The Science™ tells us that multi-tasking is rather inneffective. I tend to agree.

The counter to the claim is that "we can drive a car and listen to music at the same time...that's multi-tasking."

Fair point, but one uses drastically different parts of the brain when hearing the music compared to driving a vehicle. Listening to music, in this case, is passive. Driving is active.

For certain tasks at my desk, I can listen to music. I like putting on the "Favorites Mix" from Apple Music to see what they've curated for me this week. Sometimes I can't "get down" with the music because it no longer is passive... more of an active-listening scenario.

That's what happened today. As I was finishing up some organization, I put my Favorites on shuffle and Travis Tritt's "It's a Great Day to Be Alive" came on. I love this song and it gets me in a wonderful mood.

It is a great day to be alive. I love everything about the song. I really like Travis Tritt, too.

I was sure this song was released in the mid-90s, because that is my wheelhouse in country music. The single's B-side was another song I like, "Best of Intentions." Imagine my surprise when I saw that the single was released in late 2000. By then, I had pretty much stopped listening to mainstream country music, but apparently it leaked into my consciousness and has been there for, lo, these score and three years hence.

It did reach as high as #2 on the Billboard Hot Country chart, so that probably helped osmosize my love and awareness for the song.

But, that's where it ends. I got the idea to write an email about the song because it uplifted my mood quite nicely. Not that I wasn't in a good one already—I was—but it was elevated (even more than my last cup of coffee did for me).

I continued on with my Favorites mix, and another song came on, "Spike Drivin' Blues" by Chris Knight (not the Brady Bunch fellow, but a stalwart singer-songwriter out of Kentucky). I had to pause it. Not because of the blues vibe, but because I love that song too and I wanted to write this email about the Tritt song!

I couldn't concentrate. I can't concentrate on writing with music with lyrics, especially ones I enjoy. So I took a page out of an email I once read from Ben Settle that has stuck with me for the last couple of years.

In a Q&A email of some sort, a reader asked Ben if he listens to music when he works and if he does, what kind? Settle responded something to the effect, that when in doubt "go Baroque." Play on words and great advice.

Baroque music is a wonderful productivity tool when you need to get things done. While I don't appreciate it as much as late 20th century country and rock 'n' roll, it has its purpose. So I turned on my Baroque playlist and here we are.

Just one tip of many that I can offer. Over the better part of the last two years, my "productivity" has skyrocketed and I owe a lot of it to the folks within our small entrepreneurship groups within the Tom Woods School of Life.

There are some amazing people doing some amazing things within the School ... and they are happy to share how they got there. Tom himself ran a webinar last night for the members of the School on how he runs one little part of his business. To any schmo off the street, that 90 minutes would probably cost a fellow upwards of $2,000.

It was just part of the deal for those of us in Tom's School. The value I get is multiples of our "tuition rate."

Find out more:

As always,

Brian

P.S. -- The aforementioned Ben Settle was on a webinar last month. The value was extraordinary. Ben doesn't even do things like this in most cases. Plus, if you're a member (student, really) of Tom's School, nearly all the past webinars are available to watch at your convenience. When I signed up, I thought that alone was the value. It really is much more.

If you want to know if anyone put me up to writing this plug, it is a simple no. Plus, Tom doesn't care for country music one bit. I still like and appreciate him, though. Hail fellow well met.

P.P.S. -- I don't know if "osmosize" is a word. My spell-checker has flagged it twice. But it sounded good and I think you get the idea. More active form of "osmosis," which is not flagged.