Another Thought Bites The Dust

Do you know that feeling when you just can’t get a song out of your head?

When your mind is just obsessing over that one particular fkin melody even though you try your absolute best telling it to stfu for once - and the more you concentrate on not trying to think about it, the louder and more annoying it gets?

Yeah, everybody knows when that happens.

We Germans have a particular term for it: ‘Ohrwurm’.

I asked ChatGPT if there’s an English expression for it, and the machine told me ‘Earworm’, the literal translation, is a commonly used term (even though I never in my life heard ANYONE use it before. Just sounds wrong).

I recently had one of these annoying af ‘earworms’ running around in my head driving to the gym. Very well-known song. Very catchy.

Queens “Another One Bites The Dust” is an absolute banger.

In general, if I may express my taste of music for a moment, modern music is mostly garbage, and old music and bands are much better in quality.

Anyway, whenever you catch yourself, or get infected by such an earworm, sure it can be fun. Mostly it’s a pain in the ass.

Especially if you’re like me - you’ll want to use every moment not spent in front of a screen working to harness the power of the present moment and think.

Thinking is so damn underrated.

In a world full of screens, notifications, and distractions, moments of pure thought and yes, boredom, are rarer than ever.

I don’t have to tell you that we’re constantly bombarded by bullshit. You’re probably experiencing it yourself every single day.

All the more important (for me at least) is to let my mind wander naturally, think, and ruminate on things and thoughts in every moment of silence I get.

Think of walks. Car drives. Even gym sessions.

No music allowed. No audiobooks. No podcasts. Nothing that’s distracting my mind from the natural thought process.

There are multiple benefits in my eyes, heightened creativity, better understanding of your own thought processes and improved mental clarity and mindfulness being only a few of them - if it wasn’t for damn EARWORMS.

Or more generally, everything you can call:

Open Loops

I’m sure you’ve heard of the following analogy before:

Your brain is limited in its working memory capacity.

Like working memory on a laptop or PC (RAM = Random Access Memory), your mind can’t run unlimited open tabs simultaneously. In fact, our cognitive capacity is minimal compared to our overall brain power, which largely runs unconsciously.

TLDR: The more random ass thoughts (like earworms) run around in your mind, the more clogged it becomes.

Decreasing your ability to think.

And without thinking well, you end up like most people: Constantly distracted, confused, and overwhelmed.

For every unnecessary thought you store, a potential insight, a possible conclusion, a probable ‘AHAAA’ moment gets buried.

Or as I realized ruminating on the damn song playing around in my head:

Another thought bites the dust.

Funny conclusion (and admittedly one I couldn’t have made without having this particular song playing on repeat in my head, but hey, there are exceptions to everything).

Reduce the bullshit circling in your mind.

The freer the mind, the better you’ll be able to think.

See you soon,

Henri

P.S. Reply with your favorite (non-lyrical lol) song/soundtrack - need more tracks for a deep work playlist, thanks :)