A few years ago, I found the music genre Math rock (especially instrumentals) which has been phenomenal for whenever I have to be productive, since my brain is hyped and busy enough to not bother me with thoughts, but not too busy to be completely distracted. I swear it's like handing my toddler brain a tablet just to have a few minutes of uninterrupted time to be able to do some Adult Things like writing emails and uni stuff.
if someone is interested, I can drop the link to my Math rock playlist on Spotify
Also interested. I also like math rock on occasion. It makes for a great task soundtrack. Much like video game music, it kind of adds a sense of urgency to whatever you're doing, like beating the clock or setting a new high score, but it's doing the dishes. I'd be curious to see how your Playlist differs from what I normally listen to.
Do you have any recommendations for me? I'd love to expand my playlist with more songs - I usually get my recommendations from Spotify or YouTube, but personal recommendations are much more valuable :)
If you’re a gamer then I’d strongly recommend you get a playlist of bangers from your favourite games. They tend to be high energy, low on distracting lyrics, and if you’ve played the game any amount then they’ve might have gotten associated with a “locked in” brain state so you feel like whatever task you’re achieving is analogous to gaming.
My playlist has tracks from Streets of Rage 2, Golden Sun, Pokémon, Smash Bros and Super Hexagon amongst others.
I like instrumental electronic songs, stuff with soft emphasis on melody, but a definite beat to rely on and some good atmosphere and mood. Found a good few songs like that out of the demoscene, actually!
LukHash - especially the stuff without vocals sadly it seems I like the older stuff more, so my collection isn't growing.
Thank you for this thread to get some more suggestions!
It's been a few years I've only listened to music without any vocals in it. My favorite is tuning to SomaFM's ambient-music stations like Synphaera, Deep Space One, Space Station and, if you are really into the slowest kind of ambient music, Drone Zone. Soma has many instrumental stations with specific genres like Fluid for instrumental trap.
The French radio station Fip is really good background music. I can pretty much have that on constantly, and even the occasional announcements don’t really break my concentration, as I don’t speak French.
Enya can be helpful for me. Otherwise soothing classical music, the fast and loud works can be a little too distracting. It also helps me to listen to the same thing when doing a task to train my brain to focus when listening to it.
What can really work well is an ambient background noise, such as the TNG engine ambient noise or whatever you are into (SWTOR station ambient, ...), wind, ocean.
The trick then is to put it on exactly when the focussed studying starts, and to turn it off abruptly when you (have to) interrupt, e. g. for phone, door, water.
That prevents you from the half-assed "I'm technically working right now" when you are really not.
Pandora has a station called "music for studying" that I find pretty helpful. It's a combo of instrumental electronic and classical and it's just upbeat enough to keep me focused without being distracting.