Fidget!

LISTEN TO CLASSICAL MUSIC

Classical music is often touted as a virtual cure-all: it’s relaxing, satisfyingly instructive for young children, pleasing to the ears, and soothing for sleep. Although classical may not be your favorite music to jam to, it’s an excellent way to fidget with your ears without lifting a finger. Turn up a Bach playlist, or find some popular sonatas by Beethoven and Mozart. The notes, rhythms, and sweet sounds of these classical tunes stimulate the brain, improving everything from motor skills to mood and creativity. Classical music also aids concentration and focus, keeping your mind on task whether you’re cleaning the house, party planning, or reading a brand-new book.

These positive effects of classical music come from what’s called “the Mozart Effect.” A number of different scientific studies have tested the theory that classical music is the best type of sound to listen to while working. Surprisingly, each of those studies found that the brain flourishes while listening to classical songs, especially the works of Mozart. Overall, the Mozart Effect reveals that classical music helps expand spatialtemporal reasoning—the ability to think about concepts, plans, and more from a long-term perspective—and aids the mind in discovering unique solutions to logic-based problems. Create a playlist of Mozart’s most well-known songs, or pick your own beloved classical jams, and you’ll increase your concentration while cultivating better cognitive function as a whole.

PLAY AMBIENT TECHNO MUSIC OR INTELLIGENT DANCE MUSIC

Electronic Dance Music (EDM) bumps, pounds, fluctuates, and rushes through its beats, meant to draw bodies onto the floor to pulse, move, and flow. Dance music typically captures an upbeat mood, fast-paced and unrelenting in its buzzing, catchy rhythms. Yet dance music—more specifically, Intelligent Dance Music (IDM)—can also be ambient, down-tempo and calmer. Instead of turning on your favorite EDM songs, switch up your to-do playlist with IDM, and you’ll achieve better focus without wanting to get up and actually dance. Turn dance music into a fidget by opting for IDM or ambient music: songs that are more random and experimental in their patterns and composition and that use different sound tools like synthesizers.

IDM was created as an in-between step for dancers and partiers who move to electronic dance music for hours and hours. With all of the upbeat sounds and rhythms of traditional dance music, everyone needed a break—and Intelligent Dance Music was made for taking breaks. Down-tempo yet still positive, chill, and modern, IDM is slower-paced and quieter in its sounds than you might expect. It’s similar to ambient music made specifically to relax the mind and let thoughts roam while still inspiring creative thought. As a result, Intelligent Dance Music and ambient music are both excellent genres for easing anxiety and stress, as well as improving focus during cognitive tasks that require deep thought, such as hours of in-depth studying or memorization of new material.

WHISTLE WHILE YOU WORK

Have you ever stood up to give a well-rehearsed presentation and started speaking gibberish? Maybe you’ve bombed during a crucial sporting event or gone completely blank in the middle of an exam. One method of sound fidgeting can fix the problem of crumbling under pressure: whistling while you work. Whistling, or humming if you prefer, can improve work performance, calm an anxious mind, and help you succeed under pressure.

Psychologists at the University of Chicago studied how the brain works when overloaded with too many pieces of information. As we juggle responsibilities and tasks, our brains can have too much to process. That overwhelmed brain then causes choking—paralysis by analysis, according to the researchers. When we feel as though everything must go “right” or perfectly, our brain starts to overanalyze and process more than it should, leading to disaster.

Whistling, however, prevents the parts of the brain that can interfere with performance from taking control under stress. The act of pursing your lips and concentrating on a specific song relieves pressure on your working memory, the area of the brain that focuses on your biggest, most important task, and turns some of its attention to the smaller distraction of whistling. With your excess or nervous mental energy concentrated on your whistling, you can get to work giving that important wedding speech, hitting a crucial golf swing, or acing a standardized test with better overall performance and a clearer mind.

