Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Also,

Showing posts with label work at home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work at home. Show all posts

Friday, March 6, 2026

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4036 - Use Skinner's Law to Overcome Feeling Unmotivated

Credit: Jorm Sangsorn / Adobe Stock

A Sense of Doubt blog post #4036 - Use Skinner's Law to Overcome Feeling Unmotivated

Before I start, I should mention that today is day 3900 since Mom died. I mark these occasions with at least a short reflection, and just 100 days from day 4000, which seems more significant. If for no other reason, I keep this count just to see the number get bigger and marvel at its size. It just feels wrong.


I have been feeling unmotivated lately.




I wrote about this issue yesterday.

Thursday, March 5, 2026

I am really battling to start things, to be productive, especially with things that I am resisting for one reason or another.

This battle does not mean that I am not productive. I am not idle. I am meeting deadlines and working through the things I need to work through.

But the motivation is not always there. In fact, with the school assignment that was due back on Wednesday, I had a real mental block to it. I just didn't want to do it. PROFOUNDLY. Like existential crisis, deep-seated unwillingness to do it.

This article stood out to me given my recent struggles.

However, I am not fully in favor of it, even though I am sharing it.

I am all for rewards for getting things done. I do reward myself. I will put off a thing I want to do, eat, experience, and reward myself with it when I finish the thing that I am resisting finishing.

Punishment? I am less interested in punishing myself for not doing something, like in the example below wagering that someone can have your Playstation if you fail to lose weight. For one thing, I don't have a Playstation. For another, I would never make such a wager.

Missing deadlines often come with their own form of punishment. For instance, in my class, I would lose 10% for being one day late. That's a punishment. And I even considered not submitting the assignment on time and taking that grade hit just because of how very much I did not want to do it. After all, the assignment was worth only 10 points in a class of 300 points total with the A set at 89.5% and above. In other words, I need at least 255 of those 300 points to earn an A. Obviously, there's lots of points left to earn. Sure, 10% of 10 points is only a single point, so that would not have been a significant grade hit. 

Still, I did the assignment and submitted on time. I often find the motivation as the deadline approaches. This is why I posted three blog entries yesterday: Tuesday 3/3 - Thursday 3/5. I had put off working on my blog while I suffered the angst of not wanting to do what was actually not a difficult assignment. I also did not write any fiction for two days. Then, once finished, I did both things yesterday, completing three blog posts and writing fiction on my novel project.

Today, I have other work that needs doing, though nothing due today. I am stalling but I do not feel as unmotivated as I did earlier in the week. Probably the sense of achievement in finishing the assignment that I REALLY DID NOT WANT TO DO has fueled my fires at least somewhat. I feel more motivated. Not REALLY motivated, but better. Not as bad.

I am working around to a point. I promise.

Here it is.

This Skinner's Law stuff may work for you, and it may not.

As I think about how I am going to practice in the mental health space, how I am going to listen and respond to clients, I am very hesitant to apply a "one tool fits all" approach. 

My own case demonstrates that finding motivation and overcoming resistance is a very individual thing. What worked for me may not work for others. For me, there was no magic trick. The thing was due Wednesday, so I did nothing else Wednesday but sit down and hammer away at the thing with increasing frustration (as I shared in yesterday's blog).

For others, the threat of having to give up one's expensive video game machine may have been the thing to spark the motivation.

Reverse today as I will dive into the assignments due Sunday later on after blogging, emailing, and writing.

It's all about selfcare. Doing what's needed to protect your mental health while also doing what needs to be done in life.

I am now living by the line that ENO said in the ENO movie (Tuesday's post):

We all OVER ESTIMATE what we can do in a day and UNDER ESTIMATE what we can do in ten years.

I have lived my whole life battling the tendency to OVER ESTIMATE what I can do in a day.

These days, at the end of the day, I often review just what I did, especially when beating myself up over the six things I didn't get done.

Some days are more productive than others, and one must make peace with that.

But even days with lower productivity than others days had productivity, and often, one accomplished more things than one realized because of the pain of not doing a bunch of other things.

Review the day. Feel pride in what you got done. Give yourself grace to do better if you really needed to get some things done and didn't. What changes can you make to be more productive the next day?

