Does Listening to Music Stimulate Creative Thinking, or Stifle It?

While monotonous work like making a report is tolerable with your favorite music playing in the background, any kind of creative work can be significantly impaired if it is accompanied by music.

Studies show that certain kinds of music may be ‘paired’ with your kind of work, like classical music which are stimulating and ‘positive’ or ‘happy’ can help us perform certain tasks which require ‘divergent’ or out-of-the-box thinking.

After a problem has been examined and analysed, creative thinkers often hit a roadblock, which is actually an ‘incubation period’ where the brain works in the background to process information at an unconscious level.

This results in an ‘aha’ or a ‘Eureka!’ moment when the solution or idea pops inside the head later when we are not consciously thinking about it.