For the past three weeks, I've been experimenting with removing music from my worktime, no longer listening to it while I'm at the computer. I'd begun to suspect that I was addicted, and that I was listening to too much music, and that it was hurting my productivity. So far, the experiment seems to be confirming this, as my productivity's generally gone way up.
Most of this week, I thought I had past the "withdrawal" stage and was free of the addiction. I was rolling along without any temptation to put on music while working/studying. Listening instead to nature sounds, or to nothing at all except my environment.
Then I got news from a friend later in the week which really made me upset. It really knocked wind out of my sails for awhile, and I put some music on. In the past few days, I spent some time listening to music. Guess that means as far as a formal 30-day challenge goes, I've gotta start over. But there are still a lot of observations to report.
NO LONGER LISTENING TO MUSIC SO REPETITIVELY
Before, I had the habit of putting on a song, and listening to it on repeat, sometimes for hours. When I found a new band or piece of music I liked, I'd sometimes let it dominate my listening for an excessive amount of time, until it was totally worn out. I think the result was that each individual song had less total "life". It's like with socks. Wash and rotate a big selection of socks regularly, and they'll each last a long time, with each individual sock actually having a longer total lifetime. But wear the same socks too much, and they'll fall apart faster than you can buy them. Almost like the oils on your feet eat away at them (who knows, maybe that's exactly what happens?)
Anyway, after these three weeks of much-limited music, when I did put music on, I found I couldn't listen to the same song more than once or twice before getting an urge to change it. It's not that the song got old (quite the contrary, the songs are all new and fresh since I've been on this diet), it's more that I was keenly aware of how much better my experience would be by switching the song.
Related, I didn't find myself getting sucked so deeply into music listening as usual. After a half hour or an hour, I'd generally just turn the music off on my own. That is, without having to pump myself up or make some deliberate effort to "invoke self-discipline". I just naturally understood when I'd listened enough.
And also related, I've found my tastes in music length shifting. A lot of my favorite songs are megamixes which are over half an hour long, some of them over an hour long. Listening to one of these, I found myself "growing out" of it before it finished. Again, no deliberate effort, just a natural feeling that the mix had played long enough.
SPENDING LESS TIME ON THE INTERNET
When I got back from Japan, I made a whole bunch of resolutions, which I've been following with different levels of devotion. One of them was to drastically reduce how much time I spend at the computer/on the internet. I knew that I wasn't ready to immediately impose any reasonable specific time limit; neither could I go cold turkey, because my job actually requires some time at the computer. So, I carefully scheduled different time limits for different days, starting with obscenely large time limits and gradually decreasing the time limit, the idea being that I could slowly ease into more sane computer usage.
I found out, I wasn't ready even for such a gradual change. The plan lasted about a week (during which time the "time limits" were still so big they didn't make any difference anyway) before my determination ran out.
But now, doing the music diet, I just noticed I'm spending much less time on the computer, without even trying. I mean, I literally wasn't even aware of it until one day last week when I suddenly realized, "hey... I haven't been on the computer that much today!"
In my earlier posts on this topic, when I was first starting the experiment, I wrote about a phenomenon: I'd often finish whatever I was doing online, but be in the middle of a long megamix. And, of course, you can't just quit in the middle of a song (at least, that's what I was thinking)! But neither could I sit there listening to the song and doing nothing; so I'd go surf some other webpages for the duration of the song. But then when the song finished, I'd be in the middle of surfing those pages, and I couldn't just quit that midway through either, could I! And I couldn't do it silently, so I'd put on a new song! You see where this is leading... In a big, ugly circle!
Without the addictive, looong dance music, the vicious circle can't feed itself any more. Listening to nature sounds or nothing at all, when I finish what I need to do online, I simply get up and walk away. No self-discipline, no growling and pumping my fist to get up self determination, indeed no conscious thought at all. It would just be silly to continue, when I'd finished whatever I was doing!
MUSIC SOUNDS SO GOOD
My experiment is not to remove all music from my life; that would be impossible, unless I became a crazy hermit. I still have music at the gym, at restaurants, bars and clubs, even when I'm just passing by one of these places on the sidewalk. And, it sounds really, really good all of a sudden!
Last Thursday, walking home from my favorite dance venue, I passed a bar I'd never gone in before and noticed they had a (very local, very cheap, very indy) live band, and I went in on a whim. Now, I could've just gotten lucky and walked in on a really good, really under-appreciated band, so I can't for certain credit this entirely to the music diet. But standing there, in a nearly-empty bar listening to some musicians who could've still been in high school for all I knew, I was floored by how good they sounded! The first song they played almost moved me to tears. And this wasn't even music I'd normally describe as "my type".
That's a much more intense, awesome, fulfilling experience than listening to a lot of songs I've heard a million times before, sitting at the computer!
