Many computer programmers like to play the same song over and over. Cathy wrote about habituation previously in her article “Silence Is Golden? White Noise, Coffee Shops, And The Learning Boost Of Habituation.” I’ve heard many knowledge workers advocating approaches in this vein. The goal is to maintain a pleasant background noise which habituates your mind, augmenting novel stimuli-ideally, your work. Occasionally, to add some color to the room, I’ll turn a background television show or movie on low volume. This Medium article discusses additional considerations for choosing the right music. My favorites include the Spotify playlists Brain Food and Soul Coffee. If music has vocals, I keep the volume low so I can’t make out the words. I prefer instrumental music-usually electronic, jazz, or classical-played from speakers positioned across the room. For the moment, therefore, personal preference seems the way to go. The literature is inconclusive as to which types of music or background noise are ideal. EnvironmentĬrafting an environment which facilitates focus can be tricky. The addon “Toggle F u ll Screen” enables you to go full screen with F11. I do the same when completing Anki reviews. To further discourage the urge to stare at or switch tabs, I pull work into full screen mode (F11 on Chrome). After reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, I also deleted all social media apps from my phone and tablet. My approach has simply been to cull social media checks to once per week and email checks to once per day. I’ve read others use extensions like Freedom or StayFocusd to restrict access to certain websites, in particular social media feeds. I also pull browser tabs related to my focused activity into their own window, so my itch to open Habitica or my time tracking Google sheet-both of which I always keep open-is stymied. To keep the monkey mind at bay, I put my iPhone on Do Not Disturb mode, which blocks all notifications and calls from most contacts (I have family and close friends added to my favorites so emergent calls still come through).
The nudge of a text or email ping, however subtle, can be incredibly disruptive. Cell phoneĬell phones are prime suspects. The question becomes: How can I get the most out of my pomos? I’ll discuss several strategies I’ve incorporated which help me keep distractions to a minimum. Despite my best efforts, however, at times I still catch my mind wandering. In the eight years I’ve applied the method, its focus-break-focus-break-etc prescription has worked wonders. I wrote last week about the Pomodoro Technique and its potential for fostering productive work.
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