Can you listen to music during deep work
Music has always been a passion of mine. I play the guitar, collect records, go to live shows as often as possible, and I am always on the hunt for new music, no matter the genre (and I firmly believe there is always more great music to be found). But the music I listen to most often (e.g., James Blake, LCD Soundsystem, Wilco, Radiohead, Kurt Vile) doesn’t typically work well when I need to concentrate deeply, such as during my deep work sessions for WFC. But music is important to me, so I’ve searched for the ideal music to listen to when I need to focus. What is deep work? As discussed in our recent blog post, “Using Deep Work to Raise the Bar in Financial Thought Leadership,” deep work is a professional activity performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. At WFC, we have embraced the principles of deep work to improve our ability to write institutional-quality financial thought leadership as efficiently as possible, and to enable us to achieve the work/life balance that is so important to us. Everyone has their own custom needs when it comes to the ideal setup for deep work. I have found instrumental music—and in particular ambient music—to be the best music to accompany my daily deep work sessions. Ambient music is essentially designed as background music; it can generally be defined as gentle, instrumental music with no persistent beat, and it creates a pleasant atmosphere. Think heavy on the hums, tones, and repetition, light on the vocals and traditional structure. Below, I share a few of my top artists and albums for deep work. Pair these selections with some noise-canceling headphones and a blank wall to stare at, and you have my setup for deep work. Music to Accompany Deep Work: Connor’s Suggestions
I hope many of you will give ambient instrumental music a shot the next time you need to concentrate for an extended period of time. Remember to review our other tips for deep work, and please reach out to me to let me know what you think of these artists. I am always on the hunt for new music, so I would love to hear your deep work music suggestions, too!
About the Author Connor Martin is the chief operations officer at Wentworth Financial Communications. Connor and the team of writers and editors at WFC help professionals across the financial services industry build their brands by creating investment-grade white papers, bylined articles, newsletters, blogs, social media posts, and other forms of content marketing. A Break to Discuss Breaks After last week’s post on attention residue, multiple readers have asked about taking breaks during deep work sessions. These questions highlight an apparent tension. On the one hand, in my book on the topic and here on Study Hacks I often extol the productive virtue of spending multiple hours (and sometimes even days) in a state of distraction-free deep work. As I emphasized last week, these sessions need to be truly free of distraction — even quick glances at your inbox, for example, are enough to significantly reduce your cognitive capacity. On the other hand, in my Straight-A book (published, if you can believe it, almost exactly a decade before Deep Work), I recommend students study in 50 minute chunks followed by 10 minute breaks. I cite some relevant cognitive science to back up this timing. Similar recommendations are also made by adherents to the pomodoro technique, which suggests short timed bursts of concentration partitioned by breaks. Which idea is right? Deep Breaks The short answer to the above question: both. Deep work requires you to focus intensely on a demanding task. But few can maintain peak cognitive intensity for more than an hour or so without some sort of relief. This relief is necessary. But it’s also dangerous. Most types of breaks you might take in this situation will wrench your attention away from the task at hand and leave you with a thick slather of attention residue. If you’re careful, however, it’s possible to take a so-called deep break which will allow your mind a chance to regroup and recharge without impeding your ability to quickly ramp back up your concentration. Anyone who regularly succeeds in long deep work sessions is almost certainly someone skilled at deploying deep breaks to keep the session going without burning out or losing focus. There’s no single description of what constitutes a deep break, but here are some useful heuristics from my own experience:
Breaks that avoid the above warnings should probably be okay. For example, here are some of my standard deep break activities:
I don’t want to be too rigid in my description of these breaks. The key message is that when it comes to deep work, you shouldn’t feel like you’re required to maintain peak concentration for hours on end. (If you try to, you’ll fail.) On the other hand, be mindful about how you take your cognitive breathers as they play a key role in whether the deep work session as a whole will succeed. ##### Thank you to the 200 – 300 people who showed up last night to listen to Scott and me discuss learning strategies. I enjoyed the discussion and your questions. If you missed the webinar, but want to learn more about Scott’s new rapid learning course (which was the inspiration for the event), you can visit the course website. (Photo by Ghislain Mary) |