ABLE TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES ON MUTE
In one of my earlier reports, I pointed out how I got an urge to play FF7 in Japanese. The Japanese part was, I think, really just an excuse to sneak the game's extremely catchy soundtrack past my defenses. The Japanese was a Trojan horse and the game's addictive music was a host of Greek warriors who tore open the city gates of the music experiment.
Now, after three weeks of this experiment, I'm able to play FF7 (in Japanese) with the volume off. I find I concentrate much better on the Japanese, which is the whole productive reason for playing, and I have more fun, too.
And again, similarly to the megamixes, I now find I can only play the game for an hour or less before I feel it's time to move on to other things. Before, there was a real danger of getting sucked in and I could fritter away all day long on whatever video game I was doing, in part because the music would keep me locked in.
IS THIS THE LIMIT OF MY CURRENT SELF-DISCPLINE?
With all the positive results I've reported in this and the previous week reports, I still have yet to go an entire week without caving in to the desire to play music. Yes, I play it more responsibly now, but I still have been playing it, at least a few minutes, every day since about Wednesday, when I got the upsetting news from my friend.
It makes me wonder whether this is the limit of my self-discipline right now. Self-discipline is like a muscle, it has to be trained if you want it to be stronger. I'm wondering now whether the music diet is exactly at my self-discipline "muscle limit", since I'm allllmost able to do it, but not quite. It's like putting just exactly so much weight on a benchpress bar, that you can do a couple reps, but you can't do your normal rep amount (eight or ten or whatever you usually do).
Or maybe, it's natural, healthy, and even necessary to have a certain amount of music every day. It would be impossible to successfully go on an "anti-vitamin C diet" for much time at all before getting violently ill. I wonder whether I, and every normal human, might just naturally need a certain amount of music every day. It doesn't make a lot of sense biologically, considering our ancient ancestors had no headphones or mp3s, but maybe back then they got their "fix" through other means like the nature sounds all around them or something. I don't know. Right now the only thing I can say with absolute confidence is that I evidently have a lot still to learn. And I'll keep you posted as I learn more!
Here are the other articles in the music-addiction experiment:
Fighting Music Addiction: An Experiment
Drilling Flashcards Without Music
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 2
And some articles about self-discipline in general:
30 Day Article-A-Day Challenge Complete!
Training Self-Discipline
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Most of this week, I thought I had past the "withdrawal" stage and was free of the addiction. I was rolling along without any temptation to put on music while working/studying. Listening instead to nature sounds, or to nothing at all except my environment.
Then I got news from a friend later in the week which really made me upset. It really knocked wind out of my sails for awhile, and I put some music on. In the past few days, I spent some time listening to music. Guess that means as far as a formal 30-day challenge goes, I've gotta start over. But there are still a lot of observations to report.
NO LONGER LISTENING TO MUSIC SO REPETITIVELY
Before, I had the habit of putting on a song, and listening to it on repeat, sometimes for hours. When I found a new band or piece of music I liked, I'd sometimes let it dominate my listening for an excessive amount of time, until it was totally worn out. I think the result was that each individual song had less total "life". It's like with socks. Wash and rotate a big selection of socks regularly, and they'll each last a long time, with each individual sock actually having a longer total lifetime. But wear the same socks too much, and they'll fall apart faster than you can buy them. Almost like the oils on your feet eat away at them (who knows, maybe that's exactly what happens?)
Anyway, after these three weeks of much-limited music, when I did put music on, I found I couldn't listen to the same song more than once or twice before getting an urge to change it. It's not that the song got old (quite the contrary, the songs are all new and fresh since I've been on this diet), it's more that I was keenly aware of how much better my experience would be by switching the song.
Related, I didn't find myself getting sucked so deeply into music listening as usual. After a half hour or an hour, I'd generally just turn the music off on my own. That is, without having to pump myself up or make some deliberate effort to "invoke self-discipline". I just naturally understood when I'd listened enough.
And also related, I've found my tastes in music length shifting. A lot of my favorite songs are megamixes which are over half an hour long, some of them over an hour long. Listening to one of these, I found myself "growing out" of it before it finished. Again, no deliberate effort, just a natural feeling that the mix had played long enough.
SPENDING LESS TIME ON THE INTERNET
When I got back from Japan, I made a whole bunch of resolutions, which I've been following with different levels of devotion. One of them was to drastically reduce how much time I spend at the computer/on the internet. I knew that I wasn't ready to immediately impose any reasonable specific time limit; neither could I go cold turkey, because my job actually requires some time at the computer. So, I carefully scheduled different time limits for different days, starting with obscenely large time limits and gradually decreasing the time limit, the idea being that I could slowly ease into more sane computer usage.
I found out, I wasn't ready even for such a gradual change. The plan lasted about a week (during which time the "time limits" were still so big they didn't make any difference anyway) before my determination ran out.