That's why GETTING THINGS DONE (GTD) is a great model for being productive by sorting tasks into those that need to be done with others in short and long term goal lists.

And some things can be done right away of they will only take a minute or two. This is how task switching comes into play. For instance, I just took a few minutes to answer an email while writing this blog entry. And then I felt a sense of accomplishment.

Whatever keeps us going, right?

Thanks for tuning in.


https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/feeling-unmotivated-use-skinners-law-to-get-yourself-back-on-track/


Feeling unmotivated? Use “Skinner’s Law” to get yourself back on track

Big Think recently spoke with behavioral scientist and author Katy Milkman about what really motivates us and steers our behavior.

by 
Jonny Thomson

  • In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham built his philosophy on the idea that humans are motivated by pain and pleasure, and this idea is supported by many social sciences today.
  • A concept called “Skinner’s Law,” named after the American behaviorist B. F. Skinner, suggests that we can manipulate our motivation by making the pain of not doing a task greater than the pain of doing it — or making the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.
  • “Commitment devices,” such as setting up rewards or punishments for completing or not completing a task, can help us self-motivate and increase our chances of success.




In 1780, hunched over a table at his home in London, Jeremy Bentham wrote the first lines of the first chapter of one of his most famous works. It read, “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”

The British philosopher built an entire philosophy around this idea — that we are all motivated by pleasure and pain. Lucky for him, then, that almost all of the social sciences today agree with him. We are a hedonistic, happiness-seeking species who fear the pain-inflicting monsters of the world. Under all the pretense and bravado, we can be reduced to the simple push-and-pull mechanisms of the carrot and stick. After we get over the humbling and demoralizing simplicity of this, we can learn a few valuable lessons. We can game our own mechanisms and manipulate our Benthamite sovereigns. We can do anything. It’s all to do with something the writer George Mack called “Skinner’s Law.”

To help us make sense of this cheat code for human motivation, Big Think spoke with behavioral scientist Katy Milkman, the James G. Dinan Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.

Commitment devices

According to Mack, Skinner’s Law is that when you are procrastinating or finding a task hard to get on with, you have two choices: either “make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it” or “make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.” Since we know that we are only motivated by two things, we can use our higher, rational faculties to work that fact to our advantage. Skinner’s Law is named after B. F. Skinner, the American behaviorist who developed the idea of operant conditioning with his experiments on rats and pigeons. Skinner’s main argument was that human beings can, just as rats can, be conditioned to behave a certain way when given the correct pain-pleasure incentives.

The trick, then, is to set yourself pleasure rewards or pain punishments for doing (or not doing) a certain task. Essentially, there are two ways to motivate yourself: intrinsically or extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation is when you want to do something out of some inherent drive or desire. You might just want to eat pizza. Extrinsic motivation, though, is when you do something for some further benefit or reward (or to avoid a punishment). So, I don’t eat my pizza because I want to be trim for my beach holiday. The genius behind Skinner’s Law is that it turns our most powerful intrinsic motivator (pleasure) into an extrinsic reward.

Milkman told Big Think that these kinds of techniques are called commitment devices in the behavioral psychology literature. “It’s a tool for a person to self-motivate,” Milkman said. “It’s something where you opt in to creating an extrinsic reward system.” She described a study involving smokers trying to quit. There are two groups, each given the same “standard smoking cessation products,” but one group is also told “they will lose the money if they fail a nicotine urine test in six months. What they found was that it increases quit rates by about 30%.”

The strongest master

We know, then, that if we want to succeed in any task, we need to set compelling commitment devices to keep us on track or to raise the stakes. The next question is: How can we make the best kind of commitment device? Is it better to promise yourself pleasure or to threaten yourself with pain?

It turns out that pain is by far the stronger motivator. As Milkman told Big Think, “So [Daniel] Kahneman won the 2002 Nobel Prize for a theory called ‘Prospect Theory’. He and Amos [Tversky] showed that we find pain more motivating than equivalent pleasure. For example, if you lose $20, you’re more upset, and then if you find $20, you are happy. The pain outweighs the pleasure.”

