Remember To Play Some Music

One of the things often highlighted as indispensable to creating remarkable things is the ability to focus. Broadly speaking, the advice goes, anyone who is interested in building meaningful things must be willing to concentrate his attention on a selected pursuit.

The way we come take on this knowledge carries with it an impression that activities which fail to tie directly to our chosen pursuits must be avoided. As a writer, for example, I might think that in order to get any meaningful writing done all I have to do is sit behind a page all day, crazily focused on putting words down; to engage activities like campaigning would be a waste of time.

In efforts to distinguish activities which tie directly to our pursuits we tend to adopt categories: generally speaking, we place tasks into the "important" or "unimportant" categories, depending on how well they support our pursuits. Reading a book on a topic of interest is important. Cooking a meal that steals us from our topic of interest is unimportant. Living the focused life requires a devotion to one rule: that we avoid unimportant tasks at all cost.

But the reality of our lives comprise an outpouring of evidence showing that living by this rule is a recipe for disaster. Mark Forster said it best in pointing out that 'unimportant' tasks in our life have a way of reasserting their importance when we neglect them.  It takes only a hungry stomach to remind anyone that the brain needs regular supply of energy to maintain its focus. In other words, without a proper system to aid with churning out both "unimportant" and "important" activities, life can turn into the opposite of what we hope. 

As highlighted in a previous BasicPulse entry, the real victory in becoming adept at focus rests in our ability to re-focus. This ability to reclaim focus in our efforts to stick to the important deserves attention because it can be a thing of paramount importance to engage activities that we would normally exist in our category of the unimportant. For example, spending twelve minutes on a given day to create a path of action for the next day may seem the perfect demonstration of time-wasting but it can be the difference between a focused day and a day marred by unhealthy distraction.

One would think that abandoning a devotion to perpetual focus in favor of becoming adept at reclaiming focus is a walk in the park. However, it is more like plying the freer of two irredeemably rough roads. The crux of the matter is that while it is impossible to stay perpetually focused on tasks we consider important it can be a thing of dread to pull oneself from "unimportant" tasks to resuming "important" tasks, and vice versa. For example, some people consider (the hugely important activity of) sleep unimportant, yet even they too confess to the ordeal of prying themselves from it after it has fallen their eyes. One option for easing this difficulty comes through the use of music.

Listening to music happens to be one of those distractive activities with overwhelming potency to enforce efforts for focus. The reason for this goes beyond the scope of this short piece. At this point, let it suffice to say it pays to shift our mind by shifting the nature of our environment through music. For a more detailed info visit focus@will: "an online service based on neuroscience that helps you [with the aid of music] to focus [and] reduce distractions."

Our brains conjure images of things we might need to achieve our pursuits, along with scenarios of all that could go horribly wrong in our efforts. Music is impeccably efficient its ability to snatch us from sinking into its unhelpful patterns. It transports us into the terrain where we can glide between activities that lie in the category of the important and those that lie in the category of the unimportant. With the right set of music it becomes less than an ordeal to pick oneself from writing a piece to cooking a meal or from doing the laundry to reading an interesting book. Music helps to bypass the hurdle that prevents us from getting things done. 

Does this mean all we need do to create remarkable things is hit play on our music players and watch life turn into all we have hoped?

Sadly, this is not the case. The take away from this piece is that activities depend hugely on the state of our minds. It matters little how much we care for an activity, a non-conducive state of mind will thwart efforts to immerse oneself in it. Navigating across different states of mind can turn into a bumpy experience, especially when we have cut activities into categories of the important or unimportant. It's pays to keep in mind that listening to music offers route to easing the experience. Reach for the play button as often as needed.

Enjoy!

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Post Author: P. W. Uduk 
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