Backstory

There's an ongoing debate about whether listening to music while studying helps or distracts you.

I myself have always studied in silence until I attended college.

I used to believe that studying without music helped me fully focus and get into the flow state. Looking back, I disagree. Studying without music in high school didn't make me a very efficient student. Instead, I spent most of my study time daydreaming, mostly about the course material, but still very time-consuming. The point of not listening to music was so I could fully focus on the homework, not sway my attention away into daydreaming for hours on end.

In college, where I struggled with motivation as the course material became increasingly laborious, I experimented with listening to music.

When I found myself in an extremely challenging situation trying to catch up on six months' worth of missed classes before the finals, I discovered electronic indie music that inspired me to study hard.

The next year, I didn't enjoy that study playlist anymore; it was too distracting, too intense for me. It was relevant when I needed a ton of motivation to get through an extremely laborious and uncertain period. But now, as I've kind of gotten used to college, the extremely intense music is just too distracting.

I tried out different genres, but none really worked for me until I discovered... Breakcore. Or at least, a specific style of Breakcore. Whatever this style is, I've created a playlist that, as of today, contains 223 songs totalling 7 hours and 46 minutes of music.

Why Breakcore?

When I experimented with different genres of music, there was always something that just didn't work for me. Breakcore turned out to be the perfect study/work genre for me, but it might be different for you. Because ultimately, I believe what it comes down to is that this music mirrors how my brain works when in deep focus. I'm not a neuroscientist or anything, but when I’m in deep focus it just "feels" the same way as this music sounds.

Let me explain:

1. There are pretty much no lyrics to distract my attention — unlike rap or indie music for me.

2. The music is intense enough to keep me from daydreaming — unlike jazz or lofi in my experience.

3. The music is not too intense to distract me either — unlike when I tried rock.

4. The music is interesting enough to inspire me — unlike other instrumental music that felt too ordinary.

5. The music isn't overly crazy to inspire me too much and make me want to pursue other things — unlike my old study playlist from last year.

The Playlist

I called this playlist "Proper Breakcore" because there's a wide range of Breakcore music, but this is the one and only Breakcore playlist that "properly" works for me as a study playlist.

So just for clarification, I'm not at all implying that other kinds of Breakcore are "improper" or anything.