Superstition - 4/26/19

I finished locking up the office doors and drove across the street to a Korean coffee shop. I lived an hour away from the office and saw it pointless to sit in traffic for an hour. I had more work to do, but I knew the commute would suck the life out of me and render me useless for the rest of the night. I had taken a freelance job on top of my startup to help pay off the credit cards I had been living off of and needed to be not only functional, but able to sprint. After putting in my order of kimchi fried rice and a large bottomless coffee, I plugged my laptop in, put on my headphones, and launched my Spotify.

The one thing that I realized kept me going for another six hours of grueling “creativity on demand” after an already exhausting day at a startup was music. In fact, it was one song in particular that I had on repeat for those additional six hours every night. 

And the song is only 2:22 long. 

You might be thinking. How can you listen to the same two minute song on repeat for six fucking hours?! Some quick math would be a replay of around 180 times in one night, times five days a week. Sure, I snuck in a couple other singles in the same album every dozens of plays, but this one song was my go-to, my spinach in a can, my race fuel. 

It had the right vibe, the right energy that pushed my brain and kept my tablet pen moving. With this song, I was in a productivity tunnel at warp speed that pushed me just hard enough that I could sustain it and not have an aneurysm, but not too slow that I was not hitting my grueling benchmarks. 

I was optimized. In the ZONE.  

Using sounds to chain link behavior is as old as Pavlov and his dogs, but intentionally tapping into this power to elicit desired behavior throughout the day is an underutilized tool. Many people have their high-energy gym mix, but outside of that most people may not think of using music as a means to create action and change mindsets. While my examples are primarily adrenaline inducing, other tunage can be useful to wind down, become laser focused, and even provide one with impenetrable confidence.

Taking it to the next level, one can also design desired moods and attach them to songs. This phenomenon naturally occurs when we experience intense emotions (eg. falling in love, vomiting from too many margaritas) while a certain song is playing. Our brains attach this emotion to this song, along with other senses that may be stimulated during this exact moment. The next time we hear that song, those emotions return. It’s powerful stuff! Now that you know this method of conditioning, you can design which emotions are attached to which song. 

I rediscovered this when digging into exploring wake up techniques. Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” kept playing in my mind during planning and I couldn’t figure out why. Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that this song was attached to the morning workout scene and character introduction of Will Smith’s character in I, Robot, which was attached to a similar scene in I Am Legend. Interestingly, Will Smith was 36 at the time of filming, which is my age now, and pretty fit in these scenes. The image fit the music I was looking for, and vice versa. As I came to this conclusion, fuck yeah I rode that song as my Google Clock alarm for months. I also played it while running and working out to further reaffirm this conditioning. It takes me to my montage mode.

If you are looking to change the direction of a mood, whether it’s firing up or winding down, getting rid of anxiety or getting in the zone, take a look into your music library. As you come across new music, see where it could fit in your life. Music is used in war and love for these reasons. Take advantage.

If it can keep me gunning for hours, it can surely get you to that next positive and upward trigger. 

What songs are you rocking right now to get you where you want to go?

Fuck yeah, it’s Friday!

Photo by Malte Wingen on Unsplash