Music and productivity

[mtbc]

When I am learning something new or figuring out something difficult then I need silence. However, for much work, like practicing existing skills, it can help to put some easy lively music on, anything from Jean-Michel Jarre to the Pet Shop Boys to Lily Allen works just fine. Or, for simple household chores, I might put Absolute Radio on in the background. It then becomes easy to get productively lost in the work rather than bored or distracted.

I find it interesting how much difference the right music can make. It keeps me focused and alert like some effective psychopharmaceutical. This is significant enough that I wonder what is already known about it scientifically; perhaps the effect has a name. I also wonder why music has this effect, what relationship it has to the environment in which we evolved; perhaps social chants are quite ancient.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

Hmm. If you're finding any Jarre apart from Waiting for Cousteau (the piece, not the album) "easy", we clearly listen to it in different ways!

Then again, almost any music I actually like (and much music I don't) is a significant distraction for me from thinking deeply. Usually, I think in comparative silence. In the unlikely event I feel a serious urge for background music which won't distract me, that's very different from the stuff I'll listen to actively.

[mtbc]

It is quite plausible that we are listening in different ways.

For keeping me in the zone I do need the music to be non-trivial or boredom looms and my actual work is probably boring already which is why I need the music. I think it can be not-distracting only if I already know it very well (I certainly recall Equinoxe in the early 1980s on vinyl) so that, while it may have plenty interesting going on, it is so familiar that it doesn't draw my attention. Perhaps once something is good enough to be interesting but also something that I am used to hearing then it can somehow keep me stimulated while backgrounding the actual listening.

I'm tempted to make some analogy with music for long drives but it's also true that I then pay more attention and am more tolerant of slower tempo so long as it remains interesting. Operatic and choral works can be effective and I am more actively listening, also gentler tracks by, say, The Eagles or Pink Floyd, especially for smaller roads. Albums by anyone from Joe Satriani to Smash Mouth to Kveikur work fine for highway driving though. Again, it's about remaining alert while doing something that could be boring and, now I'm back to regular cars, keeping some fun in it too.