Using all of this and Milkman’s advice, here are three practical bits of advice:

Make a wager: Find a friend or a family member, and bet them some sum of money or some item you value that you will do a certain thing. “Okay, Dad,” you might say, “if I’m not 5 pounds lighter by my birthday, you can have my PlayStation 5.” Ideally, place the “wager” in some kind of intermediary location so you can’t back out of the deal if you lose. Commitment devices only work if you can’t slip out of them.

Social accountability: Tell everyone you’re trying to do something. Tell them your target and your deadline. Keep people updated about your progress. This serves two purposes: to present the carrot and the stick. The carrot is that you get praise, support, and advice from your closest relatives. The stick is that you might be embarrassed or ashamed if you fail.

Avoid boredom: It’s easy to assume that boredom is some middle, neutral state somewhere between pleasure and pain—it’s just absence. But not according to Milkman. As she put it, “There is research to show a fundamental dislike of boredom. It causes us pain to be bored. In 2016, one study showed that when presented with a long, monotonous, and tedious film fragment, people would rather shock themselves than be bored. So, as a general rule, try to keep yourself busy. The devil makes work for idle hands; bored people do silly things.


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2603.06 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3900 days ago & DAD = 554 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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Wednesday, August 6, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3823 - Reflections on Getting Things Done (GTD) Part One



A Sense of Doubt blog post #3818 - Reflections on Getting Things Done (GTD)  Part One

I started reading the book Getting Things Done - The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen because I felt I could improve my systems as I juggle more and more complex combinations of jobs.

I learned of the book from an article by one of my favorite writers and people: Cory Doctorow.

Often people believe that the major or only motivation for reading a book like this (and I am reading by listening to the audio that came with a PDF document) is "what can I learn from this?"

And yet, a possibly even more important motivator to read a book like this is "What's in it that I am ALREADY doing?"

And this is not unusual.

Allen reports what some readers have shared in his book. Some feel that the entire book is worth just one idea to adjust their own process.

That's my big takeaway, too.

I am happy to say that I do a lot of what's in the book. I capture tasks, sort them, and work from a to-do list of short term goals, daily and weekly tasks, and longer term goals/tasks. 

The thing I liked best about the book is the classification of the task and what the next steps are. If the task is easy and takes only a few minutes, then do it right away, like answering a simple email. Bigger projects have first steps, often research, capture those tasks and organize.

I have read recently that Warren Ellis is using AI devices to capture research tasks. He can literally say out loud to one of these devices (apparently he has two, not sure why) to research something and email the results to him for reviewing later. I love this idea. I am just not sure that I have enough need for such a thing to invest in an AI device. I have enough devices.

Here's Doctorow on GTD.

Thanks for tuning in!







Science fiction author Cory Doctorow touched on GTD in one of his recent posts on his website, Pluralistic: Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers

I found it a great read on the power of the Agendas list—which he calls a Suspense File—and thought to share. I especially liked some points he made:


I'm definitely guilty of de-prioritizing this list, with the mentality of "well it's on their todo list, it's their fault if it doesn't happen"... but then I'm unhappy it doesn't happen, and reading this made me realize I also have a responsibility in seeing it through, even if the ball isn't currently in my court.

Anyway, would love to hear everyone's thoughts on this post. I'm certainly going to refocus my Agendas list into a priority list and not a backburner one.

https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-10-26-one-weird-trick-todo-txt-3a58188ba241



Two decades ago, I was part of a group of nerds who got really interested in how each other managed to do what we did. The effort was kicked off by Danny O’Brien, who called it “Lifehacking” and I played a small role in getting that term popularized:

https://craphound.com/lifehacksetcon04.txt

While we were all devoted to sharing tips and tricks from our own lives, many of us converged on an outside expert, David Allen, and his bestselling book “Getting Things Done” (GTD, to those in the know):

https://gettingthingsdone.com/

GTD is a collection of relatively simple tactics for coping with, prioritizing, and organizing the things you want to do. Many of the methods relate to organizing your own projects, using a handful of context-based to-do lists (e.g. a list of things to do at the office, at home, while waiting in line, etc). These lists consist of simple tasks. Those tasks are, in turn, derived from another list, of “projects” — things that require more than one task, which can be anything from planning dinner to writing a novel to helping your kid apply to university.

