Music vs. work

Noticed people were exchanging music for work. So, I decided to do a little research on how music influences performance. Does it help or distracts? 

In short, you should listen to music at work. It makes you feel better, decrease stress, improves performance. Yet, when learning or reading, turn it off.

There is even a research particularly with software developers. Details on researches and some music links are below. 

• software design and development work are connected to high level stress, anxiety and even depression;
• music affect emotions. It even lets people experience ‘peak’ emotions;
• generally it makes people ‘feel better’;
• people who worked without ‘sedative’ music experiences significantly higher level of stress;
• personally preferred music helps to decrease stress better;
• preference, familiarity and past experience are more important than the kind of music
• the more knowledge (and suppose experience) a person has about music the more is emotional responsiveness;
• people in positive mood after music demonstrated significantly better creative problem solving than participants who had a neutral or depressed mood;
• besides, there is better integration and relationship among people in positive mood;
• with music on, software developers work faster;
• people who normally don’t listen to music might need time to discover positive experience effect;
• people spend significantly more time on tasks when don’t listen to music during a workday.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/LESIUKarticle2005.pdf

• music causes physically boosting or relaxing effect
• yet, pause in listening is even more relaxing than relaxing music

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860846/

• when doing mechanical work, music improves efficiency and accuracy
• this helps best when music plays periodically and without lyrics or with familiar or boring lyrics;

Fox, J. G., & Embry, E. D. (1972) Music—An aid to productivity. Applied Ergonomics, 3 (4), 202-205.  

• people comprehension information worse with music on the background

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/14f3/46c1ff670e10c96afabdf6351235f4837eb3.pdf

• speed and accuracy of task performance were significantly better in the surgeon-selected music condition than in the experimenter-selected music condition, which was also significantly better than the no-music control condition

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/379309

• ambient noise enhances ones creativity
• high noise hurts creativity

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048?seq=12#metadata_info_tab_contents

Some playlists

Disco & Funk

https://soundcloud.com/icebound/sets/funk-and-beyond-radio-show-on

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2i7YnctEe5VXjxZKVwML9L?si=aI8armm_S7uUKRK-F9mrEw

DnB & Jungle

?

Rock

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0x9HCT7ZZlOEfLSVCDi5SO?si=iPjwQ77NTUankiDEbtkG2w

Low Tempo. Relaxing

https://open.spotify.com/user/chilledcow?si=bAIoEzPwTbmXGhCCC-KYNQ

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSJ4gkVC6NrvII8umztf0Ow