This is Your Brain on Brain FM
By Anna Elliott | January 7, 2016 |
© Nevit Dilmen via Wikimedia Commons
My daily writing time tends to be fragmented. Really, really fragmented. I homeschool my two oldest kids and have a toddler running around and creating mayhem, too. It’s no harder or more hectic I’m sure than trying to write and hold down a day job, but I do sometimes struggle with snapping myself from parenting/teaching mode into writing/creative mode and back again on a dime– or rather during the 10-20 minute windows I usually get to do some work. Enter (cue dramatic music) Brain FM. Have you heard of Brain FM? I hadn’t, until my husband happened to see it advertised, decided to give it a try, and then recommended it to me.
Now, to be clear, I have no affiliation or contact whatsoever to brain FM, beyond my husband having paid for a subscription, so no one is paying me to write this post or anything. I just tried it, thought it was pretty cool, and thought fellow WU-ers might like to give it a try.
But what exactly IS Brain FM you ask? It’s an audio brainwave training program designed to help you focus, relax, or sleep, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. You can learn more about it here:
https://www.brain.fm/
But basically, you go to the site, click the button indicating what you’re hoping to be doing (focus, relax, or sleep) and then pop in your headphones. You’ll need to create an account profile, but you get several free sessions so you can test it out without having to pay anything. You can also fill out a question and answer survey to help the program better tailor the audio track to your particular personality/brain. The program will start playing an audio track designed to help your brain block out distractions and focus on the task. The tracks come in 30 minute sessions, and if you don’t like the particular track playing or don’t feel it’s helpful, you can click the “skip” button at the bottom of the screen and try a different one.
I haven’t tried to use the program for relaxing or sleeping as yet, only for working. But I must say the results were pretty dramatic. Almost instantly, the part of my brain that thinks about things like what-am-I-going-to-make-for-dinner, and did-I-remember-to-put-the-laundry-in-the-dryer felt like it had been effectively shut off, allowing me to snap into writing mode much more quickly than usual.
I personally am the kind of writer that does not like ANY noise whatsoever while I’m writing. I have of necessity adjusted to writing with the noises of child chaos filtering up from downstairs, but I never, ever listen to music or anything like that while I’m writing. So after maybe 20 minutes of Brain FM, once I felt like I was thoroughly in the zone of my book, I wound up shutting the program off and taking out my headphones, because listening was distracting me a little bit from listening to my characters. But that may well be just me, and even still, the ease with which I was able to get into the zone was well worth it. My husband is a computer programmer and he swears by how much the audio tracks help him to concentrate.
As far as I’ve experienced, there are no side effects. The site mentions a few possible minor ones, like tingling sensations from increased blood flow, etc., but I haven’t noticed any. All in all, if you’re looking to change up your writing routine for the new year or jump-start your ability to focus, I’d say that Brain FM is well worth a look.
What about you? Have you ever tried Brain FM or something similar? Do you like silence or background noise while you write?
Anna Elliott is an author of historical fiction and fantasy. Her first series, the Twilight of Avalon trilogy, is a retelling of the Trystan and Isolde legend. She wrote her second series, the Pride and Prejudice Chronicles, chiefly to satisfy her own curiosity about what might have happened to Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, and all the other wonderful cast of characters after the official end of Jane Austen’s classic work. She enjoys stories about strong women, and loves exploring the multitude of ways women can find their unique strengths. Anna lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and three children.
Wow, thank you Anna! I have always been a work-in-silence person but also believe firmly in the power of music to influence our brains and metabolisms. I will definitely give this a try!
Both my husband and I have found it super helpful. Let me know what you think!
I haven’t used Brain FM, but I have an app called Brainwave Sharp Mind on my iPhone and it does essentially the same thing. You select the brainwaves for what you want to accomplish (such as focus) and then pick an ambient track to go over it. This could be nature sounds, which are on the app, or you can link to your favorite playlist. I don’t listen to music when I write, but I don’t find the rainfall soundtrack distracting. It drowns out the brainwave sound for the most part, but my brain obviously responds to it. My mind tends to wander to other things I need to do, and I don’t get further than “Maybe I need to…” before snapping right back to what I’m doing. I highly recommend trying one of these programs!
That sounds very similar, Kim– and that’s exactly the benefit that I find. I start to think, Maybe I should . . . But then snap back to focus.
