CHAOTIC CONCENTRATION

My attention span isn’t what it used to be. I get distracted quite easily now. It could be anything… TV, the Internet, food, that piece of lint on my desk, the list goes on.

In undergrad, I used to mitigate this weakness of mine by going to the library. Also, back then I was a machine when it came to schoolwork. Hell, I guess it wasn’t a weakness back then anyways.

I’m lazy now, and it just takes too much damn energy to pack my crap up and hoof it over to some library where I may or may not get a decent place to study. Just thinking about the time and energy that I expended going to libraries makes me shudder.

So, I work in my room where I can do a million things other than study. I feel like I’m not productive most of the time. In an effort to stop this, I discovered a radically alternative method of making me concentrate. Instead of placing myself in a quiet environment conducive to studying and working, I go to the other extreme. I make it loud in my room.

I’m not talking about glam rock or metal or anything like that. The best thing that I’ve found so far is the first twenty minutes or so from Saving Private Ryan. I’m not sure why, but listening to arguably the most chaotic battle sequence in history of film allows me to focus on what I need to get done. I’ve done this with my speakers twice now, and once with my headphones. Something about the incessant chatter of machine-gun fire drowns out any thoughts I have of doing something else. I’m guessing it must be similar to those white noise generators some people use for sleeping.

I can’t do this with my normal speakers much more now. While I believe the soundproofing between walls here is good, I think my neighbours will probably want to kill me if I keep this up.

Maybe I should look into those white noise CDS. The headphones are ok, but nothing can replace the sweet boominess of a dedicated subwoofer.

Holy crap, what the hell am I doing writing for my blog at 4:30am in the morning?