That's the end.

Hello, it's Dr. Sahar Yusuf 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 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

...