Hi Anna: I’ve never heard of Brain FM. I tend to use classical music when I write–lots of Mozart and Tchaikovsky (Beethoven when I want to soar) and I find it quite effective to sooth or stimulate. So, it blocks out normal sounds and directly alters brain wave activity?I’m a little scared. Can you tell us the kinds of sounds you are listening to? Is it music or something else? Do you enjoy listening to it?
Hi Paula! The sound is . . . like music without any discernible “melody” if that makes any sense. The closest I can come is comparing it to a sound track of wales’ songs, with a bit of a percussive beat interspersed. It’s pleasant, but not catchy enough to be distracting. The site has links to loads of scientific studies about safety, etc, which quite frankly I have only barely skimmed through because I never have time. :-) So I guess if my ears suddenly start leaking smoke, we’ll all know why. :-) But it so far hasn’t had any negative effects on either me or my husband.
Thank you! I thought I was the only one who couldn’t listen to music or TV when writing. Funny though, I can tune things out in a public space. Go figure.
I know! So many authors have a playlist of music for their books that I almost feel like I’m doing something wrong that I can’t listen to music while writing . . . But I just totally can’t. I can’t do public spaces, either– I wind up people watching. :-)
sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
It’s very interesting, Carol. Our brains are such amazing mechanisms!
Thanks, Anna, I’ll give it a try!
Dee Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Let me know what you think, Denise!
Thanks for this tip, Anna! I’d never heard of Brain FM before; I just gave it a try while working, and it really did seem to help me focus — I liked the music it chose for me, too. I’m going to investigate further.
That’s awesome, Victoria! I hope you like it!
Background noise that doesn’t become the main focus of what’s surrounding you or in this case me is preferable. I write in sprints. I don’t believe it’s a good idea to sit down at a chair for eight hours in a row without so much as getting up and walking around every hour or two, and I find I’m most creative when away from the keyboard.
That’s so true– we all need brain breaks, I think, or we lose focus.
Anna–thank you for alerting fellow writers to the “wave of the future” in productivity maximization. If brain FM works for you, all to the good.
I have to say, though, that your post conjures for me some images in competition with writing efficiency. I see you with ear buds in place, fully immersed in the creative process. You’re no longer even half aware of “child chaos filtering up from downstairs.” But eventually the brain FM recording shuts off, and you go down to check on the little ones. Won’t you find yourself standing in what used to be a neighborhood in Damascus, or Fallujah? What about dinner? Will it be kung pow chicken every night? After months of brain FM have silenced your washing machine, won’t everyone’s clothes resemble coconut husks?
Jokes aside, if brain FM can actually promote sleep, THAT is something I’d be interested in.
Barry, it would take an absolute miracle for my little ones to leave me alone for that long, whether or not I’m using Brain FM. :-) My six year old is currently waiting for me to finish typing this comment, and has interrupted me no less than 6 times in the course of 2 sentences. :-)
I went to try it immediately after reading this post. I noticed the results in SECONDS. Ten minutes ago I was sitting at my laptop like every other morning, reading my regular blogs and comics while trying to fire up my brain after too little sleep. After I turned this on, I thought, “Let’s do this,” opened up my first draft and wrote the line where I’d left off after struggling with it last time. Currently brimming with creative energy and impatient to finish his comment. This works. You can try it for free for seven sessions, and I strongly recommend everyone to at least give it a try. Thank you for posting about this.
That’s fantastic! So glad you found it helpful, too.
Hi, Anna:
Focus? Who has a problem with focus?
Or sleep. Ha!
I tried once using Gregorian chant to help me drift off and was woefully dissatisfied. But I did get in an hour or two of worthwhile music appreciation.
Like you, I find music distracting when I write, though I have used certain pieces as focus-mood enhancers. Usually they are atmospheric, atonal (or at least nothing distinctly melodic), and absolutely devoid of words. (Example: Richard Strauss, Death and Transfiguration.) So I may give this (Brain FM) a whirl to see if it’s genuinely helpful.
And yet, because of how my mind works, I’m sure, as I’m listening, niggling little doubts will emerge, such as fears that, beneath the task-enhancing music, a voice only my subconscious can hear will be whispering: Eat more Cheetos… Eat more Cheetos …
Ha! Well, I guess if I start craving Chetos, I’ll know where it’s coming from. :-)
That’s too funny, Dave! I’m suspicious of this stuff as well … but will give it a whirl.
Just tried it and liked it a lot. I’ve been writing steadily since 1999. I used to write to music all the time, but I got out of the habit. Time to break out the harp music and the soundtrack to “The Piano.”
That’s great, Victoria! And that sounds like lovely music to write to, too.
Trying it now. I like the first track a lot. Thanks for the tip, Anna!
Excellent, Cheryl, glad if you find it helpful!
I like silence when I’m writing too, but Brain.fm sounds cool. I have tried some CDs in the past, called Brainwave Suite by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, that are supposed to do something similar. I think they helped, although I’m not sure the results were all that dramatic for me.
Very interesting!
I DO write with music all the time, often movie scores or classical. The new Battlestar Galactica score is fantastic! With certain stories, I do wonderfully with music that fits the setting or the characters. I have many playlists for different stories and characters. If I’m very familiar with the songs, even lyrics don’t bother me if they suit the character.
My brain even seems to set up the playlists for me. One story was set in Wales and Scotland, so I was listening to a lot of Brit Pop whether I was writing or not. When I switched stories, I was craving the classic rock of my youth for the first time in ages. Took me a few days to realize the story was set in Illinois in the 80s. Of COURSE my tastes changed! :)
I did just try one of the Brain.fm focus tracks, and I quite enjoyed it. And yeah, I got a scene finished that I’ve been struggling with for a while. I’ll definitely go through the free tracks, and likely more if the results are this good.
Thank you for the tip!
Hey everyone, Adam Hewett from Brain.fm here. Turns out, I have some friends who are WU members and so this popped up in my twitter feed.
Really great to see all the positive responses here!
Oh how I envy you. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. But come to think of it, everyone I know has the same dream – it’s just you guys are actually making it happen.
I’m happy to do my part. If I can’t write, maybe I can help writing happen. :)
I’m a reading addict, so you guys are my enablers. One time a friend of mine got to stay in Kerouac’s house in Orlando and I begged her until she let me stay in his room for a couple days. Now that’s off my bucket list, only a couple ten thousand authors left to openly deify. (hah!)
I’ve tried writing. It’s not that I’m too bad at it, I’m just not that great, and it just doesn’t flow for me. It takes me days to get into the flow. And for me one of the curses of reading is that with every good book I increase my own barrier to entry to writing anything any good! :D
Anyway, back to what I’m good at. I see a lot of writers who usually work in silence. I’m the same way – I used to buy gun-range headphones, the kind that would block out a shopvac inches from your face. But who would have suspected that sound can actually supersede silence? Turns out, if the sound is built from the ground up, it can be many times better than silence. Silence, in itself, can be a distraction. Plus, sound can be used intrinsically to get you more focused than you would in any case.
Example: we use our own 3D audio placement technology, which allows the placement of sounds anywhere in 3D space around the listener, using just stereo headphones (earbuds work even better! – closer to the ear canal). Many of the focus sessions do this. They place sounds around you to act as a kind of interference. A buffer. (We tested these in coffee shops so the Brain.fm audio is positioned specifically to block sound from other patrons, as well as wall speakers). Here’s how it works: your mind tends to pay attention to what is in motion closest to you. Slow moving, non-distracting sound appearing in the space a foot or two around you will unconsciously draw your mind’s attention away than the hipsters talking about nietzsche or the barista dislodging coffee grounds in a way that implies a serious physical assault on the trash can. Eventually, since the Brain.fm sound all around you is non-threatening (socially, mentally or physically), you begin to ignore the scene completely and focus on your work. Cool huh?
We used to have a category specifically for this! I actually intended it for writers. But, it was rarely used. Ah well, maybe some day. It would be fairly easy to bring back in the future. There is an increasing interest. On a podcast we did recently the guy was using it for this and had much the same thoughts that you all have.
I’m curious to know which categories you are all using? Relaxed or Intense focus? How long does it take for you to get into the writing “zone”. I don’t mean when you feel focused – that happens very rapidly for most people. I’m talking about the writer’s zone. Where your whole mind is in the book – characters all having a life of their own, conversations, making unexpected turns beyond your control. I think writers have a very special kind of “zone” that I’m very interested in.
Also happy to answer any questions!
Sorry about the novel above – although it would be just too ironic to do a tl;dr in this particular forum ;)
Thanks again everyone!
P.S. If you guys want, I could get a special discount for WU members. Just have the WU overlords email me.
@Anna Elliot: I LOVE historical fiction. Bernard Cornwell, Sharon Kay Penman… So I’m expecting great things! :) Also I was home-schooled until the last year of high school. How old are your kids?
Hi Adam! Thanks so much for stopping by! So nice to hear from a homeschooling graduate, too. My kids are 9, 6, and 2. Huge thanks coming your way from my husband, who loves Brain FM even more than I do, and I do like it a lot. (My husband is the world’s biggest skeptic about all such products, and when I told him about the topic for this post, his exact words were, “I’m starting to think no one should work without it”)
I use the ‘intense’ focus program. I’ve never tried the relaxed one, so no idea how it would work. I would say that how fast I get into the writing zone depends on the day and the story and what particular scene I’m working on– how vividly I’m able to imagine myself into my characters’ heads and how connected I feel to them at that particular point. And possibly how much noise my children are making. :) Average maybe 20 minutes?
Also, don’t give up on writing just because it doesn’t come easily/right away! It’s a rare writer who finds it easy, believe me– you just don’t see all the background struggle on the finished page. (You’re also probably not seeing all the discarded practice novels that the author wrote before the one that was actually good enough for public eyes!) Not that you HAVE to write, because not everyone needs to write a book, obviously, to succeed in life– and you’re already doing great work. But if it’s a dream that just won’t let you go, then commit to making it happen. Rachel Aaron has a fabulous post about that on her blog this week: https://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2016/01/writing-wednesday-pay-yourself-first.html
Thanks and all best to you!
20 minutes! Wow. Just wow. Amazing.
You’re right, it’s often all too easy to assume people have innate talents without seeing all the hard work and failures in the past. I should know. It’s impossible to insult me – call me gay, ginger, stupid, but don’t ever call me lucky. :)
So glad you’re husband’s liking it too. You HAVE to be a skeptic today. So much bullshit out there.
And best of luck to you and your kids! Relevant to this discussion, when I went back to school for my final year, I had no trouble assimilating socially, aside from the stereotype of homeschoolers as westbro baptist nutjobs. But I did find that people were suddenly using words and turns of phrase that I had never heard. Clever things that I wanted a piece of. (And I don’t have dumb parents – my dad used the word “laborious” so much I would get made fun of by the faculty in West Virginia kindergarten for using words I just made up). In my final year of public high school I kept a journal at all times, and would constantly write words to look up and phrases to integrate. Luckily the evidence of this embarrassing act was destroyed in a flood of 2005. But, I was home schooled 20 years ago, and without as much of an internet. No doubt kids face different problems these days, or hopefully, none at all. Actually I wonder if anyone talks in school cafeterias today. I’m picturing a silent room lit only by the reflected light of a thousand adolescent faces and the contentment of all modern lunch ladies. (off topic but I love that Ann Leckie’s bio begins with “former lunch lady” haha!)
Hope to be reading one of your books soon!
Thanks! This sounds like something worth trying and see if it helps.
I tried this last night without headphones, and didn’t really see much change. So I tried it just now WITH headphones (as they recommend) and started my normal daily writing session. Typically I average about 1,200 words per hour (I know this because I’m also tracking how much of an improvement in productivity I see when writing at my new walking desk—about a 25%-50% improvement in words per hour, incidentally). On a really good day, I might do as many as 1,600 words in an hour. In this session, listening to Brain FM, I did more than 2,000 words in an hour, which is more than I’ve ever been able to do before. I plan to keep testing out a few more of the free sessions, but if this effect keeps up, it’s definitely a service worth paying for.
Hi Anna, thanks for the pointer to Brain.FM I will try it. I’ve been using something called Focus @ Will (https://www.focusatwill.com/) for the last year. It’s instrumental music scientifically designed to improve focus. There are several channels, including a coffee house one that includes the sounds of a typical coffee shop mixed into the music.
Previously I was a complete silence fan. I find that focus@will keep me at the page significantly longer and into the work faster. So for folks who enjoy music but find it distracting. This could be just the thing.
I have an office with a open balcony on one side, so focus can be difficult for me as voices float up from the main level, constantly interrupting my thought flow. I decided to give this a try, and ended up buying the lifetime subscription. Thanks so much for posting about this–it will help me a great deal :)
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