TUNE IN TO THE TICKING OF A CLOCK

Ticking clocks and watches make sounds that are almost imperceptible— until the rest of the room goes quiet. If you catch yourself unable to hear anything except that rhythmic and repetitive tick-tock sound, give in and let your mind follow the beat. Let the ticking sound fill your ears, resound in your head, and guide your own rhythm. Allow the hard and soft beats of the clock hands’ movements to push you, to keep your hands folding or cleaning or whatever else they need to do. The body has an internal rhythm of its own, and that rhythm can be altered by other paced and repetitive beats.

Japanese researchers studied the effects of clock ticking on individuals’ performance while working. The study asked participants to perform tasks while the sound of a ticking clock played either quickly or slowly. While the fast clock had no impact on the group, the slower rhythm slowed down the participants’ working speed. However, this was found to be a positive effect as the slower pace led to smoother, more accurate work. A slower-paced ticking sound lowered pulses, leading to improvement in quality of work and calmer, less-stressed participants. Zone in on the ticking of the noisy clock in your kitchen or the movement of a particularly loud watch in the workplace, and you’ll be able to better complete any task.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BREATHING

Breathing is automatic and not something most of us pay much attention to. In fact, it may be such a background activity that you catch yourself holding your breath without realizing it during exercise or breathing shallowly and rapidly while trying to race against a looming deadline. When distractions start to tug at your eyes or your thoughts, take a pause and use the sound of your inhales and exhales as a fidget.

Get your breathing and your brain concentrated with one of the following exercises, listening to the sound of your breath during each:

• Alternate breathing through each nostril. Take a breath in through the left side of your nose, holding your finger against your right; exhale through the left side. Take another breath in through the right side of your nose and repeat several times.

• Take deep breaths with audible exhales. Inhale with your nose, taking a breath that fills your chest with air. Open your mouth slightly and push the air out, hearing yourself exhale.

• Try the 4-7-8 breath pattern. Take a breath inward for 4 seconds, then hold that breath silently for 7 seconds. Blow the breath out with your mouth slowly, counting to 8 seconds. Try to make a whooshing sound as you exhale so you can hear the release.

Fidget with your breathing rhythms and you can sharpen your focus again. Listening to the sound of your own breathing as you follow different exercises draws your mind into what’s present and pressing: the emails you’re trying to read, the online lecture you’re trying to follow, the knitting pattern you’re trying to master. Concentrating on the sounds of your inhalation and exhalation, the inward and upward intake and the slow blow outward, allows distractions to fade into the background and renews your focus.

REPEAT WHAT YOU HEAR ALOUD

Did you lose focus while chatting with your coworker about the numbers you need to complete a project? Can’t remember what, exactly, the caterer said during your phone call? It’s easy to lose focus and completely miss information when you’re zoning out, especially if the information you’re hearing is flat. Take a page from a parrot’s book of tricks and repeat what you hear out loud to fidget your way back to a focused, alert mind.

Repeating what’s said is a way to keep your ears and your mind focused on what you’re hearing without missing a beat. Instead of shifting your attention to people walking around in the background or the dull hum of the air conditioner, keep your focus on the conversation at hand by repeating what was just said. This form of fidgeting offers clarification and makes you engage with the activity in front of you. As an added benefit, you’ll also become a better listener by adopting the skills of active listening.

It’s not as weird as it sounds. Here are a few examples of how you can practice active listening and repeat what you hear without drawing odd glances:

• Repeat numbers or facts for clarification: “So that’s one hundred and sixty-two place settings we’ll need for Saturday at nine a.m., right?”

• Acknowledge others’ mentions of their feelings or concerns: follow up a comment about deadline-related worries with, “I understand being worried we won’t be able to meet that deadline.”

• Confirm your own role in a larger project: “Yes, I will be responsible for bringing the cake on June twelfth.”

