When I first heard of Matt’s practice of listening to a single song on repeat in order to focus, I truly thought he was mad. The idea of listening to the same song over and over again seemed like a modern version of Chinese water torture.
Then I tried it.
I don’t recall what song in particular I was listening to, but it was on in the background as I hit a particular mental stride with a problem I was solving, so I restarted the song to maintain the beat. Then I did so again. And again. And again. Eventually, I hit the “repeat” button in Google Music until it was set to “Repeating Current Song.”
I’ve been rather shocked by the effect this practice has. Many of the posts I published in January, and the contributions I made to work-related projects, benefited. In fact, I’m currently listening to Billy Joel’s “C’Etait Toi (You Were the One)” as I compose this post.
Matt talked about this behaviour when he appeared on Tim Ferris’s podcast and his post about the same inspired Joseph Mosby to write about the related psychology.
I never thought I’d adopt this practice, but I now have playlists named “Strong beats for coding,” “Classical for writing,” and so on, and my Google Music player is almost always on repeat.