Your Playlist Is a Performance Drug. Here's the Science.

How to stop using music by accident and start using it as a precision neurobiological tool for focus and flow.

Here's a question worth sitting with for a moment.

When you put your headphones on at work, are you making a deliberate performance decision? Or are you just... playing something?

Most high performers I work with use music the way they use caffeine: habitually, instinctively, without much thought about mechanism or timing. They know it does something. They're just not sure what, and they're certainly not calibrating it.

That's a missed opportunity. Because the neuroscience of music is remarkably clear, and the practical levers it offers are genuinely powerful.

Today we're going to decode exactly what music does to your brain, why some music builds focus while other music quietly destroys it, and how to use this information to make music one of the more underrated tools in your Peak Performance Architect toolkit.

Let me start by dismantling two myths.

Myth one: Music helps you focus.

Myth two: Music distracts you.

Both are true. Both are incomplete. The relationship between music and cognitive performance is conditional, mechanistic, and beautifully exploitable once you understand the underlying neuroscience.

The goal today isn't to tell you to listen to lo-fi beats on YouTube (though we'll get to why that's actually not a bad shout). The goal is to give you a mechanistic understanding of what's happening in your brain when you press play, so you can make intelligent decisions about when, what, and how to use music as a precision performance lever.

TL;DR (In a Hurry? Start Here)

• Music is a genuine neurobiology intervention: it releases dopamine, modulates cortisol, regulates arousal, and influences which attentional networks are active in your brain
• The effect of music on performance is heavily conditional: task type, music complexity, lyrical content, familiarity, and your personality all determine whether music helps or hurts
• Lyrical music during verbal cognitive work is reliably disruptive; instrumental, familiar, moderately complex music during routine or creative work is reliably supportive
• Music can be used strategically across three phases: priming the system before deep work, sustaining focus during the right task types, and accelerating recovery post-work
• The relationship between music and flow is real but indirect: music can prime the neurochemical conditions for flow, but the wrong kind of music during deep work often prevents flow rather than inducing it
• Five protocols below with specific, evidence-based prescriptions

The Part Where I Tell You What Your Brain Does With Music

Most people intuitively understand that music affects their mood. Fewer realise how deeply it reaches into the brain's operating system.

When you listen to music you love, you are not having an aesthetic experience. You are triggering a cascade of neurochemical events that simultaneously involves your reward circuitry, your stress response systems, your autonomic nervous system, and your attentional networks.

Let's start with the most important one.

Dopamine: The Reward You Didn't Know Music Was Giving You

In 2001, Blood and Zatorre published what would become one of the most cited papers in music neuroscience. Using PET scanning, they showed that when people experienced musical "chills" (that spine-tingling feeling when a piece of music hits just right), the brain regions that lit up were not the auditory cortex. They were the nucleus accumbens, the ventral tegmental area, the amygdala, and the orbitofrontal cortex (Blood & Zatorre, 2001, PNAS). The exact same reward circuit activated by food, sex, money, and drugs.

A decade later, Salimpoor and colleagues took this further. Using a radioligand PET technique that directly measures dopamine release rather than just brain activation, they showed that music triggers dopamine in two distinct anatomical locations at two distinct times. During the anticipation of a musical peak, dopamine floods the caudate nucleus. During the experience of that peak, it floods the nucleus accumbens (Salimpoor et al., 2011, Nature Neuroscience).

This is not a trivial finding. This is the anticipation-reward cycle that drives all intrinsically motivated behaviour. Music is running the same neural software as every other goal-directed activity your brain cares about.

Then in 2019, Ferreri and colleagues closed the loop by making the relationship causal rather than correlational. They gave participants either levodopa (a dopamine precursor), risperidone (a dopamine receptor blocker), or a placebo, then had them listen to music. Levodopa enhanced musical pleasure. Risperidone blocked it entirely (Ferreri et al., 2019, PNAS). Dopamine isn't just correlated with musical enjoyment. It is mechanistically required.

Why this matters for your performance: Dopamine is not just the feel-good molecule. It is the currency of motivation, focus, and the drive to continue an activity. When music primes your dopaminergic system, it is literally making your brain more ready to engage with challenging work. We'll use this deliberately in Protocol 1.

Cortisol: The Stress Buffer You Didn't Know You Needed

If you've been following along since the cortisol edition, you'll recognise this pattern immediately.

