31/01/2021
The wake-up:
Hi and welcome to the Pedy Up. Pedy Up is a bite-sized read up/listen up /watch content types to help you meditate, sleep, move and focus better in your daily lives.
Today we'll be sharing about how we can tap into the biological way that our brains function by using music to help us tune in and focus throughout the day. Pedy has curated some music that boosts your energy at the gym or helps you calm down at night. Music can be a powerful tool to automatically trigger your brain to focus on different tasks throughout the day. Your brain is always on the lookout for familiar cues or cognitive triggers so that it can try to predict and prepare for what you're going to be doing next.
Cognitive triggers can be different physical environments like your bedroom versus the kitchen, or different sensory experiences like the smell of fresh coffee in the morning, or the smell of barbecue on the grill. You can tap into the power of these associations by purposefully assigning specific cognitive triggers, to help shift your brain into specific brain states like focus. You can use almost any kind of sensory input as a cognitive trigger from a sound to a smell to an object, but music is particularly effective for triggering focus and productivity. You can take it anywhere that you might need to focus, whether it's in the office at home or at a coffee shop. And that has the added benefit of blocking out distracting background noise, helping you further deepen your focus and prevent you from getting interrupted.
So to sum up in the same way that hearing a song from your gym playlist while you're shopping will pump you up and might even make you want to start moving, using a specific playlist for focus can help trigger your brain to automatically zone. In, when you sit down to work. If you have different modes of focus that you need throughout the day, you'll want to create a different focus playlist for each. For example, you might need a playlist for your creative focus mode, and a different playlist for a more busy focus like processing emails and messages by purposefully using special music to trigger a state of focus. You can set up a crystal clear relationship between that type of music and certain types of tasks. The goal is to set up an if-then relationship with different kinds of music. For example, when you need to crank through emails in the morning, then you listen to dance music to keep your energy high and when you need to analyze data to do other types of detail-oriented work, then you listen to techno music on repeat for hours.
You need to listen to this same playlist for over years because repetition makes these associations stronger and more effective when chosen intentionally. These playlists will enable you to quickly transition into each mode of focus whenever you need. The science gets fuzzy when you ask questions like, which songs are best, or are there certain playlists that work better for different modes of focus? This is because we all have different cultural relationships with different kinds of music, a fundamental point to keep in mind when you're choosing music for your focus playlist is to opt for lyric-less music or, if you prefer music with lyrics, make sure it's in a language that you don't understand. The reason why is that your brain is actually hardwired so to speak to constantly be listening for anything, emotionally relevant important or potentially even threatening. Everything that you can hear especially if the sounds involve intelligible speech, actually drains your brain's valuable resources, because your brain doesn't know if it's a threat, and you can't turn off this constant scanning, which is really meant to protect you.
So if you're playing music in the background with lyrics that you understand, even if you think you're not paying attention to them. You're stealing brainpower away from whatever it is that you want to be 100% present for. If that's time with your loved ones or if that's your meditation or if that's your work, whatever it may be. So do your brain a favor by simply sticking to songs without lyrics, or with lyrics in a language that you don't understand. Once you choose a focus playlist, only listen to that music when you're trying to trigger yourself into that mode. Otherwise, if you also listen to that music when you're cooking, or when you're working out, you're going to start to model that if-then association that your brain is trying to make. If you get distracted while you're listening to your focus playlist, we all do sometimes, simply pause the music before dealing with the distraction, then restart it when you're ready to focus again. This will keep the association, clean and clear. By doing this, you're working on strengthening your brain's relationship between that specific music and performing a certain type of task.
Picking one song to play at the end of your day can also be a powerful mental cue to your brain that it's time to stop thinking about the workday and time to focus on whatever matters most to you in your personal life. Inversely, if you found it more difficult to fully turn on for work, you can also use a specific song to start your day. It's going to boost your energy and signal to your brain that it's time to get to work, which can be especially helpful as we navigate changing work environments. We hope you can use this knowledge to focus better and be more productive, regardless of the day or the task. And if you're looking to enhance your creative focus in the coming days. Be sure to check out the new Pedy Music tab which features curated focus music playlists.
