If you’re like me, sometimes you put on your headphones to drown out your neighbor’s chatter. But now research is showing that music is not only good for staying focused, it also increases your productivity and decreases stress levels.
Unfortunately, not every workplace is supportive of having their employees wearing headphones. But now that a study shows that 65% of business workers were more productive while listening to music, maybe your boss can be swayed by its value.
Music is Good for Business
A study for Psychology of Music led by Teresa Lesiuk focused on a group of computer information system developers. In order to gather data, Lesiuk measured how listening to music affected an employee’s time on a task and the quality of work. Not only do the results on productivity speak for themselves, employees also reported more creative thinking and lower stress levels.
In today’s open office environments, there are endless distractions to keep you from producing high quality work. So with research showing that 73% of warehouse workers and 65% of business workers could be more productive when listening to music, perhaps headphones should be more common at the workplace.
But if your workplace is not music friendly or you don’t know how to get started, these 5 tips will help you increase your productivity by listening to music.
- Can I Listen?
Because wearing headphones at work may have an image of laziness or distraction, make sure it’s ok for you to listen to music. Simply ask your boss and let him/her know why you want to listen to music.
- Test Your Music
Not all music makes you more productive. So make an effort to test how different selections of music change your work habits. If you find a certain style of music distracting you at work, try something different.
- Go Instrumental
Although no one is the same, you might be able to maximize your productivity by using music that doesn’t have lyrics. Lyrics can be distracting when at work especially if you are dealing with words.
- Don’t Drown in Sound
Since you’re part of a team, make sure you show your face around the office. Don’t isolate yourself under your headphones.
- Organized Listening
If your job is busy, try to schedule in some music listening time for batches of creativity and productivity at work. Try listening to music while doing computer based tasks that are not collaborative.
Do you use music to make yourself more productive at work? How do you do it? Share your experience in the comments below.
I listen to music at work a couple of ways. Instrumental with no lyrics for sure helps you focus. I prefer something that has a consistent beat. For some reason it especially makes the monotonous tasks fly by! I agree that for sure, music with lyrics are distracting, but overall, if you can listen to music at work, the time seems to go by really fast. Also, your day is more upbeat and you seem to be in a more positive vibe, which also reflects on others you work with and the work itself!
Sounds like you like your music Todd!
I do to. A bit of classical/instrumental music in the background is always nice for me as well, especially during routine tasks.