In 2013, Thoma and colleagues ran a rigorous RCT exposing 60 participants to the Trier Social Stress Test, a standardised psychological stress protocol used widely in stress neuroscience research. Before the stressor, participants were assigned to either relaxing music, the sound of rippling water, or quiet rest. The music group showed significantly faster cortisol recovery and lower autonomic stress responses than either control group (Thoma et al., 2013, PLOS ONE).

Linnemann and colleagues took this out of the lab with an ecological momentary assessment study, measuring salivary cortisol in real daily life rather than a controlled setting. Music was associated with lower cortisol levels, but crucially, only when the person was listening with the intention of relaxing. Listening for distraction or activation did not reduce cortisol (Linnemann et al., 2015, Psychoneuroendocrinology).

Why this matters: Music is a legitimate cortisol management tool. But intention and timing matter. The same track that energises you before a morning sprint session is not the right tool for your post-board-meeting recovery window.

Arousal: The Inverted-U in Your Ears

We've talked about the inverted-U curve in previous editions. The principle that most performance-relevant neurochemicals have an optimal range, and that both too much and too little impair performance, applies directly here.

Music functions primarily as an arousal modulator. It can move you up or down the arousal curve depending on tempo, mode, complexity, and volume. Fast tempo, major mode, and high complexity push arousal up. Slow tempo, minor mode, and low complexity bring arousal down (Husain, Thompson & Schellenberg, 2002, Music Perception).

Here is the key insight: the optimal music for any given moment is the music that brings you to the peak of the inverted-U for the task you're about to do, from whatever baseline state you're currently in.

If you're sluggish at 8am, you probably need activation. If you're wired and heading into a 90-minute strategy session, you probably need calming. One-size-fits-all playlist choices miss this entirely.

Thompson, Schellenberg and Husain (2001, Psychological Science) showed that the famous "Mozart Effect" was not about Mozart at all. It was about arousal and mood. Any music that elevated arousal and positive mood to the right level produced similar effects. The effect disappeared when arousal and mood were controlled for. The Mozart industry made a lot of money from a misunderstood finding. The real message is more useful: music is an arousal regulation tool, and its performance effects flow directly from that function.

For the Geeks: Where in the Brain Is This Actually Happening?

(If neuroanatomy isn't your thing, skip ahead to The Problem section. I won't be offended.)

The neural story of music and focus involves four key systems operating in concert.

The mesolimbic dopamine system (VTA to nucleus accumbens to prefrontal cortex): the primary reward pathway. As covered above, music activates it reliably and measurably. Menon and Levitin (2005, NeuroImage) showed functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and the auditory cortex during pleasurable music listening, with downstream projections into the hypothalamus.

The default mode network (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, angular gyrus): your mind-wandering network. When it's active, you're not focused on the task in front of you. You're ruminating, daydreaming, or running mental simulations about that conversation from Tuesday. For focus and flow, you need this network quieted down. Taruffi and colleagues (2017, Scientific Reports) showed that positive-valence music reduced DMN activity and mind-wandering compared to negative-valence music.

The salience network (anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex): your relevance-detection and network-switching system. A landmark Stanford study by Sridharan et al. (2007, Neuron) showed that transitions between musical movements activated the salience network, which then triggered engagement of the central executive network while simultaneously suppressing the DMN. Music appears to drive exactly the attentional-switching sequence associated with focused engagement.

The central executive network (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex): your focused cognitive control network. Where deliberate, directed thinking happens. The goal for deep work is CEN dominance with DMN suppression. Well-chosen music appears to facilitate exactly this state.

Neural entrainment: Large and Jones (1999, Psychological Review) proposed that attention is fundamentally rhythmic and can be entrained by external periodic stimuli. Nozaradan et al. (2011, Journal of Neuroscience) provided direct EEG evidence: neural oscillations synchronise to the beat frequency of heard music. The practical implication is that a steady, predictable beat provides a temporal scaffold for attention, which is why repetitive, beat-driven music tends to support sustained focus better than highly variable or unpredictable music.

How and Why: The Three Mechanisms Worth Understanding

Synthesising across this literature, music affects focus and flow through three distinct mechanisms. Understanding all three lets you use music with precision rather than luck.

