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Listening To Music May Be Damaging Your Creativity (newatlas.com)
The results of a new study suggest that listening to music can significantly impair your ability to perform creative tasks. Whilst music was found to disrupt creative processes, ambient "library noise" was found to have no significant effect. From a report: The first experiment saw volunteers complete tasks while being played music with vocals that wouldn't mean anything to them -- for example, English-speaking listeners being played music with Spanish lyrics. In the second experiment, the participants were played instrumental music with no vocals, and in the third the volunteers were played music with familiar lyrics that they could understand. During the third experiment, the participants were also subjected to "library noise" conditions, which involved ambient noise such as unintelligible distant speech, photocopier noise, typing, and the rustling of papers.
The team discovered that creative performance dropped significantly when listening to music over the course of all three exercises, as compared to periods during which participants were allowed to complete the exercises without distraction. Even when participants declared that the music improved their overall mood, in the third exercise, it still impaired creativity.
The team discovered that creative performance dropped significantly when listening to music over the course of all three exercises, as compared to periods during which participants were allowed to complete the exercises without distraction. Even when participants declared that the music improved their overall mood, in the third exercise, it still impaired creativity.
...impairs any intellectual endeavor.
Hell, even musicians have to dial back the "listening" part in order to concentrate on playing the part. If you get too caught up in the piece, you will miss entrances, etc.
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Distractions are distracting and cause one to lose focus. The more distracting, the more you are distracted from the distractions.
Unfortunately, distractions that distract you from other distractions only further distract you.
Now back to my Ted Nugent....
The style of music will impact everyone differently.
The current mood of the person and the tasks to accomplish will also alter the impact of the music.
Simply going with "lyrics that can be understood, lyrics in another language and no lyrics at all" is an incredibly short-sighted choice of parameters for such a study.
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I know I'm not alone here but many people listen to music to muffle the distracting chit-chat of office space. That unconscious listening to other peoples conversion is far more detrimental to creativity/focus that listening to music. Maybe I'm a bit more susceptible to it than others because I have ADHD, but I often find myself being pulled in to other conversions even when I don't need to be in them. I find using intramental music works the best to keep focused. I know anything with lyrics engages my brain in a different way that makes it hard to concentrate on a task.
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I'm listening to rap, not music.
Have gnu, will travel.
That of the open plan office: People walking about, doors slamming every now and then, phones ringing and a constant buzz of people yakking. We should definitely test how this improves your concentration, since management thinks it must be the best kind of environment.
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Listen to music from the 1980's or 1970's. When artists were actually involved instead of just formulas. When there was no autotune so you actually had singers...
... and those kids should get off your lawn, amirite?
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They only gave one example of the article but I'm highly dubious of the ability to "measure creativity".
The example they gave - linking related words - does not to me seem a "creative" task, but more analytical.
I do think lyrics can be more distracting than music without though,
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I use it to damp out all the noise the other monkeys make.
Listen to music from the 1980's or 1970's. When artists were actually involved instead of just formulas. When there was no autotune so you actually had singers...
... and those kids should get off your lawn, amirite?
Yes ... yes they should :)
A photography teacher I had in college held that the problem with creating artwork while listening to music was that when you are creating, you are creating until you feel good about the creation. if you are listening to music, it may make you feel good. How do you know when you're done?
over the years I've noticed that whenever I work (creatively) to music, when I look at the work later, it's always bad. working mechanically to music, (i.e. simply performing a process) it's different, because how you feel about the work is less important.
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For me, music will often help my productivity/creativity because it gives my brain a built-in distraction. So instead of deciding to check out Slashdot, Reddit, or some other Internet site "just for a minute", I'll just listen more to the lyrics when my brain needs a mini-break. I'm less likely to find myself having wasted three hours listening to music than browsing the web.
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I have John Cage's 4'33" playing on constant repeat.
I work in a noisy environment (lots of people talking about interesting things that I'm not supposed to listen to), so noise-cancelling headphones are a godsend. They need some sound to work well, though.
After reading this article I decided to try to listen to video game music while working instead of the usual classic concentration tracks. I do not need to be relaxed to work, on the contrary. After having tested video game music for a few weeks, I feel it makes a big positive difference.