Music In The Workplace 🎶

If you’ve ever found your Zen while listening to spa music or felt the rage rising on hold with customer service, you know that music can influence our moods. But what about our productivity? Does music have the power to make us more productive?

Yes. Yes, it does.

If you’re looking to turn up the productivity for yourself or your team or band, adding a musical component to the environment is a must. Music has a host of benefits that can help you and your employees be the rock star team members you’re hoping for.

Music can…

• Strengthen focus by closing you off from distractions and allowing you to focus on the task at hand.
• Improve memory by placing the brain into a meditative state that allows you to retain information better.
• Lower stress by impacting your biological processes. A slower tempo will actually slow down your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure.
• Increase your creativity with a catchy beat. A 2017 research study showed that happy songs with high, positive emotions helped people come up with more ideas.
• Improve morale by bringing out better attitudes among employees and helping them to look at the big picture.

There’s no doubt that listening to music will help you be more of a rock star at work. However, it does beg the question, is all music created equal?

No. Just like our opening example, the type of music we listen to has a huge impact on our emotions. You may want to pump head-banging rock music throughout the office to up the energy and get employees working at top performance… but that’s likely to backfire. Music with lyrics can be distracting and actually pull focus from the task at hand, while an extremely high tempo will have employees’ hearts pounding right out of their chests. This is not the least bit conducive to quiet, focused work. Instead of relying on the rock greats, save this type of music for firing people up in meetings, and then look to other types of music to provide the benefits we discussed above when they go back to work.

So, what is the best type of music to be focused, creative, and productive?

For this, we need to look to the original rock stars like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky.  That’s right, classical music tops the list when it comes to productivity. Classical music causes the body to release dopamine (the happy chemical) and improves neurocognition. It’s been used to help students study better and dementia patients for their cognition and memory. Just imagine what it can do for you and your team.

Not a fan of classical? That’s okay. Epic fantasy music (like scores from Lord of the Rings or Star Wars) can also boost productivity, as can jazz and instrumental covers of popular songs. Not interested in music at all? You can use nature sounds to achieve many of the same benefits.

If you’d like to create rock stars in your office, why not harness the power of music? Team members will be happier, more focused, more creative, and more productive. For more tips on how to turn it up and be a better leader, visit www.marvellessmark.com.

You Rock, