This isn’t sponsored by them and I am in no way affiliated with brain.fm but I have to say it is a huge reason I’ve managed to catch up on my tertiary goal of blogging my way through this project. 

For months I was focused on completing all the goals but whenever it came to writing something on the site I would always procrastinate or lose focus. Sometimes during a hyper-focus day I’d crank out a few posts as part of an overall super productive mindset, but I was falling way behind – months in fact. Since I knew blogging about all the goals was a goal itself, I started to get a bit nervous – what if it fails because I never got around to writing all those posts?

I was listening to a podcast where one of the guests was extolling the virtues of brain.fm on helping him focus on tasks and I got curious. Can something so simple in theory work on my admittedly scattered ADHD brain? Since they were offering a free trial and discount, I figured it’s worth a try. 

I signed up, downloaded the app and tried it out at work with the ‘deep focus’ setting and at first, I really noticed the sounds but after a little while they fell into background noise. I was working and getting things done and I thought to myself I’m not sure this is really helping. That’s when I looked up and saw three hours had passed and I had gotten a lot of deep work done and I didn’t code switch once during it. 

That’s the most important thing – my brain is not good at staying on task and that’s why I end up not finishing things or procrastinating because my mind is flitting between 20 different ideas at once making it hard to buckle down and focus. The fact I stayed on task for a few hours was eye opening to me. 

Still – it could have been a fluke so the next day I sat in my office in the evening and put on the deep-work station again and started writing blog posts. Four hours later I had written 25 posts making a huge dent in the backlog and again I stayed on task and worked diligently without code switching.  For me that was something that I haven’t been able to accomplish in the past – staying on task and writing quality posts not just pushing them out but editing them, refining the ideas and I started adding images and other embellishments that I hadn’t done up to that point. 

The next day I repeated the process and wrote 15 more posts. I scheduled them all out for almost two months so each day new content would drop. I was amazed at how productive I was being and that I was able to stay on task. I did a bunch of research and read the articles on how the app works and what it’s doing with sound and your brain and it’s fascinating

I decided to try some of the other modes to see if they generated any different results. I tried the creative mode while doing some drawings and I found that I actually was more on-task and was generating better results. Now, I know this is subjective but I was looking at my sketches/drawings pre-app and post-app and there is an uptick in quality. Is it a placebo effect? I don’t know.. and I don’t care.. I like it and will continue to use the app when I’m creating. 

The one mode that I wasn’t sure was that helpful was the meditation mode – I only tried it twice but it didn’t seem to help or hurt my meditating efforts. Meditation is a struggle with my ADHD but I’m making progress, and it is easier now to get into the meditation flow than it was when I started so I’ll continue to do it with the brain.fm station 

Just something interesting I’m sharing since I’m impressed with the impact it is having. I have no affiliate link or anything just a big fan!