Hello, it's Dr. Sahar Yousaf here, your guest host for the week.
Welcome to Radio Headspace.
If you don't know, I'm a cognitive neuroscientist and co-founder of Becoming Superhuman, a program that helps busy people get their most important work done in less time, with less stress.
I've been talking all week about how to get better focus so you can be more productive.
One of the easiest and funnest ways to do that is through music.
In fact, I actually did a whole video with John Legend on the science behind this.
And we'll have that linked in the show description if you'd like to check it out.
Today, I'm going to share what the research says about how music can help us get things done and why music can be one of the most effective focus triggers.
Music is a super powerful tool as it relates to focus and productivity, but also really any kind of brain state you're trying to really game for, because it is considered to be a cognitive trigger.
Now, what is a cognitive trigger?
Well, in order to understand that and its purpose, we have to talk about something called cognitive associations.
Now associations are what they kind of sound like.
It is when we associate one thing to another.
So, for example, you may associate the smell of vanilla with warm, freshly baked cookies.
Maybe the holidays?
Maybe you associate a smell of cleaning products with freshness and weekend time and getting things in order.
Perhaps you associate certain kinds of environments, times of day light, information around you with certain kinds of things.
For example, being in a library versus being in a nightclub.
You've got a lot of memories and a lot of associations built up about what is appropriate and expected behavior in each one of these environments.
Music is a portable and invisible way to make an environment that has built-in associations.
Over time you can build an association between a certain kind of music And the brain state of focusing, the brain state of productivity and deep work.
And guess what?
Over time, even if you don't feel like focusing, you play that kind of music and it compels you to go into that brain state.
That trigger exists now.
So if I'm doing quantitative work, I have certain sounds, certain artists that I have gotten used to over the years that are now heavily associated and connected to that brain state of data analysis and being in that kind of headspace.
So two mistakes that folks are prone to making in trying to set up music as a trigger one, using music with lyrics in it in a language that you understand, when you are trying to focus and get productive, guess what your brain's listening?
It's going to actually waste and expend energy.
So, for example, listening to Taylor Swift when you're trying to sit down and focus and get productive, it's going to make it more difficult.
You're taking the finite amount of focus and the finite amount of energy that you have and you're splitting it.
You're spending a bit of that energy and a bit of that focus on processing those lyrics.
If you are choosing and crafting a focus playlist, a productivity playlist, I would highly recommend choosing music with either no lyrics at all or lyrics in a language that you don't understand.
That's my first tip.
The next one is actually about boundaries.
You gotta make sure that you do not listen to your focus playlist when you're relaxing on the weekend.
You don't listen to it when you're on a hike.
You don't listen to it when you're cleaning the house.
That playlist is associated with focus and productivity and only that.
So I would not recommend choosing your all time favorite songs or your all time favorite soundtrack to essentially create a focus playlist, because you're kind of condemning that playlist to only being utilized during the workday, when you're trying to get into a certain headspace.
So you need different playlists for different things, essentially.
There will always be a subset of the human population that finds the addition of music essentially an auditory input as deeply, deeply distracting.
Listen to your biology.
Listen to your brain.
If that's you and you still feel like you could benefit from something being associated with focus, what I would recommend is actually investing in some noise canceling headphones of any sort that fits your lifestyle, fits your budget, so that again it's still portable and you can listen to white noise or just make use of the noise canceling feature.
But essentially wearing something that's blocking out the extra distracting background noise that helps you zone in.
But really, there's no one size fits all.
You've got to listen and figure out what works well for you.