LISTEN TO YOUR TO-DO LIST

A to-do list is meant to tighten your focus on the most important tasks you need to accomplish over the course of a day, a week, or whatever the given period of time. They’re meant to be concise: only the most important items make the list. Yet obviously the act of creating a to-do list doesn’t mean you’re going to stay laser focused on those listed projects; distraction can still pull us away from our best intentions. Lists are also easily forgotten, sometimes just a few minutes after they’ve been made.

Instead of writing your tasks down and moving on, turn your to-do list into a vocal and auditory fidget to keep yourself on track. Once you’ve crafted your list for the day ahead, take a break every few hours to read what’s left on the list out loud. You can also rely on your smartphone, tablet, or other smart device to read your to-do list aloud to you.

The auditory action of listening to our to-do lists forges links between our brain and our ears. Research indicates that the auditory-memory link is strong: subjects who read itemized lists out loud are better at recalling those lists than those who simply scan them visually, probably because visual memory isn’t as strong as auditory memory. Hearing rather than just seeing your list makes you more likely to remember, and therefore accomplish, everything on it!

READ YOUR WORK ALOUD

Distracted reading is useless reading. How many times have you struggled to understand the words on the page, watching them swim in circles as you reread the same batch of lines repeatedly? The next time you crack open a book, work on analyzing a poem, or craft a letter to your extended family, read your writing out loud as you go. Read entire pages, paragraphs, stanzas, or emails out loud, and you’ll fidget your way to improved information retention, better concentration, and increased engagement.

When you’re reading while distracted, you aren’t engaged with the content or the overall message of what you’re reading, and you’re less likely to remember what, exactly, you just consumed. Long understood as an excellent approach to editing and correcting written works, reading aloud helps draw your attention to aspects of writing you didn’t notice when reading with your eyes alone. Hearing phrases, sentences, pauses, and intonation points out problem areas and statements that are unclear.

Reading your work out loud also brings the words into the brain’s memory center, helping to improve your concentration, comprehension, memory retention, and engagement with the words on the page. Students who read material out loud are significantly better at recalling facts and details than silent readers are; research also indicates that reading material out loud helps the brain pay particular attention to words and concepts that are new and different. Fidget with the way you read, and you just might hone your learning skills along with your focus.

MIMIC THE SOUNDS OF A BUSY COFFEE SHOP

If you want to focus your mind, work more efficiently, and spark your imagination, head to your local coffee shop: tune in to the dull murmur of others’ conversations; the hum of machines and background music; and the sounds of people walking and moving around, and you’ll likely see a positive difference in your output. The sounds of a coffee shop are a great auditory fidget, offering background noise at just the right moderate level that encourages most of our minds to do deeper thinking, with better creativity and increased focus.

This fidget doesn’t even require you to leave your house or office! If doing so isn’t an option, you can mimic a coffee shop environment and surround yourself with the noises of bustling baristas, coffee spurting machines, and chattering customers by downloading an app or playlist featuring these familiar sounds.

Coffee shops feature ambient noise, the kinds of sounds that are lively enough to capture a small part of your attention yet unengaging enough that you can tune out the details. According to ambient noise research published in the Journal of Consumer Research, the buzzy background sounds that can be heard in an average café are the perfect mix for creativity. Broader thinking, creativity, and new ideas sprout when we’re surrounded by ambient noise—and the results of several experiments show that moderate noise is just distracting enough to provide the perfect balance for focusing on and accomplishing work. The bland, uninteresting noise helps guide your concentration toward that homework assignment, interesting article, or coding project you’re trying to complete.

ENJOY SOME SARCASM

No, really.

The clever wisecracks and snarky quips of your coworkers, friends, and even random strangers can spark creativity and insight as you work on a task. Up your sarcasm fluency and you’ll start thinking outside the box, finding new solutions to problems, thinking more clearly and abstractly, and becoming more creative—a perfect mix for better focus during a long, dull task.

