Listen to One Song on Repeat When You Want to Get Into the “zone”
If you listen to music while you work, consider cutting your playlist down to one or more songs. It can increase your concentration and focus.
Software engineer Joseph Mosby learned this trick from WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg , who listens to one song on repeat to get into the stream. Mosby found that a playlist of three songs brought him into the zone much faster than usual, and explained:
Arkansas psychologist Elizabeth Helmut Margulis has written a book called On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind, which indirectly addresses this issue.
Musical repetition forces us to mentally imagine or sing what we expect to do next … There may be a sense of shared subjectivity with the music. In describing their most intense musical experiences, people often say that the line between music and ourselves has disappeared.
Okay, that helps us. The more we listen to music on repetition, we tend to dissolve into it. This is extremely useful for creative work where turning off the monkey mind is paramount.
If classical music or white noise doesn’t work for you, perhaps pick a song from the video game soundtrack .
The Psychology of Repetition of a Small Playlist | Joseph Mosby