But now, doing the music diet, I just noticed I'm spending much less time on the computer, without even trying. I mean, I literally wasn't even aware of it until one day last week when I suddenly realized, "hey... I haven't been on the computer that much today!"
In my earlier posts on this topic, when I was first starting the experiment, I wrote about a phenomenon: I'd often finish whatever I was doing online, but be in the middle of a long megamix. And, of course, you can't just quit in the middle of a song (at least, that's what I was thinking)! But neither could I sit there listening to the song and doing nothing; so I'd go surf some other webpages for the duration of the song. But then when the song finished, I'd be in the middle of surfing those pages, and I couldn't just quit that midway through either, could I! And I couldn't do it silently, so I'd put on a new song! You see where this is leading... In a big, ugly circle!
Without the addictive, looong dance music, the vicious circle can't feed itself any more. Listening to nature sounds or nothing at all, when I finish what I need to do online, I simply get up and walk away. No self-discipline, no growling and pumping my fist to get up self determination, indeed no conscious thought at all. It would just be silly to continue, when I'd finished whatever I was doing!
MUSIC SOUNDS SO GOOD
My experiment is not to remove all music from my life; that would be impossible, unless I became a crazy hermit. I still have music at the gym, at restaurants, bars and clubs, even when I'm just passing by one of these places on the sidewalk. And, it sounds really, really good all of a sudden!
Last Thursday, walking home from my favorite dance venue, I passed a bar I'd never gone in before and noticed they had a (very local, very cheap, very indy) live band, and I went in on a whim. Now, I could've just gotten lucky and walked in on a really good, really under-appreciated band, so I can't for certain credit this entirely to the music diet. But standing there, in a nearly-empty bar listening to some musicians who could've still been in high school for all I knew, I was floored by how good they sounded! The first song they played almost moved me to tears. And this wasn't even music I'd normally describe as "my type".
That's a much more intense, awesome, fulfilling experience than listening to a lot of songs I've heard a million times before, sitting at the computer!
ABLE TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES ON MUTE
In one of my earlier reports, I pointed out how I got an urge to play FF7 in Japanese. The Japanese part was, I think, really just an excuse to sneak the game's extremely catchy soundtrack past my defenses. The Japanese was a Trojan horse and the game's addictive music was a host of Greek warriors who tore open the city gates of the music experiment.
Now, after three weeks of this experiment, I'm able to play FF7 (in Japanese) with the volume off. I find I concentrate much better on the Japanese, which is the whole productive reason for playing, and I have more fun, too.
And again, similarly to the megamixes, I now find I can only play the game for an hour or less before I feel it's time to move on to other things. Before, there was a real danger of getting sucked in and I could fritter away all day long on whatever video game I was doing, in part because the music would keep me locked in.
IS THIS THE LIMIT OF MY CURRENT SELF-DISCPLINE?
With all the positive results I've reported in this and the previous week reports, I still have yet to go an entire week without caving in to the desire to play music. Yes, I play it more responsibly now, but I still have been playing it, at least a few minutes, every day since about Wednesday, when I got the upsetting news from my friend.
It makes me wonder whether this is the limit of my self-discipline right now. Self-discipline is like a muscle, it has to be trained if you want it to be stronger. I'm wondering now whether the music diet is exactly at my self-discipline "muscle limit", since I'm allllmost able to do it, but not quite. It's like putting just exactly so much weight on a benchpress bar, that you can do a couple reps, but you can't do your normal rep amount (eight or ten or whatever you usually do).
Or maybe, it's natural, healthy, and even necessary to have a certain amount of music every day. It would be impossible to successfully go on an "anti-vitamin C diet" for much time at all before getting violently ill. I wonder whether I, and every normal human, might just naturally need a certain amount of music every day. It doesn't make a lot of sense biologically, considering our ancient ancestors had no headphones or mp3s, but maybe back then they got their "fix" through other means like the nature sounds all around them or something. I don't know. Right now the only thing I can say with absolute confidence is that I evidently have a lot still to learn. And I'll keep you posted as I learn more!
Here are the other articles in the music-addiction experiment:
Fighting Music Addiction: An Experiment
Drilling Flashcards Without Music
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 1
Fighting Music Addiction: Week 2
And some articles about self-discipline in general:
30 Day Article-A-Day Challenge Complete!
Training Self-Discipline
Getting Motivated To Go Lift Weights
Posts
2 comments:
Hi,
Music might not be such a bad thing you know. e.g. Baroque music actually gives you a more conducive learning environment.
If you have to listen music, try Baroque, or at least instrumental ones. Vocals tend to be the distracting element.
Good luck!
found all your posts on your 'music addiction' really good. agree with a lot of the stuff you said, actually probably all of what you said.
keep up the good work
Post a Comment