You ever have one of those days when you’re getting a whole ton of stuff done, but can’t put your finger on why? I’ve had several of those days lately…and because I am who I am…I had to discover why I was being so productive. Since I’ve been battling another serious case of ICBB (I Can’t Be Bothered), it was interesting to me that I had a few days where that wasn’t the case. In fact, I was super productive on those few days…more than making up for the days where I was a total slacker.
I wanted to know why.
I started by looking at my time logs to see if there was anything really obvious. One thing that jumped out were the large, solid blocks of time that I spent on particular tasks. For instance, when I was doing the house cleaning, I had a couple of hours of uninterrupted time. I tried to think back if that was really the case, or whether I didn’t record all the shifts and changes in focus throughout the day. I freely admit that I’m not perfect on my time-tracking, so it was important to discern. But to the best of my recollection, I really did work in large, unbroken blocks.
It makes sense I was getting a lot done during those blocks, since the hardest part of any task is getting started. Once you get going, you’re over the initial hump and things move along smoothly. So staying focused on what I was doing was certainly one of the factors in my success.
But why was I so focused?
I kept trying to remember, but I couldn’t come up with anything. They were fairly typical days, and nothing jumped out at me. But I’m not one to give up so easily, so I kept digging. To most people, I probably crossed the boundary of sanity and marched right into crazy land with how hard I was trying to find a reason for my success. But as is often the case with my wild goose chases…I think I caught the goose!
I had listened to mix of music, podcasts, and Focus@Will on those days. In fact, I had intentional sound surrounding me throughout the entire day. That’s definitely different for me.
As a kid growing up my Mom always had something playing. Since it was the pre-digital era, we played LP records on our HiFi system. She would put a stack of records on the player and turn the volume way up. We’d listen to music all day long…no matter what we were doing.
If she wasn’t playing music, the radio was tuned to local talk radio…mostly WGN in Chicago. As I was writing this I could clearly hear Wally Phillps’ voice in my head. His show is still ingrained in my memory…and I can still do bits from the show to this day.
My life was always filled with intentional sound, and I continued that habit through much of my adult life. But I’ve kind of fallen off the wagon when I’m working at home. I’m not sure why. As I sit here, it’s awfully quiet, with just the sound of the dishwasher and clothes washer providing white background noise. Honestly, it’s kind of eerie.
But on those ultra-productive days I had intentional sound playing, for a combination of reasons that apparently created the perfect storm for the perfect day. It all started because Hectic Grandson wanted to hear some music on my Jam Wifi speaker. He’s fascinated with my little speaker and asks me to use it all the time. We play a lot of Toddler Radio from Pandora. His Mom and I have updated the station over the five years he’s been around so it’s really a 60-40 mix of cute toddler music and danceable oldies. He’s listened to it enough that he can sing along to many of the songs, and even when music isn’t playing he’ll break out into song.
Unlike me, he doesn’t have to make up any lyrics because he knows the real ones.
So the Jam was on the counter and there was a ton of work to do. Plus I was doing work that required moving around. Since I sit or stand at my desk on most days, I need a bit of a push on days where I’m doing physical work. Music is that push, and playing it on the Jam allowed me to keep my phone with me but still play the music loudly from a base station. I would play a couple of hours of various Pandora and Apple Music stations, and when I got tired of that I’d switch to either Focus@Will or a podcast. I noticed that on each day that I was ultra-productive, I had played something for upwards of 14 hours! Since Hectic Mom is not a fan of music when we’re eating or when she’s working, that means I was essentially playing something while I was doing my work or while she was in the other room for the entire day.
I’m not sure why the music, podcasts, and Focus@Will make me so much more productive. Maybe it’s something that I picked up as a kid and have deep in my psyche. It could be that I associate moving around and music with getting things done. Or maybe it’s possible that the music keeps part of my mind occupied so I’m able to power through the boring tasks I was working on. All I know is that after correlating my most productive days for the past 14 months with my listening habits, there is a direct, provable link between having intentional sound playing and my productivity.
So I’m going to start being even more intentional about trying to listen to something while I’m trying to get things done. As my Polka-habit demonstrates, I have a somewhat eclectic set of musical preferences. Both Polkas and Bagpipes are universally booed by the rest of my family, so those have to be limited to times when I’m alone. And some of my pop music preferences have to also be constrained to times when only Hectic Grandson and I are here, but for the most part I can get away with listening to most of my other musical preferences on the speakers. Podcasts and Focus@Will do better on headphones, so no one else has to know what I’m listening to.
At any rate, I’m going to keep working out what’s the best intentional sound to listen to for various tasks and see if I can eek out a little bit more productivity from my days by making this small change.
Who knows, I might actually be onto something!
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