Everyone has experienced that unmistakable moment when a track comes on shuffle and you freeze for a second thinking, "That's my song!" If you don't want those special songs to lose their magic, you should deliberately listen to them as sparingly as possible.

Our brain pays far more attention to novel stimuli than to what is familiar and predictable. You are much more engaged when listening to a song whose next second still surprises you; once you have memorized every single note, habituation sets in and you eventually skip it out of boredom. Consciously rationing how often you play your favorite tracks preserves their sense of novelty and keeps the pleasure alive.