Mechanism 1: Dopaminergic Reward Cycling

Music creates a continuous cycle of prediction and resolution. Each musical phrase establishes an expectation; its resolution (or deliberate violation) delivers a small dopaminergic reward. Salimpoor et al. (2013, Science) showed that the degree of connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and the auditory cortex predicted how much participants were willing to pay for new music, suggesting this prediction-reward loop is central to musical engagement.

This mechanism is what makes music intrinsically motivating. It keeps you in a state of mild, sustained reward engagement, which is cognitively similar to the reward dynamics of flow itself.

The practical constraint: This mechanism works best with music that sits in the sweet spot between predictable and novel. Highly familiar music eventually stops generating prediction errors and becomes true background noise. Highly novel music generates too many unresolved prediction errors and hijacks attentional resources. For focused work, known-but-not-exhausted music is the target.

Mechanism 2: Arousal Regulation

As covered above, music is your most accessible arousal modulator. The inverted-U applies: you need enough arousal for engaged performance, but not so much that cognitive resources are consumed by regulatory demands.

The evolutionary rationale here is worth noting. Music has been a feature of every human culture ever studied, and its most consistent documented function across cultures is physiological synchronisation in groups: coordinating effort, regulating collective arousal during labour, ritual, and preparation for challenge. Your brain responds to music as an arousal-regulatory signal because it has been doing exactly that for tens of thousands of years. This is a deeply wired response you can exploit intentionally.

Mechanism 3: Attentional Scaffolding

Beat-driven music provides a rhythmic temporal structure that entrains your attentional oscillations. Beyond rhythm, music also facilitates the network-switching sequence (salience network engagement, central executive network activation, DMN suppression) that characterises focused attention.

Think of it this way: silence in a modern office is rarely true silence. It's a low-level cocktail of unpredictable auditory intrusions: notifications, conversations, the hum of the HVAC system changing, footsteps in the corridor, hello Teams call at full volume from the next desk. Each unpredictable sound event activates the salience network, interrupts the CEN, and creates an opportunity for the DMN to re-engage. Well-chosen music effectively masks this unpredictable auditory noise with predictable auditory structure, reducing the frequency of unwanted attentional interruptions.

This is actually the strongest practical justification for focus music: not that it enhances cognition directly, but that it reduces the cognitive cost of attentional interruptions from environmental noise.

The Problem: Why Most High Performers Are Using Music Wrong

Let me describe a pattern I see constantly.

Someone sits down for deep work. They open Spotify, find something they've been enjoying lately, and hit play. It's a track with great lyrics, a tempo that varies dramatically, and a complexity level that would be perfect for a drive but is genuinely disruptive for strategic thinking. They spend 90 minutes feeling like they worked hard, but their output is patchier than it should be. They attribute the underperformance to fatigue, or the difficulty of the problem. The playlist never gets interrogated.

Here are the specific failure modes the research identifies.

Failure mode 1: Lyrical music during verbal cognitive work.
This is the clearest finding in the literature and the most commonly ignored. Lyrical music competes directly with verbal working memory through phonological loop interference. Perham and Currie (2014, Applied Cognitive Psychology) showed that lyrical music impaired reading comprehension regardless of whether participants liked or disliked it. Writing a strategy document, drafting a board paper, or composing a client communication while listening to a song with lyrics is essentially asking your verbal processing system to run two streams simultaneously. You are leaving cognitive capacity on the table every time.

Failure mode 2: Novel music.
Novel music generates more unresolved prediction errors than familiar music, consuming attentional resources for auditory processing. The effect is similar to the difference between driving on a route you've taken a thousand times (near-automatic, low attentional cost) versus navigating an unfamiliar city (high attentional demand). New music makes your auditory cortex work harder, pulling resources away from your cognitive task. Save new music for the gym or the commute.

Failure mode 3: Music that's too complex for the task.
Gonzalez and Aiello (2019, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied) found that complex music improved performance on simple tasks but impaired performance on complex tasks. Simple, repetitive musical structures provide attentional scaffolding without cognitive competition. Complex structures become a competing cognitive object. The inverse relationship between music complexity and task complexity is one of the most practically useful findings in this entire literature.

Failure mode 4: Ignoring personality.
Furnham and Strbac (2002, Ergonomics) found that introverts showed significantly greater performance decrements with background music than extraverts, consistent with Eysenck's arousal theory: introverts operate at higher baseline cortical arousal, so any additional stimulation pushes them more readily past their optimal point on the inverted-U. If you're introverted and you find focus music frustrating rather than helpful, this is likely a real neurobiological signal, not a failure of willpower. The prescription is different for you. Listen to what works for you.