The point of all this list-making isn’t to do everything on the lists. While these lists do help you remember what to do next, what they’re really good for is deciding what not to do — at all. The promise of GTD is that it will help you consciously choose not to do some of the things you set out to accomplish. This is in contrast to how most of us operate: we have a bunch of things we want to do, and we end up doing the things that are easiest, or at top of mind, even if they’re not the most important things.

GTD recognizes that you can be very “productive” (in the sense of getting many things done) and still not do the things that you really wanted to do. You know what this is like: you finish a Sunday with an organized sock-drawer, all your pennies neatly rolled, the trash-can in your car emptied…and no work at all on that novel you’re hoping to write.

You can’t do everything, but you can control what you don’t do, rather than just defaulting into completing a string of trivial, meaningless tasks and leaving the big stuff on the sidelines. Organizing your own tasks and projects is a hugely powerful habit, and one that’s made a world of difference to my personal and professional life.

But while good to-do lists can take you very far in life, they have a hard limit: other people. Almost every ambitious thing you want to do involves someone else’s contribution. Even the most solitary of projects can be derailed if your tax accountant misses a key email and you end up getting audited or paying a huge penalty.

That’s where the other kind of GTD list comes in: the list of things you’re waiting for from other people. I used to be assiduous in maintaining this list, but then the pandemic struck and no one was meeting any of their commitments, and I just gave up on it, and never went back…until about a month ago. Returning to these lists (they’re sometimes called “suspense files”) made me realize how many of the problems — some hugely consequential — in my life could have been avoided if I’d just gone back to this habit earlier.

My suspense file is literally just some lines partway down a text file that lives on my desktop called todo.txt that has all my to-dos as well. Here’s some sample entries from my suspense file:

WAITING EMAIL Sean about ENSHITTIIFCATION manuscript deadline 10/24/24
WAITING EMAIL Russ about missing royalty statement 10/12/24
WAITING EMAIL Alice about Christmas vacation hotel 10/8/24 10/20/24
WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

WAITING CALL LA County about mosquito abatement 10/25/24
WAITING CALL School attendance officer about London trip 10/18/24

WAITING MONEY EFF reimbusement for taxi to staff retreat $34.98 10/7/24

WAITING SHIPMENT New Neal Stephenson novel from Bookshop.org 10/23/24

This is as simple as things could possibly be! I literally just type “WAITING,” then a space, then the category of thing I’m waiting for, then a few specifics, then the date. When I follow up on an item, I add the date of the followup to the end of the line. If I get some details that I might need to reference later (say, a tracking code for a shipment, or a date for an event I’m trying to organize), I’ll add that, too, as it comes up. Creating a new entry on this list takes 10–25 seconds. When someone gets back to me, I just delete that line.

That is literally it.

Every day, or sometimes a couple of times a day, I will just run my eyes up and down this list and see if there’s anything that’s unreasonably overdue, and then I’ll send a reminder or make a followup call. In the example above, you can see that I’ve been chasing Ted about Sacramento for months now (this is a fake entry — no plans to go to Sacto at the moment, sorry):

WAITING EMAIL Ted about Sacramento event 8/12/24 9/5/24 10/5/24 10/20/24

So now I’ve emailed Ted four times. Maybe my email’s going to his spam, and so I could try emailing a friend of Ted and ask them to check whether he’s getting my messages. But maybe Ted’s trying to send me a message here — he’s just not interested in doing the event after all. Or maybe Ted is available, but he’s so snowed under that he’s in danger of fumbling it, and I need to bring in some help if I want it to happen.

All of these are possibilities, and the fact that I’m tracking this means that I now get to make an active decision: cancel the gig or double down on making sure it happens. Without this list, the gig would just die by default, forgotten by both of us. Maybe that’s OK, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run into someone who said, “Dammit, I just remembered I was supposed to email you about getting that thing done and I dropped the ball. Shit! I really was looking forward to that. Is it too late now?” Often it is too late. Even if it’s not, the work of picking up the pieces and starting over is much more than just following through on the original plan.

Restarting my suspense file made me realize how many of the (often expensive or painful) fumbles I’ve had since the pandemic were the result of me not noticing that someone else hadn’t gotten back to me. In essence, a suspense file is a way for me to manage other people’s to-do lists.

