Do You Recommend Listening to Music While Doing Deep Work?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC]

00:00:05.280 | All right, moving on here, we have a question from Rodrigo.

00:00:10.200 | Rodrigo asks, do you recommend listening to music

00:00:14.080 | while doing deep work?

00:00:17.040 | Well, it's up to you.

00:00:18.160 | Some people do, some people don't.

00:00:21.600 | What I always tell people when they ask about this

00:00:24.240 | is that music can help you drown out other distractions

00:00:29.160 | and get into the mood of deep work

00:00:31.200 | if you practice first doing deep work

00:00:34.000 | with that specific type of music.

00:00:35.820 | So it is a trainable thing.

00:00:39.160 | If you listen to the same Mozart sonatas

00:00:40.960 | every time you do deep work, the first few sessions,

00:00:43.720 | you might actually find it a little bit distracting.

00:00:46.000 | But after a while, your brain learns to filter it out,

00:00:49.440 | and it can be effective.

00:00:50.760 | So that's the only caveat I would give.

00:00:52.600 | The people who use music have practiced

00:00:54.760 | working with that music.

00:00:56.600 | This can get pretty extreme.

00:00:58.840 | And I do tell the story sometimes

00:01:00.360 | of a novelist I interviewed years ago who

00:01:03.040 | had four kids at home.

00:01:05.080 | It was a very noisy home.

00:01:06.920 | And he had to work there.

00:01:08.800 | And he wrote a lot.

00:01:09.640 | He was a self-published novelist who did a lot of word count.

00:01:13.000 | And what he did in the end was got NASCAR-style headphones.

00:01:17.880 | So they're heavily insulated, and you can also play audio

00:01:20.240 | through them.

00:01:21.560 | Because I guess at NASCAR, what you do

00:01:23.240 | is you wear these really insulated headset headphones,

00:01:27.400 | but you want the audio of the commentary playing.

00:01:30.480 | And he would put Metallica, would blast Metallica

00:01:34.040 | into these heavily insulated headphone speakers.

00:01:36.560 | So there was literally no sound from his kids.

00:01:38.440 | That's what it takes.

00:01:39.360 | And I have three kids, so I can attest to this.

00:01:41.160 | That is probably what it takes to actually eliminate

00:01:44.200 | the sound of your kids from your life if they're home

00:01:47.160 | and you are trying to work at home.

00:01:49.160 | That's what it really takes.

00:01:50.800 | He learned to write pretty productively with Metallica

00:01:54.040 | blasting in his ears.

00:01:56.200 | If I tried this now, it would be incredibly distracting.

00:02:00.640 | If I did this consistently for two weeks,

00:02:03.240 | my mind would easily tune it out.

00:02:04.640 | It would actually probably be pretty effective.

00:02:06.600 | So Rodrigo, it's all about practice.

00:02:09.440 | (upbeat music)

00:02:12.040 | (upbeat music)

00:02:14.620 | (upbeat music)

Do You Recommend Listening to Music While Doing Deep Work?

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