Back in the days, I tweeted few words about staying focused:
Pomodoro + chillstep music = really great focus. Give it a try.https://t.co/VPzTxT2ul5#productivity #codinghard #keyboardonfire
— Krzysztof Zbiciński (@zbicin) February 10, 2016
After a year, I can broaden this statement and say that what gives me really great focus is music in general.
Recently I’ve had to go through a tedious task of writing my master thesis. The vision of performing a long research and dedicating an infinite amount of hours to it was anything but motivating. Nevertheless I had to put myself together and eventually face the challenge.
The surprising game changer was listening to VNM’s album entitled Halflajf In addition to regular breaks (whether performed according to the pomodoro technique or not) it was the major factor that was driving my productivity.
The good thing about listening to an album is that you can set a pause after a particular song and/or after the whole album has been played. That way it is easier to remember about taking breaks, even if the keyboard is on fire and you want only to add this one more feature and then you’ll definately take a break. Most of the time I didn’t. I simply kept forgetting about it.
Interestingly, I discovered that I have a set of music albums or Spotify playlists that I can listen to during literally the whole workday and don’t get bored. They include e.g. chillstep and latino music playlists as well as some albums from Kanye West (especially The College Dropout!), Limp Bizkit or Bob Marley. I haven’t determined what is their common part though. It’s not the genre nor the language, that’s for sure.
Well… it’s seems that I’m a pioneer of the music driven development. ;)
Photo by Malte Wingen on Unsplash.