Let me unpack that. By “managing other people’s to-do lists,” I don’t mean that I’m deciding for other people what they will and won’t do (that would be both weird and gross). I mean that I’m making sure that if someone else fails to do something we were planning together, it’s because they decided not to do it, not because they forgot. As GTD teaches us, the real point of a to-do list isn’t just helping us remember what to do — it’s helping us choose what we’re not going to do.

This is not an imposition, it’s a kindness. The point of a suspense file isn’t to nag others into living up to their commitments, it’s to form a network of support among collaborators where we all help one another make those conscious choices about what we’re not going to do, rather than having the stuff we really value slip away because we forgot about it.

I have frequent collaborators whom I know to be incapable of juggling too many things at once, and my suspense file has helped me hone my sense of when it would be appropriate to ask them if they want to do something together and when to leave them be. The suspense file helps me dial in how much I rely on each person in my life (relying on someone isn’t the same as valuing them — and indeed, one way to value someone is to only rely on them for things they’re able to do, rather than putting them in a position of feeling bad for failing you).

Lifehacking gets a bad rap, and justifiably so. Many of the tips that traffick as “lifehacks” are trivial or stupid or both. What’s more, too much lifehacking can paint you into a corner where you’ve hacked any flexibility out of your life:

https://locusmag.com/2017/11/cory-doctorow-how-to-do-everything-lifehacking-considered-harmful/

But ever since Danny coined the term “lifehack,” back in 2004, I’ve been cultivating daily habits that have let me live the life I wanted to live, accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish. I figured out how to turn daily writing into a habit and now I’ve written more than 30 books:

https://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

A daily habit of opening a huge, ever-tweaked collection of tabs has made me smarter about the news, helped me keep tabs on my friends, helped me find fraudsters who were trying to steal my identity, and ensured that all those Kickstarter rewards and other long-delayed, erratic shipments didn’t slip through the cracks:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/#unfucked-rota

Daily habits are superpowers. Once something is a habit, you get it for free. GTD turns on decomposing big, daunting projects into bite-sized, trackable tasks. I have a bunch of spaces around the house — my office, my closet, the junk sheds down the side of the house, our tiki bar — that I used to clean out once or twice a year. Each one was all-day, sweaty, dirty job, and for most of the year, all of those spaces were a dusty, disorganized mess.

A month ago, I added a new daily task: spend five minutes cleaning one space. I did the bar first, and after two weeks, I’d taken down every tchotchke and bottle and polished it, reorganizing the undercounter spaces where things pile up:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=tiki+bar&view_all=1

Now I’m working through my office. Ever day, I’m dusting a bookshelf and combing through it for discards to stick in our Little Free Library. Takes less than five minutes most day, and I’ll be done in about three weeks, when I’ll move on to my closet, then the side of the house, and then back to the bar. A daily short break where I get away from my computer and make my living and working environments nicer is a wonderful habit to cultivate.

I’m 53 years old now. I was 33 when I started following Getting Things Done. In that time, I’ve gotten a lot done, but what’s even more relevant is that I didn’t get a ton of things done — things that I consciously chose not to abandon. Figuring out what you want to do, and then keeping it on track — in manageable, healthy, daily rhythms that bring along the other people you rely on — may not be the whole secret to a fulfilled life, but it’s certainly a part of it.




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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2508.01 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3683 days ago & DAD = 337 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3738 - Using Brain.Fm Daily has Changed my Brain for the Better



A Sense of Doubt blog post #3738 - Using Brain.Fm Daily has Changed my Brain for the Better

I recently discovered https://www.brain.fm/.

I have subscribed for the year after trying it out for a free trial.

I have been listening for 30-60 minutes a day for a few weeks, and I feel it has changed my brain state with its "entrainment."

I feel the change. Could be all in my mind, but I am convinced by smart research and actual science.

This stuff is legit.

I will write about one of the revelations that has happened since I started using brain.fm tomorrow.

Until then, I recommend this to everyone, especially artists or people who need to induce a state of flow.

BTW, because this is NOT binaural beats, it is not hemi-synch.

Also, this for Hemi-synch.

This is 


Explore!

Subscribe!!



Brain.fm DID NOT pay me to write this post; they do not even know that I am writing this post.

