The noise in our workplace is undoubtedly a huge factor in our productivity. Numerous studies have highlighted the impact open office environments have on our productivity, whilst research has also shown that the background noise of a coffee shop can also change how we think.
Is the same true for classical music? Retailers have long used music to manipulate consumers, with fast food restaurants using faster paced music to chivvy diners along, whereas classier restaurants will have classical playing in the background. Does classical music have a similar impact on our work?
For a while, many argued that listening to classical music was able to boost our ability in various cognitive tasks, but that is a theory that has largely been debunked, both because it hasn't been something that has been replicated, and also because participants listened to music and then performed various tasks rather than doing both simultaneously.
New research has attempted to fill in that gap by testing the impact of music on our performance. They tested not only the nature of both the music and the task, but also the personality of the individual listening to it.
They brought together a few hundred volunteers to perform a couple of cognitive tasks. The first of these involved spotting and then crossing out all instances of the letter "A" in a body of text. The second task was slightly more complex and required the volunteers to study a list of word pairs before then having to recall them when they were shown a single word from each pair.
As the volunteers completed each of these tasks, they had a variety of sounds in the background. Some listened to elevator-style music, whereas others worked in blissful silence. Those in the musical groups were subjected to a range of tunes, with some more complex than others, whilst others had music playing at varying volumes.
In addition to completing the tasks, the volunteers also completed a questionnaire to establish their likelihood of being bored by certain tasks, whether they like external stimulation, and so on.
As you might imagine, the performance of each volunteer was a complex combination of the nature of the task, the style of music they listened to and their unique personalities. For instance, on the simplest task, if someone was generally not prone to boredom, they tended to perform better when listening to the most complex form of music than with either simple music or complete silence, albeit when the volume of the music was relatively low. If the volunteer was prone to boredom however, the opposite was the case, and silence was the best condition.
The researchers suggest that this is largely because people who have a low boredom threshold tend to dislike external stimulation, so the quieter, more complex music provided just the right dose of distraction to enable them to focus properly on the task at hand. Their more prone to boredom peers however actually like external stimulation, and so when they heard the complex music they focused more on that than the task at hand.
So that was the simple task, but what about the more complex task, like those that make up many of our working lives? For these tasks, the nature of the music made no difference at all, either in terms of its volume or complexity. For complex tasks, the results were consistent: those with low boredom proneness were helped by having some music in the background, whereas those who were prone to boredom did better in silence.
The authors believe that this is because for those of us who are prone to boredom, such a complex task provided all of the stimulation we required, and therefore the background music simply got in the way. This hypothesis was supported by the fact that the volunteers in this silent condition actually out performed their low-boredom peers.
So the key seems to be understanding your personal boredom threshold, and adjusting your musical habits accordingly. If you're prone to boredom, you're better off performing complex tasks in silence than with any music in the background.
"We offer evidence against the commonly held belief that distractions like music will always harm task performance,” the authors say, “our findings suggest that the relationship between music and task performance is not ‘one-size-fits-all.’ In other words, music does not appear to impair or benefit performance equally for everyone.”
Prone to boredom
So how can you tell whether you're prone to boredom? Probably the most reputable method is the Boredom Proneness Scale that was developed by the University of Oregon in the 1980s. The 28 question test would give you a reasonable idea as to where you stand, and you can then adjust your work accordingly.
There are various places online where you can take the test for free, but New York spinout The Cut was the first I came across. Good luck, and hopefully the finding will help boost your personal productivity.