What makes hearing sarcasm a fun and effective fidget is the creative basis of sarcasm itself. In a 2005 study, researchers found that sarcasm is a unique form of commentary and mental activity. Many people, including a large number of the study’s participants, misinterpret sarcasm and find it difficult to understand. However, the study discovered that those who understood and picked up on sarcasm both in person and via email correspondence were better abstract thinkers. A more recent study from 2015 found that those who could identify sarcastic comments performed better on creative tasks. Being able to pick up on verbal irony and the act of understanding its exaggerated nature requires a creative orientation, and that same clarity and innovative thinking is directly applied to other tasks when you’re in the proximity of sarcasm.

Both those who doled out sarcastic comments and those who heard them or saw them written out were seen to reap the benefits of this sound-based fidget. Just make sure you use sarcasm sparingly; those around you might not appreciate your approach to concentrating and sparking creativity as much you do!

CHOOSE A LOUD, CLICKING KEYBOARD

No matter how slowly, quickly, softly, or powerfully you type on any keyboard, there’s an unavoidable clicking sound that comes with the tap of every key. Some, like many computer coders, enjoy the sound of their fingertips tapping away. If you’re something of a quiet key-tapping typist, you can create a clicking, tapping soundtrack for your household chores, data entry, or study sessions thanks to apps and online playlists that loop the sound of typing at a loud keyboard for hours on end. You can also upgrade to a louder keyboard—yes, they sell loud keyboards on purpose—if you want to fidget to get your brain in the zone of concentration every time you have something to type.

Tap into the power of a keyboard’s clicking sound and use it as a way to fidget toward better focus and renewed concentration. The underlying logic behind loud, clicking keyboards and the sound of fast, aggressive typing is part mindless motion and part slightly distracting noise. The familiar, repetitive motion of hitting each key feeds the mind’s desire to settle on something constant and unexciting. With every loud clicking sound, your brain tunes in to the rhythm of your fingers tapping at each key—and the tapping of typing creates a consistent, ambient sound that distracts just enough to allow your mind to concentrate on the larger, more critical task at hand.

LISTEN TO THE SOCIAL SOUNDS OF PLEASANT CONVERSATION

If the pile of papers sitting before you is numbing your ability to focus, or the stacks of wedding invitations that need to be stamped and sealed are beginning to swim before your eyes, fidget your way back to concentration and refreshed energy by listening to the sound of people talking. Sit in an area that features significant traffic, like the office break room, to fill your ears with conversations. When your focus is starting to fade, you can also strike up a conversation with whoever’s nearby—a total stranger is best, but a friend or familiar face works too.

Whether you’re sleepy or just mentally burned out by a single task, listening to people’s conversations provides the jolt of focus and energy that you need to keep going. Getting a small burst of social interaction is reenergizing, helping you feel as though you’re taking a break and becoming engaged with the world beyond your desk, your laundry room, or your classroom.

When getting up and chatting isn’t always possible, you can fidget with your ears without leaving your seat by listening to realistic conversations on web videos and achieve the same positive effects. Listening to a soundtrack of people talking also provides ambient background noise while you work, letting your brain both tune in and tune out so you can better focus on licking those envelopes or sorting through those papers.

ADD THE SOUNDS OF NATURE TO YOUR SPACE

A river running over rocks and splashing against sandy banks; leaves waving in the wind, rubbing against tree branches; the whooshing of wind as it blows through tall grass and the trails of the forest. These nature sounds and many more are auditory fidgets, featuring low-level noise that soothes while providing a small amount of stimulating distraction. Whether you choose to use a playlist, app, or other white-noise device with a nature sounds setting, the noises of trees rustling, animals chattering, and brooks babbling work to improve concentration, soothe feelings of stress, enhance productivity, and boost your mood.

