Hack #27. Play Mind Music
You can condition yourself to use your favorite music as a creative trigger, as well as a filter for environmental noise, and if you put it on your iPod or MP3 CD player, you'll always have it at hand.
Practically everyone has worked to music at one time or another, from late-night college study sessions to the night shift at a fast-food joint. Consider the beat of a drum to encourage a crew pulling at oars, or the fife and drum corps of an army. Music has always been used to change people's moods and get them to work together; it coevolved with ritual drama, which was also used to change people's state of mind.
However, what is appropriate for one situation might not be appropriate for another, and the same music that gets a team working in synchrony might be completely distracting for someone who is trying to think in solitude. The converse holds true, of course. Some kinds of music are appropriate for thinking that would probably be a drag on physical work.
In Action
Get yourself a good pair of headphones that are as sonically isolated as possible, and make yourself a mind music MP3 CD or playlist on your iPod that you can fill with music to help you concentrate and focus on thinking. You might already have an idea what music this might be; if not, see the "In Real Life" section of this hack for some ideas.
Condition yourself to think while this music is playing so that it becomes a kind of musical thinking cap: put it on and you become a thinker for the ...
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