Failure mode 5: Using the same music regardless of what you need it to do.
Your arousal level varies significantly across the day and across different emotional states. A single playlist cannot optimally regulate arousal for both your 7am deep work block and your post-meeting recovery window. The tool needs to be matched to the current need.

The Protocols

Five evidence-based protocols. Use them individually or stack them into a complete music operating system for your performance day.

Protocol 1: The Dopamine Prime

The Science

Before entering deep work, your brain's reward and motivation circuitry benefits from activation. We know from Salimpoor et al. (2011) that music you love drives genuine dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic system. We also know from Lesiuk (2005, Psychology of Music), a field study with information technology workers conducted over five weeks, that self-selected music produces stronger performance benefits than researcher-selected music. Choice and personal preference are neurochemically meaningful, not just psychologically.

The goal here is not to put music on during deep work. It's to use a short pre-work music ritual to prime the dopamine system before you need it, in the same way a warm-up primes the muscular system before exercise.

This also leverages conditioned state-change: over time, a consistent pre-work music ritual becomes a contextual cue that reliably signals to your brain that focus time is coming, accelerating the transition into a ready cognitive state.

The Protocol

1. Identify three to five tracks that reliably produce a positive, energised response in you. These should be tracks that feel intrinsically motivating rather than simply pleasant. High-tempo, positively valenced, familiar music works well for most people.
2. Play these tracks for five to ten minutes before starting your deep work session, not during it.
3. Use this as a deliberate transition ritual: close unnecessary tabs, put your phone away, get your water, and let the music signal the shift in context.
4. When the music ends, begin your work in silence or move directly into Protocol 2.
5. Use the same tracks consistently over time to build the conditioned cue. Resist the urge to update the playlist too frequently.

Expected Outcome

Immediate effects: improved mood and arousal within five to ten minutes, consistent with the arousal-mood literature. Over two to four weeks of consistent use, most people notice a faster, more reliable transition into focused states as the conditioned response strengthens. Track your subjective readiness and focus quality scores if you want objective markers.

Protocol 2: The Focus Filter

The Science

If you're going to use music during deep cognitive work, the research is quite specific about what works and what doesn't. The key variables are: no lyrics (verbal working memory protection), familiar rather than novel (low prediction error cost), moderate tempo (around 60 to 90 BPM for focused analytical work), and low to moderate complexity (attentional scaffolding without cognitive competition). Full disclosure; I completely buck the trend here. My tempo sweet spot is 125+ BPM with 150 BPM being a sweet spot.

The meta-analysis by Kämpfe, Sedlmeier and Renkewitz (2011, Psychology of Music) across 97 studies found that background music has a small positive effect on emotional state but a small negative effect on memory performance, with effects heavily moderated by music type and task type. The sweet spot exists, but it requires deliberate selection rather than algorithmic recommendation.

The Protocol

Use the following criteria as a filter when selecting music for focused work blocks:

1. No lyrics during any task involving reading, writing, or verbal reasoning. This is non-negotiable based on the phonological interference evidence.
2. Familiar over novel: choose music you know well rather than exploring new artists during focus work. Save new music for commutes or physical training.
3. Tempo matched to task energy: 60 to 80 BPM for deep analytical work requiring sustained, calm attention; 80 to 110 BPM for tasks requiring more energy (creative brainstorming, reviewing materials, high-volume administrative work).
4. Complexity inversely matched to task complexity: for your most cognitively demanding work, choose structurally simple, repetitive music. For routine or low-demand tasks, more complex music is fine and may even help.
5. Volume below conversational level: music should fill the space, not dominate it. Background, not foreground. Also where I buck the trend ...

Genre examples that broadly meet these criteria: ambient electronic (Brian Eno, Stars of the Lid), lo-fi instrumental, minimalist classical (Erik Satie, Max Richter), jazz without vocals, and understated film scores.

Expected Outcome

For most people, switching from lyrical, novel, or complex music to instrumental, familiar, simple music during high-demand cognitive work produces a noticeable improvement in output quality and reduced mental fatigue within the first session. This is not a subtle effect. If you track output quality across work blocks, you should see a measurable difference within a week.

Protocol 3: The Arousal Match

The Science

This protocol treats music as a precision arousal tool rather than a pleasant backdrop. The goal is to diagnose your current arousal state and select music that moves you toward the optimal point on the inverted-U for the task you're about to undertake.