Just as looking at images of nature and greenery—the visual version of this fidget—offers a boost in concentration and a shot of energy, so too does tuning in to a soundtrack of nature’s most familiar noises. Research conducted by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studied the incorporation of nature sounds into the workplace and found the benefits were substantial for focus, stress, productivity, and overall mood. Researchers played nature-based sounds, such as flowing water from a stream or the crashing waves of the ocean, while participants worked as they normally would in an office setting. The researchers found that natural sounds helped employees block out more distracting noises, such as a loud meeting or laughter from a break room, yet weren’t so loud or unpredictable that they negatively impacted focus. Rather, the background sounds of a breeze blowing, a whale cooing, or the patter of raindrops made individuals happier while working and more focused on their projects. Nature, unlike white noise, causes a relaxation response in the brain that alleviates stress and instills calm. The combination of soothing and minimally distracting nature sounds makes for more effective and productive people, whether you’re working on reorganizing your closet or crafting your next presentation.

TUNE IN TO THE SOUND OF CHANGING BEATS

Classical music and Intelligent Dance Music bring brain benefits when it comes to fidgeting and focus, but other types of music help concentration too. One example is music with a set number of beats that changes subtly as a song plays. What is it about those specific kinds of songs that lure us into the perfect focus with the sound guiding us to keep our attention on task?

Part of the fidgety magic of music lies in a song’s number of beats per minute and how those beats change once you’re entranced and focused to keep your concentration steady. When you listen to music, you’re giving your brain something to amuse itself with, letting your mind engage with the sounds yet not pull your attention completely away. Songs with 128 beats per minute, with each beat separated by approximately 120 milliseconds, are best, according to music productivity expert Will Henshall. Henshall also recommends music that increases its beats every so often, upping from 128 to 132 beats per minute. This change ensures that your brain remains interested and engaged, which in turn keeps your focus locked on whatever you’re working on. You won’t even notice the change in beat, but your subconscious will, and the results will show in increased productivity.

PUSH AND POP SUCTION CUPS

There’s something so satisfactory about yanking a suction cup off its flat, tightly sealed surface and hearing the loud pop that results. Play with the sound once, twice, or for a full minute when you need a brain break—or keep one hand on something that suctions so you can create the sound repeatedly while trying to think. If the sucking snap sound pleases your ears, use it to fidget your way to stimulated focus that gets you engaged in your work.

While suction cups do have a physical, tactile side as a fidgeting tool, the sound is what carries the greatest impact and positive effect for many. The sound generated when a suction cup is freed is stimulating, capturing the brain via auditory connections. When you find yourself waning in the face of a chore that isn’t interesting or thought provoking, you can reengage your brain and restore your attention by creating the familiar and somewhat surprising sound that comes from suction cups.

Some different types of suction toys that make the most perfect pops (and can also fulfill other forms of fidgeting) are suction construction sets, or small colorful suction cups that secure onto one another or on any flat surface, and water timers with a suction base. These exciting suction cup items combine visual fidgets and touch fidgets with satisfying sound that aids concentration, creating a fun and inviting way to focus.

LISTEN TO MUSIC MADE BY BIRDS

Take your nature-sounds fidget a step further for improved focus: fill your ears with the sounds and songs of birds. The notes of a nightingale’s song, the continuous patter of a woodpecker, the chirps of a blue jay, and a dove’s cooing all create the same effect: cognitive stimulation that increases focus, betters brain function, and invigorates energy.

According to several studies, bird songs both relax and stimulate the brain. These songs signal that the sun is rising and the day is beginning; they’re familiar sounds that we hear each and every day. At the same time, the clattering of birds marks the cycle of dawn and evening to our internal clocks. So, when you’re staring mindlessly at a task you just can’t drum up focus for, like a series of boring homework questions or sorting through survey responses, birdsong lifts your energy levels and increases your ability to concentrate.

Whether you choose to listen to a birdsong soundtrack in a normally quiet environment or use the chirps and tweets to drown out more distracting noises, this auditory fidget will improve your attention and ability to knock projects off your to-do list.

PART 4

SOUND