Travelling Thoughts

"Paradise is a walled garden." Jordan B. Peterson

🎧 Podcast Suggestion: Modern Wisdom with Jordan B. Peterson.

This Monday I suddenly realised that I have school next week and that I have not done much to prepare myself. I started planning. I made a simple but effective change: every single day I must do at least one hour of studying. One hour is not much, it’s easy to accomplish and it can lead to longer studying sessions once the wheel gets going. I managed to stick to this very well since it is a very clear and accomplishable task.

Also on Monday I wrote future-me a letter thanks to this service I randomly found. I will receive a letter in 2027 about how I was feeling on the 14th February 2022. I made some bold predictions about my future for fun. This was truly thrilling to write. While writing I pointed out how weird it is to think that I will one day be 24 (my age at the time of receiving the letter). Everything ages with time but for some reason even when looking to the future I do not see my age increasing per se.

The first three days of the week I stayed in Brussels. It was a lot of fun to be back in the place I spent the past 8 years of my life in. It is not nostalgic yet, but it might become it soon enough. I stayed with my mom and that was awesome. It is incredible how I just let go when I am around her. I become relaxed on a level that I had not noticed before this visit. I do not need to look up words when reading I just ask, there are usually freshly baked cookies on the living room table and during her work-breaks we try to figure out how this world functions.

On Thursday afternoon I made my way to Maastricht. The trip took less time than expected. On the way I decided to come up with an original logo design. I have been putting off creating a personalised logo for a while now. When starting my blog I simply took the design made for Sub Focus’ album called Reworks as somewhat of a tribute. The creative part of the design took me less than 30 minutes, it’s just that beforehand I was too lazy to go through the trouble to find a website or application to even try to make a logo. I wanted my initials on it and a classy touch. I am quite happy with the final result of “UP” with an integrated arrow pointing upwards.

From Thursday on there were heavy winds in all of Western Europe. They are still going on Sunday. In the Netherlands the train traffic was stopped from Friday afternoon till Saturday early evening. On Friday we stayed in, listened to loud music and talked about life philosophies. It was truly great. On Sunday luckily my train was not cancelled and I made my way back to Lille where I proceeded to have an extremely productive day.

I myself was surprised by this Sunday's productiveness. I travelled for a while, listened to a two-hour podcast, managed to finalise my blog post, finished all my school work, went to get groceries and also got to see my sister! This productive day was fuelled by caffeine, change of environment and also music! On that note, do You know what music is best for focusing?

How to choose the Best Focus-Music?

Once we have planned work time thanks to our calendar and breaking down the tasks thanks to a to-do list, it is time to get to work. When motivated it is easy to get started but sometimes we need extra buttering to get us going. Music can serve as grease!

This focus music has to be well chosen because listening to our every day playlists can be derailing. Especially since usually this music includes vocals, highs and lows. When trying to focus we try to be constantly on one task, one level. This should be reflected in the music we use to achieve said focus. The music should have little to no vocals and be with a more persistent flow. I myself have experimented with lots of different things. Of course I do enjoy my occasional lofi hip-hop session but I have found myself to thrive with other genres:

• Organic House:

I use this genre mostly for tasks that do not require deep focus. It is perfect for something like writing a first draft, doing practise exercises of an already studied chapter or trying to smoothly get into the study groove. The playlist is by Chris Luno, a one of a kind disk-jockey.

• Past Inside The Present

I used this playlist a lot in my last year of high school to study for my finals. It is great for deep work. Its stretched out sounds really help to stay on a single task. It is great to approach a novel situation like going over a new chapter’s exercises, writing that final paper or trying to understand how physics makes sense (SPOILER: sometimes it does).

• Classical Music

I only started using classical music as a focus tool earlier this year. It is why I can not really tell what kind of work it fits best. I have used it for all kinds of things and so far it has worked well. I really enjoyed it while doing chores but it was also helpful for doing schoolwork.

If you have noise cancelling headphones then I suggest you use them. It helps even further in creating an isolated workflow!

I hope you enjoyed this week's post!

See You again in 168 hours!