I’ve reached a point in my college career where I am officially studying for a good majority of my free time.
While this would normally be a bummer, I have made it my mission to make the studying tolerable, if not a little fun.
I’ve written in the past about how much I love listening to movie soundtracks while I study, and while I still do that, I have found something that is almost better that I would love to share with anyone who is struggling with staying on task and focused while studying.
Recently, I have taken to putting on a nature documentary in the background while I am studying.
Whether I am working with multiple monitors, or I just have one playing on my phone, I find it wildly relaxing to look over and see some happy fish or a hungry lion on my screen keeping me company.
My old standby for nature documentaries were the ones produced by the BBC. These included “Planet Earth,” “Blue Planet” and “The Hunt.”
For some asinine reason that makes no sense to me, they have all been taken off Netflix, and not even setting my VPN to Great Britain will bring them back.
Until Netflix and the BBC get all their affairs in order, there are a couple other documentaries that are still available that I highly recommend.
The first is “Our Planet.” A Netflix Original, “Our Planet” has eight episodes that each dive deep into a different aspect of our planet.
Whether you are interested in the oceans, the deserts, forests or jungles, “Our Planet” has an episode that is sure to keep you occupied.
The second recommendation is “Disney Nature’s Oceans.”
While this isn’t a series, this hour and a half documentary is full of beautiful imagery and top-notch music.
Given that this is more directed at children, the narration can be a bit distracting at times, so with this one, I find it best to mute the Netflix window and have something else playing in the background, but that’s just me.
The last documentary I’ll touch on here is “Night On Earth.” Another Netflix Original, this six-episode series showcases the magic of nocturnal animals and what happens on this beautiful planet while we are all asleep.
This doc and “Our Planet” also have behind the scenes featurettes that are about an hour, and are extraordinary interesting, but they are much too in-depth to have on in the background.
So, I would suggest just watching them later if you are really that interested in the technology and filmmaking expertise that it takes to bring series like these to fruition.
Once you have your documentary chosen, turn the volume down until you can just barely hear it and press play. That’s all there is to it.
I cannot put into words just how much I enjoy being able to take mini study breaks to learn a cool new fact about penguins or to see a tuna barely escape a sea lion’s jaws.
It’s engaging, it’s relaxing and most importantly, it’s something to break up the monotony of multi-hour study sessions. What more can you ask for?