Husain et al. (2002) established that fast tempo combined with major mode increases arousal and positive mood, which mediates improved performance on tasks requiring energised engagement. Slow tempo combined with minor mode decreases arousal, which is appropriate for tasks requiring calm, measured attention or for post-work recovery.

Bernardi et al. (2006, Heart) added a critical nuance: it is not just the music itself that produces the strongest physiological effects. The contrast between music and silence, particularly natural pauses within music, drives significant parasympathetic responses. Music with natural dynamic variation is more physiologically effective for state regulation than monotonous, unvarying soundscapes.

The Protocol

Before each significant work block, take 30 seconds for an arousal audit:

1. Rate your current energy and arousal on a simple one to ten scale. One is barely functioning. Ten is anxiously over-activated.
2. Identify your target state for the upcoming task. Deep analytical work generally requires a five to seven. Creative work often benefits from a six to eight. Recovery requires a two to four.
3. Select music accordingly:
   • Below target: faster tempo, major mode, energising music to activate the system
   • Above target: slower tempo, lower complexity, calming music to bring arousal down before the session begins
   • At target: consider silence, or low-complexity instrumental music purely for auditory masking of environmental noise
4. Reassess at the end of the block. Over time, you'll build an accurate map of your own arousal patterns across the day and the music that reliably shifts you in the right direction.

Expected Outcome

The immediate benefit is better arousal management at the start of focus blocks. Over two to three weeks, you'll develop a cleaner read on your own patterns and a more precise toolkit for adjusting them. Secondary benefit: reduced reliance on caffeine for afternoon activation, because you now have an accessible, zero-cost arousal tool at your disposal.

Protocol 4: The Recovery Reset

The Science

Thoma et al. (2013, PLOS ONE) showed that relaxing music post-stressor produced significantly faster cortisol recovery and reduced autonomic stress responses compared to both silence and white noise. Linnemann et al. (2015) confirmed this effect in daily life, with the important caveat that it is specific to music listened to with a relaxation intention. Listening to music while simultaneously checking email or transitioning to the next task does not produce the same cortisol response.

This connects directly to the strategic recovery principle we've covered in previous editions. Recovery is not passive. It is an active neurobiological process that can be accelerated or impaired depending on what you do during the recovery window. Music is a precision tool for accelerating cortisol clearance and parasympathetic rebound between high-demand periods.

Bernardi et al. (2006) added the finding that pauses in music induced relaxation responses even greater than sustained silence alone. The contrast between sound and silence drives the strongest parasympathetic responses.

The Protocol

After any high-demand period (a difficult meeting, a 90-minute deep work block, a challenging stakeholder conversation), implement a 10 to 15 minute recovery window using these parameters:

1. Stop active cognitive work. The music does not produce cortisol recovery if you're simultaneously processing information.
2. Choose slow-tempo (50 to 70 BPM), low-complexity, familiar music. Ideally music you associate personally with rest rather than energy.
3. Choose music with natural dynamic variation and pauses rather than a monotonous continuous soundscape.
4. Set a deliberate intention. This sounds soft but Linnemann et al. (2015) found it's neurochemically meaningful. Frame this consciously as a recovery window, not transition noise.
5. Combine with a brief walk or change of physical position to compound the autonomic reset effect.

Expected Outcome

Reduced subjective stress and improved energy within 10 to 15 minutes, consistent with Thoma et al. (2013). If you track HRV, you should see improved post-session HRV recovery scores compared to days without deliberate recovery music use. Across a week of consistent implementation, expect more stable afternoon energy and meaningfully reduced end-of-day depletion.

Protocol 5: The Flow Trigger Stack

The Science

I want to be honest about what the evidence does and doesn't support here, because the music-and-flow space is where enthusiasm tends to outrun the science.

Direct research showing that music causes flow in knowledge workers is thin. What we have is this:

Dietrich (2004, Consciousness and Cognition) proposed that flow involves transient hypofrontality: a temporary reduction in activity in the prefrontal cortex regions associated with self-monitoring, self-criticism, and explicit self-regulation. This quieting of the inner critic is what produces the effortless, ego-dissolved quality of flow. Ulrich, Keller and Grön (2014, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience) provided direct neuroimaging support, finding reduced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (a key DMN hub) during experimentally induced flow states.

