The Sound of Success, How Music Influences Your Mood and Overall Well-being

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It’s stupid how hyped I can get from just listening to music

I would not stand where I stand today If I wasn’t able to listen to music

I occasionally go on what I call 'Motivational Walks.' whenever I lack clarity, motivation, or face a big problem, I take a walk

In the first half of the walk, I talk out loud to myself about my most pressing problem

The 2nd half of the walk I go stupid

I start to listen to the songs that give me the most motivation

Full volume don’t think about anything else

Just me and the music

When I get home, I am so motivated I get right back to work I sometimes even get so motivated I start doing little sprints on my way home, haha

One day after a Motivational Walk I wondered

How can listening to someone saying words with background noise for roughly 10 minutes have such an impact on my overall well-being?

That’s where the idea for this newsletter stems from.

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How Music Influences your mood and overall well-being

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We don’t need to argue that music can change our mood.

I think everyone at some point or another in their lives experienced the uplifting effects of the right music at the right time.

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• You can listen to music to get a boost in motivation
• You can listen to music to feel happier
• You can cope with loss or loneliness
• You can even reduce anxiety

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It’s no secret which music can give us which effect

Listening to your favorite music for 10 minutes before work is one of the best things you can do to get motivated (like a Motivational Walk, cough)

If we want to feel happier, we can listen to a song with happy lyrics and 140-150 BPM or faster the lyrics don’t matter at that moment, it could also be total nonsense.

There are also studies on how long someone needs to listen to happy music in order to get happier, the threshold is approximately 9 minutes.

If we feel lost or sad, we can listen to “sad” music at 50-60 BPM or less.

It is proven that listening to “sad” music for 13 minutes or more is an effective method of processing feelings of sadness.

When we listen to this one song for only 3 minutes, we are even able to reduce our anxiety by up to 65%.

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You can listen to the "anxiety song" here:

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Music and Productivity, Achieving More with Music

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I already hear the people screaming

Listening to music while working makes you less productive

They’re not wrong most people perform best on cognitive tasks while in complete silence

But there is also evidence that Listening to binaural beats (sounds with a tempo of 40-50 BPM), white noise, or my personal favorite brown noise can improve focus

While I was researching the topic, I also came across pink noise there are not as many studies on pink noise as on white noise, but pink noise can improve focus as well.

If you want to listen to the different Noise colors:

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White Noise

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Brown Noise

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Pink Noise

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Fun-Fact: As I wrote this Newsletter, I was listening to brown noise

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Enhance Learning through Music

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Music can improve our ability to learn new skills, yes you heard that right

If someone can play an instrument or can sing, it has been shown to enhance the learning ability in every other skill as well.

But don’t let your head down if you’re not able to play an instrument or sing (just like me) there still is hope for us because just listening to novel forms of music is also able to expand our brain’s capacity to learn new things.

Although music can enhance learning ability, I would not recommend music while learning something new or reading a book

When you read a book, you are creating an inner narrative you are listening to. Music especially music with lyrics you know also creates that narrative in your head, listening to both narratives at the same times makes learning than it should be.

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Actionable Steps

• Incorporate music into your work routine.
  I for example use the pomodoro method and the short breaks in between to listen to music to recharge my motivation and focus.
• Experiment with different types of background noises like white noise, brown noise, or pink noise.
• Give a 'Motivational Walk' a try and experience the effects firsthand.

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The future of music is very interesting, AI will be able to leverage every aspect of music we just talked about, even ones we are currently unaware of. AI will generate banger after banger, and we might not even know that the music we just listened to was created by AI.

But that’s a topic for another day, for now let music be our companion on the journey to a more motivated, focused, and emotionally balanced life.

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I took most of the information for this newsletter from the Andrew Huberman podcast. I highly recommend checking it out if you want to learn more about the effects of music on your body.

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!
Have a great Sunday

Cheers,

Niklas