Next time someone in the office (i.e. your boss) complains about you playing music in the office, feel free to show them this article. A study conducted by Scala Radio shows that work productivity increased by as much as 15% just by listening to music.
Here’s how the study was conducted. 2,000 workers were each assigned two 600-word transcribing tasks, the first in complete silence, and another with music playing in the background. Workers completed the first task in 20 minutes and 59 seconds on average. Now, with some background music, workers completed the second task in an average time of 17 minutes and 42 seconds. That’s a significant difference of 3 minutes and 17 seconds, or in percentage terms, 15%.
Words not your thing? Well, here’s a video documenting the same study, which also provides an explanation by psychologist Dr. Becky Spelman, who attributed the “drastic difference” to the relaxing nature of music. She says,
“When people listen to relaxing music, it stimulates the brain. And we become worried less easily, so we stay focused.”
Before you start blasting electronic music in the office, we should add a disclaimer that the background music played during the survey was classical music. So, would electronic music have the same impact on work productivity? According to a previous study that we also covered, probably!
