I Use My Earphones to Generate Unlimited Ideas For Medium. Here is how

Can you tell me if this works for you?

A week ago, I decided to embark on an ‘article-a-day-for-30-days’ challenge on Medium. I knew what stood between me and my goals. One glance at the statistics and a sense of defeat would crawl through my veins. My growth graphs on Medium were embarrassing tiny shrubs. Not the giant teaks it should have been; my pocket money during early school days was much brighter than my earnings from the platform. To ensure that my Medium wallet’s plight is not dampening my spirits to pursue writing, I decided to create a reserve of 15–20 articles at a go, and start publishing them from a specific date. But, how do you generate so many ideas for Medium articles?

What do I Write?

I have read many texts on Psychology, but most of the topics are already being expounded. I watch a fair share of movies and cricket, neither of them sells well in Medium. My personal life is so uneventful that I would exchange my biography for a telephone directory. So, where do I find topics from? Should I go ahead and make something up like ‘I checked my girlfriend’s phone, and I couldn’t believe what I saw’?

Logic dictated that I fall back on Psychology, the topics that I am familiar with, and sort issues that affect people. But Ideas were still not sprouting.

When Things Started to Work Out

A couple of days later, while taking a shower, something hits me. It was a question about whether a man and a woman could really manage to stay friends without letting their feelings sway. Studies have already been made on the topic, but I still felt I could offer my own perspective. I wrote a few lines as soon as I bathed, but didn’t come anywhere close to finishing it.

Minutes later, while I had my breakfast, sentences I could use in my article began to spring in my mind. It happened again before I was about to enter my afternoon power nap. At night, while brushing my teeth, a few subheadings I could use, germinated. It was as if my mind had entered some ‘sweet-autopilot-creative-mode’, that it was randomly conjuring useful ideas. I loved it. But it soon struck me that the four activities in motion, while thoughts occurred in my brain, had something in common.

Bathing. Eating. Sleeping. Brushing. The non-negotiable recurrent actions. Why on earth would useful thoughts shape during such odd times and not when I am staring into the darkness with my laptop, crying for a new idea?

The answer was somewhere there in the psychology books I have read. It’s called Brain Waves.

What are Brain Waves?

For the uninitiated, brain waves are the electrical pulses generated through the neurons’ movement in the many different networks existing in our brains. There are billions of neurons inside our brains, and each of them is connected to thousands of other neurons. Imagine the complexity. I could go on and bore you with more technical details, but let’s get to the point that matters.

There are five types of brain waves, each denoted by a Greek letter: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Theta, and Delta. Each of them is recognized by their level of activity, amplitude, and frequency. For instance, beta waves occur while we are awake and active, like when we make regular conversations or solve a problem. Gamma rays, on the other hand, are equated with problem-solving efforts or a high state of perception.

Always keep in mind that our experiences are not caused by the different brain waves, but it’s the other way around. Brain waves are instead a reflection of the various processes occurring in our brain.

But here is the question: what has brain waves got to do with writing Medium articles?

Everything.

Alpha and Theta brain waves

Alpha waves have a frequency of 8–13 Hz, while theta waves are between 4–8 Hz. The former occurs while you are physically and mentally relaxed or engaged in creative or artistic endeavors. See where I’m going with this?

The theta waves are produced while we engage ourselves in an activity so mundane that your mind can completely detach from it. They are a lot about your memory and creativity. It is probably what happened to me, that while I engaged in my routine activities like brushing and bathing, my mind dived into the theta state, and started making itself useful. Useful ideas sprouted thus.

To put it in a nutshell, boosting your alpha and theta waves would be an excellent way to get in touch with your creativity- the trait which is of high demand in Medium. Do you know where to start to boost your brain waves? Enter binaural beats.

Binaural Beats

Have you heard about them?

Well, my research tells me that people are entirely split about their opinion on it. It’s like their experience with binaural beats is a pendulum that only knows two extremes; either it’s a lifesaver or they hate them to the core. I went through some of the comments about the first-hand accounts of binaural beats. Some claim to have found a single magic bullet to all their problems while some make sarcastic remarks. While it’s possible to play binaural beats down as unscientific, it’s more scientific than you think.

The literal meaning of binaural is ‘relating to both ears.’

Here is how it works: Inferior colliculus is the part of your brain that receives all the auditory inputs. When you play music on an earphone with slightly different frequencies on the left and right ear, they make their way into inferior colliculus through separate channels. The two notes would eventually join together into one beat at a completely new frequency. So in a way, you are actually listening to something which is not there!

It is not entirely backed by science, but many experts believe that when this new frequency is introduced to your brain, it feels compelled to synchronize with it. This will put you into a desired new brain state.

So when you go to YouTube and choose the binaural beats for the alpha or theta brain waves, it should, in principle, produce those waves in your brain.

Perhaps it sounds all ridiculous, but to test this out, all you need is ten minutes of your time and a pair of earphones.

Get your earphones now.

So, I decided to tap into this possible potential and had a whole week experimenting with it. I googled binaural beats, and to my surprise, there were truckloads of videos, claiming to do all sorts of magic on your mind. Don’t fall for them, but don’t shut your mind so hard that you are unwilling to give it a shot.

I plugged my earphones and started making a habit of playing binaural beats before I worked. I believe they ushered me into a calm and relaxed state for the kind of nervous personality I am, and ideas occurred very naturally. From the moment I used it, hardly a day has gone by without me spending at least half an hour with it; and I wrote more than two articles on each of those days. A considerable achievement considering I was all set to earn the championship of procrastination.

Now, I wish to think of myself as a scientific person. I am not going to give you those pumped up speeches and ask you to follow in my footsteps from now. But It’s harmless to try it out, and I wish all of you would give it a go.

Have good quality earphones, find good binaural beats on YouTube, and start listening now. It is entirely possible that my success in being productive had nothing to do with binaural beats. May be It was just the right activity to find itself in the right place at the right time. I am curious to find out if it works for anybody else. I asked my wife to do it, and she said she got a headache after listening to it! Can you guys try this out and let me know?