Thanks for tuning in.

How is Brain.fm music made?

Made with science,
tested with science.

We use neuroscience to inform our music-making, but also use science to test the resulting music. These are two different roles of science at Brain.fm, setting us apart from any other music service.


The Brain.fm White Paper







Peak productivity on demand

Brain.fm’s focus music is made to help you work better, by blending into the background so you can focus distraction-free... all while stimulating the brain with gentle rhythmic pulses in the music that support sustained attention.

Other music is made to grab your attention, making it hard to think and work, even if you don’t realize it. Brain.fm’s functional music is designed from the bottom up to affect your brain and optimize your performance.

FOCUS WITH SCIENCEarrow

Real science with
extraordinary results

Scientists at Brain.fm work with academic institutions to observe the effects of our technology on the brain using fMRI, EEG, and behavioral studies. We always include placebo groups in our tests to ensure our tech is what makes the difference.

See our science













Why does Brain.fm increase focus?

Your brainwaves operate at different speeds (Hz) that scientists generally break down into 4 categories that are associated with different mental states.

  1. Delta (0.5-4 Hz) - Deep sleep
  2. Theta (4-8 Hz) - Light sleep and deep relaxation
  3. Alpha (8-12 Hz) - Relaxed wakefulness, creativity, and meditation
  4. Beta (12-30 Hz) - Active thinking, problem-solving, and focus

Brain.fm identifies the optimal Hz range for a given mental state and translates it into volume modulations within certain areas of our music. This encourages your brain to increase the power level of brainwaves that are equal to or similar to the patterns we've embedded in the music.

This process not only enhances brainwave activity but also synchronizes your brainwaves throughout your brain, making it easier for different parts of your brain to work together more seamlessly.

It may sound wild, but we've conducted quality research, published multiple papers, and received a grant from the National Science Foundation to continue our work.

In short—brain.fm is a safe, evidence-based way to hack your brain and take control of your mental state on demand using sound.


Is this the same as binaural beats?

Brain.fm is not binaural beats. There are some similarities, but it’s important to remember that binaural beats were first discovered in 1839, popularized in the 1970’s and haven’t really changed since.

In a way, you could think of Brain.fm as binaural beats 2.0. We took the concept behind binaural beats and applied an updated understanding of neuroscience and auditory processing to create a more effective and powerful solution.

Some core differences:

  • Binaural beats primarily impacts the lower brain which is not where thinking or creativity occurs.
  • Brain.fm impacts the prefrontal cortex which is where all your thinking and creativity comes from
  • Binaural beats requires both ears to be free of hearing damage and high quality headphones to be on.
  • Brain.fm works with one or two ears, does not require headphones, and is not dependent on your ability to hear certain frequencies.

Most importantly, Brain.fm uses many methods to make our music work, unlike binaural beats which is just one technique!


How large are your scientific studies?

We’ve conducted research and testing with hundreds of participants. We always include placebo groups to make sure it’s not just our music that increases focus, but the technology embedded within it.

You can read our papers, supporting research, and more at www.brain.fm/science



From Left to Right: Resting, Pink Noise, Average Music. Brain.fm
with phase locking values of 4000 (far left of spectrum) to 13,000 (far right).

Electrical activity in the brain: EEG studies

Electroencephalography measures fluctuations in electrical current at the scalp, showing rhythmic brain activity (‘brainwaves’) and how this kind of activity shifts in response to Brain.fm music.




From left: Pink Noise, Spotify, Brain.fm

Blood flow in the brain: FMRI studies

Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures blood flow in the brain, showing which brain regions and functional networks are more active in response to Brain.fm versus other music.


Brain.fm is not ‘binaural beats’!

Binaural beats produce weak neural synchrony while modulation directly in each stereo channel (used by Brain.fm) has much stronger effects on brain activity. Importantly, Brain.fm uses many methods to make our music work, unlike binaural beats which is just one technique!


Music without distractions

Most music in the world is designed to grab your attention, which leads to distraction. Instead, our process ensures that attention-grabbing elements are subdued or removed, allowing the music to sit comfortably in the background.


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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2505.13 - 10:10

- Days ago: MOM = 3603 days ago & DAD = 257 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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