ve come to associate with that campaign. With that music on, it puts me in the frame of mind to focus on game prep. I have different soundtracks and stations for various writing projects, church projects, and classes.
Alternately, Give Each Task a Theme Song
Sometimes music is a distraction. Algebra and economics require my full attention. For those tasks I cut the soundtrack down to a theme song, something that puts me in the right emotional frame of mind. Before I begin the task, I put on the theme song, then shut off the music and go to work. For algebra, I listen to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” to muster the strength to power through doing 50 problems at a clip. I once had a particularly brutal boss, and before meeting with her I’d play Limp Bizkit’s “My Way” to psych myself up, and it gave me the attitude to keep her from walking all over me. I usually play the song for myself at the end of the task, to celebrate having kicked its butt, before moving on to a neutral playlist or the next task.
The Neutral Playlist
You’ll want to keep some things sacrosanct and not related to specific tasks. This is music that you want to listen to for pleasure whenever you want. Keep it out of your work soundtracks and reserved for private time. Alternately, pick just one song by an artist for a playlist or theme song, and keep it our of your personal rotations.
There are times when quiet is too quiet, but you don’t want the distraction of music. I have neutral playlists that have everything from nature sounds with oceans and rainforests, to whale songs (try to sing along with those) to street noise. With these, I try to put them on very low volume and even in another room if possible. It’s ambient, but not music, and I try to use it across tasks to prevent associations. I have even put on the television in the other room, on programming I have no interest in so I won’t get sucked in, with the volume low enough that I can hear voices but cannot make out what they’re saying; sitting in a coffee shop with low crowd noise serves much the same purpose.
Summing Up
Hacking your head space to get into the right frame of mind is a good thing. Training your brain to react to music cues to get you prepared for certain types of tasks can boost productivity. It’s a way to define your workspace when your physical surroundings can’t act as a cue for the work that needs to be done.
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