Effects of music on productivity
- Listening to music with lyrics is distracting for most people. It’s best to avoid it when working on tasks that require focus or the learning of new information.
- Listening to music with lyrics may help people working on repetitive or mundane tasks.
- Classical or rock music allows people to identify numbers more quickly and accurately.
- Ambient noise, or ambient music, at about 70 decibels can be the best kind of music for work productivity. But increasing it over 85 decibels hurts creativity.
- Searching for the right artist can detract from workplace productivity but, once you know what works for you, music can become a tool for near-instant concentration.
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Music has a real impact on human emotions and perception. Music activates different areas of the brain in different people, but there are general brain and mood patterns revealed by music research.
For the most part, research suggests that listening to music can improve your efficiency, creativity and happiness in terms of work-related tasks.
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- Classical music: No lyrics are always a popular choice.
- Electronic music: It’s repetitive but in a good way.
- Video-game music: Game composers know the ideal music enhances the experience while not distracting the player.
- Anything soft enough to not divert attention and focus is a great addition to your playlist .
- White noise or nature sounds.
Certain regions in our brain—which evoke strong emotions and improve concentration—are more active when we listen to familiar rather than unfamiliar music.
Plus, when we listen to unfamiliar music we’re more likely to lose focus, while adjusting to the new sound.
Another study tested drivers while listening to their own choice of music, silence or “safe” music provided by the researchers. The results showed that drivers made more mistakes and drove more aggressively when listening to their own choice of music. Unfamiliar music resulted in safer driving.