The Neuroscience of a Focus Playlist

Psst. (mouse clicks) (bright music) Headspace Studios. (bright music) Hello, it's Dr. Sahar Yousef here, your guest host for the week. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Wednesday. 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 gonna 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 head space. 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...