Music has been shown to reduce DMN activity (Taruffi et al., 2017), suppress self-referential processing, and drive the attentional network-switching sequence associated with focused engagement (Sridharan et al., 2007). De Manzano et al. (2010, Emotion) measured the physiology of flow during piano performance and found it was characterised by increased HRV and parasympathetic tone (a state of effortless engagement rather than effortful striving). This is important: flow is not a high-adrenaline state. It is a deeply focused, parasympathetically stable one.

The synthesis: music probably does not cause flow directly, but it can create the neurochemical and attentional preconditions that make flow more accessible. In particular, familiar, rhythmically engaging instrumental music may help quiet the inner critic and maintain the attentional continuity needed for flow entry.

The Protocol

Build a conditioned flow-trigger stack using music as one component:

1. Create a dedicated flow playlist: 60 to 90 minutes of instrumental, familiar, beat-driven music with consistent tempo and low to moderate complexity. Long enough to cover a full focus block without requiring any management attention. The uninterrupted continuity is part of the design.
2. Reserve this playlist exclusively for deep work. Do not use it as general background music throughout the day. Over time, the playlist becomes a conditioned cue for the cognitive state associated with deep work. Your brain learns that when this music plays, it is time to go deep.
3. Stack with other flow-supporting conditions: a consistent physical environment, phone on Do Not Disturb or in another room, a brief pre-work ritual using Protocol 1 above, and a clearly defined task with a specific output goal. Each element individually is modest. Stacked together, they create a reliable entry signal.
4. Do not manage the music once it starts. No skipping, no adjusting, no rating tracks. The moment you start managing the playlist, you've interrupted the continuity of the focus state. Choose your tracks in advance and commit.
5. Start with shorter sessions (60 minutes) and extend over time as the conditioned response strengthens.
   Here is what is reliably pushing me into flow and deep concentration at the moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdgz66W0yLg

Expected Outcome

Flow states cannot be reliably guaranteed on demand. The neuroscience does not support that claim and I'd be doing you a disservice to suggest otherwise. What this protocol builds is a higher base rate of flow access: more frequent entry into deep focus states, faster entry when conditions are right, and longer sustained periods before attentional drift. Over three to four weeks of consistent use, most people notice a meaningful improvement in both the frequency and quality of their best work periods.

Top Takeaways

Music is a genuine neurochemical tool. It releases dopamine, modulates cortisol, regulates arousal, and influences attentional network dynamics. Using it accidentally is like having a precision instrument and using it as a blunt object.

The effect is conditional, not universal. Music helps performance when it is instrumental, familiar, matched in complexity to the inverse of task complexity, and timed appropriately. Music hurts performance when it is lyrical (for verbal tasks), novel, overly complex, or mismatched to your current arousal needs.

Three mechanisms to remember. Dopaminergic reward cycling (prediction and resolution), arousal regulation (inverted-U), and attentional scaffolding (neural entrainment and DMN suppression). Each can be used deliberately.

Three phases for your day. Making (dopamine prime before deep work), Using (focus filter during the right task types), Clearing (recovery reset after high-demand periods).

Flow is not caused by music, but it can be conditioned to it. A consistent, dedicated flow playlist builds a conditioned cue for deep work states over time. This is legitimate neuroscience applied practically, not wishful thinking.

Your personality matters. If you're introverted, your optimal music intensity is likely lower than most productivity advice suggests. Your biology is not broken. The one-size-fits-all recommendation is.

Binaural beats are not well-supported. A 2019 meta-analysis (Garcia-Argibay et al., Psychological Research) found small effects on anxiety and no consistent effects on cognition. Save the subscription money and invest it in building a good instrumental playlist instead.

One Final Thought

You spend significant time and money optimising your sleep, your training, your nutrition, and your supplementation. You hire coaches and attend leadership development programmes. And then you sit down for your most cognitively demanding work of the day and let an algorithm pick your soundtrack at random.

The gap between accidental music use and intentional music use is small. The knowledge required fits in a newsletter. The cost is zero.

Your brain is responding to music whether you're paying attention or not. Dopamine is rising or falling. Cortisol is being buffered or ignored. Attention networks are being supported or undermined. The only question is whether you're directing that response or leaving it to chance.

Your operating system is listening. Time to give it a better signal.

Press play deliberately. In saying that, don't forget the autotelic nature of music, if it feels good and you need a pick me up, listen to it.