4 ms·

"* Use triggers and condition yourself to concentrate on the triggers. For me it's original-flavor Trident gum + rainymood.com + somafm.com/play/groovesalad."

• astrofinch 15y ago
  Yes. Whenever I want to concentrate, I choose something to work on, set a 50-minute timer, pop in some gum, and turn on the rain noises and ambient music. Then I focus like hell for 50 minutes until the timer rings, take a 10-minute-break where I walk to another room and daydream, and repeat. The idea here is to leverage classical conditioning. Just like Pavlov conditioned his dogs to drool on the bell, you want to condition yourself to focus when you're chewing original-flavor Trident gum and listening to rain noises and ambient music. This means that if at any time during the 50 minutes you feel your concentration starting to slip significantly, take out the gum and turn off the sounds. This is so you can avoid ruining your trigger. You want the association between gum + rain + ambient music and Getting Stuff Done to be as strong as possible. I didn't choose these triggers at random, by the way. See the following links: For chewing gum: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/redefining-stress/200902/retraining-the-adhd-brain http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/redefining-stress/200902... For ambient music: http://www.reddit.com/comments/6l9t9/best_background_music_for_programming http://www.reddit.com/comments/6l9t9/best_background_music_f... For rainymood.com: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/805cp/need_some_space_and_quiet_for_your_coding_but/c07vsae http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/805cp/need_some... But you can certainly choose your own set of triggers if you like. Just one might be enough.