My teenage son listens to music while he works. I asked him not to as it ruins your concentration. He disagrees and reckons that I should play music in the serviced offices that I rent, to improve performance. So I decided to do a bit of research in order to prove that I was right. As it turns out, he was right and I was wrong.
We know that music can modify your mood. Films have been using musical scores for years to produce the correct mood for a scene. At times you barely are aware of the music at all but you are very amenable to the mood being conveyed. So can we use music to put us in a ‘productive’ mood?
Research seems to sustain such a claim. For example, a trial where 75 out of 256 workers in a serviced office, were given personal stereos to put on at work for four weeks, showed a 10% boost in productivity for the headphone wearers.
Other comparable research conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois established a 6.3% enlargement, when compared with the no music control group.
So if we believe that music does add to productivity, does it matter what types of music we listen to? Does all music have the identical result or are certain types superior in certain situations?
If your goal is to add to your attentiveness then music which has a steady, easy beat and light melodies is suggested. These are thought to be excellent for those trying to revise as they help you pace your reading to aid focus and memorising. Baroque music is reported as an outstanding example, particularly the works of Vivaldi, Bach and Handel.
Rock music can have a comparable effect. According to an account in the journal Neuroscience of Behaviour and Physiology, the Russian Academy of Sciences revealed that a person’s capacity to distinguish optical images, together with letters and numbers, is quicker when either rock or classical music is playing in the background.
If you are aiming to be more productive through being more stress-free, then you may be fascinated to learn, music with an upbeat rhythm can decrease stress hormone levels by as much as 41%.
Some of the most publicised studies into whether listening to music increases productivity have centred on what has been termed the ‘Mozart effect.’
The expression got its name after a study showed that college students had performed better solving mathematical problems, when listening to classical music.
So if you have your own workforce housed in a service office, you should think about playing some calming background music. You could soon be seeing an increase in productivity.
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