Komidar 1

Taylor Komidar

Mrs. Cramer

Comp Pd. 8

28 Sept. 2018

Productivity and Music

“Music is a piece of art that goes in the ears straight to the heart,” said Michel Vanden

Broeck. Music is everywhere you go. More people every day are bringing headphones with them

to libraries and study halls. Music has a way of permeating through empty corners and filling up

environments with substance. It can help you relax, make you well up in tears, or feel alive. It’s

becoming more popular as time goes on due to new genres and artists. The question is whether or

not music is beneficial to productivity. Listening to music has been proven to have positive

effects on people’s emotions and feelings, as well as studying and work ethic; however, negative

effects have been documented as well.

First off, listening to music can cause positive peak emotions. This then causes an

increase in the amount of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a specific neurotransmitter that

helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers (Halcrow). The positive effect from the

Dopamine that music creates, then helps different skills involved in productivity. Putting

background music on while working on a task has been proven to cause motivation and an

improved mood (Davis). The improved mood that music creates also makes memorization easier,

and it helps people complete repetitive tasks in less time with more ease. Listening to music that

is soothing and relaxing helps relieve feelings like stress and anxiety when doing tasks like

studying (Davis). Music has become a therapy because it has been proven to be helpful in
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treating negative feelings and emotions. According to the American Music Therapy Association,

music therapy manages stress, expresses feelings, enhances memory, and promotes Physical

Rehabilitation so that people can accomplish everyday responsibilities, such as work and school,

easier and more efficiently than before.

Notably, with the accompaniment of music, studying and work performance becomes

simpler and more obliging for the brain. Music helps with speech, reading, phonological and

morphological awareness. Dr. Teresa Lesiuk, at the University of Miami, did research on the

effect of music to work performance (Chu). She had fifty-six participants and the data of the

experiment was collected at the participants’ actual work environments over a five-week period.

Those who had listened to music finished tasks at a faster rate than those who hadn’t listened to

any music. In a noisy atmosphere, music can be a way to tune out the noise and distractions,

therefore improving focus. Neuroscientific research, research on the brain, shows the brain

processes music and language in similar ways. It also shows music creates stronger neural

pathways, which control basic body functions like heart rate and breathing (Halcrow).

Now, while listening to music has positive effects towards productivity, it also has its

drawbacks. Completing reading or writing tasks while listening to music with lyrics, can lead to

students absorbing less information. This is because the brain is trying to process multiple

sources of words. If it’s new music, then your brain is trying to process two sets of new

information at a time (Davis). Also, if the music is loud or agitated, then it can have adverse

effects on reading comprehension and mood, therefore causing a negative impact on focusing.

Studying with music on in the background could also have the effect of it being difficult to take

the test on the material when it’s in silence because the brain got used to the music and

information combination. It has been proven through multiple scientists’ research that problem
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solving and memory recall tasks are performed better in silence than with any kind of

background noise. The Mozart Effect is a popular theory that listening to music will make people

smarter. Dr. Gordon Shaw came up with the theory in the early 1990s and it’s said to help

improve the performance of certain kinds of mental tasks. This theory was later debunked when

a team of scientists did a study and they found little evidence that classical music improves

performance on specific tasks and zero evidence that it improves your intelligence (“How”).

Some studies say listening to popular music interferes with reading composition and information

processing, while other studies say listening to music all depends on the situation and type of

music of the person (Chu). Dr. Haake identified five factors that could help determine if music is

distracting or helpful; the music structure, lyrics, listening habits, difficulty of the task, and the

control over the music. The music structure is how many chords and instruments a song is

composed of or how simple the song is. The lyrics can be distracting because they can cause a

loss of focus on the message of the song and interrupt the brain’s train of thought. If someone is

used to listening to music while working, then the lyrics are often more beneficial than

distracting and vice versa. A task might require more thought and focus, and music might make

it more difficult to work efficiently. When music is played and there is no say in the matter, then

it can be more distracting than if the person could control it (Chu).

In conclusion, listening to music has been proven to have positive effects on peoples’

emotions and feelings, as well as studying and work ethic; though, it is not without its

drawbacks. Listening to music can cause positive emotions and be used as a therapy to help

manage stress, express feelings, enhance memory, and promote Physical Rehabilitation, so that

people can accomplish everyday responsibilities easier and more efficiently than before.

Studying and tasks becomes simpler and more accommodating for the brain with the help of
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music. Music helps with speech, reading, phonological and morphological awareness. Listening

to music can also be a bad idea when it comes to productivity, for reasons such as, it can have the

effect of students absorbing less information and losing their train of thought. Whether listening

to music will help with productivity or not, it all depends on situation, type of person, type of

music they listen to, and student that someone is. “Music is life. That’s why our hearts have

beats,” said Cecily Morgan.

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Work Cited

Chu, Melissa. "Research Shows Listening to Music Increases Productivity (and Some Types of

Music Are Super Effective)." Inc., www.inc.com/melissa-chu/research-shows-listening-

to-music-increases-produc.html?cid=search. Accessed 21 Sept. 2018.

Davis, Nicky. "Is it Good to Listen to Music While Studying?" Study.com,

study.com/academy/popular/is-it-good-to-listen-to-music-while-studying.html. Accessed

21 Sept. 2018.

Halcrow, Katherine. "Imitation and innovation: Harnessing the principles of music pedagogy for

the writing classroom." Literacy Learning: The Middle Years, vol. 26, no. 3, 2018, p.

48+. Academic OneFile,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A554040665/AONE?u=pl1949&sid=AONE&xid=9b

d069ae. Accessed 21 Sept. 2018

"How music affects your productivity." Sparring Mind, www.sparringmind.com/music-

productivity/. Accessed 21 Sept. 2018.

"What is music therapy?" American Music Therapy Association, 1998,

www.musictherapy.org/. Accessed 16 Nov. 2018.

https://www.fastweb.com/student-life/articles/the-best-study-music-what-to-listen-to-while-studying