A process for productivity

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I am writing my thesis so I am doing whatever I can to stay focussed. The two most effective methods are listening to the same playlist over and over again. It is akin to using musical cues to create a certain state in performance. My current playlist is Apple Music Classical Concentration Playlist. I have it on shuffle whilst I write and think. The second method is following The Pomodoro technique which is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo. In short, you work for 25 minutes and rest for 5, then repeat until you achieve the desired outcome. I do this 4 times across two hours, between 6am and 8am each morning.

A piece of music I have enjoyed – Chopin Nocturne in C Minor, no, 21,

Something I have read

The following is a text I read a while back and although it will not be acknowledged in my thesis, I want to keep it in my frequency. The qualitative study by Stepney (2015) interprets and explores the presentation of a hyper-sexual femininity and its link to binge drinking. Specifically, interviews and ethnography were used to tease out contradictions of power and choice in young women’s feminine behaviour. For instance, an unsurprising finding was that whilst feelings of empowerment emerged as a result of choice to drink alcohol and to engage in hypersexual feminine behaviour, young women were often unaware of the detrimental effect this has on their mental and physical health until they were met with shock and shame afterwards. The damaging psychological and physical effects ensued by these activities, however, are overridden by the pleasures of validation and engagement these acts produce. This is fascinating from a personal level in some of the ways I consumed alcohol when I was younger, and also in another two ways; the first is the existance of objectification and empowerment as a binary that women are claiming pleasure from.  The second is the connection between femininity, desirability, and sexual approval. The desire to be seen, to be watched and to be approved is something that I have experienced and witnessed in dance since I can remember, so I am curious how these results would differ if this type of study was targeted only at dancers, pole dancers and performer in general.

I hope this week has treated you well, thanks for reading.

Rowena x

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References

Stepney, M. (2015) The Challenge of Hypersexual Femininity and Binge Drinking. A Feminist Psychoanalytic Response.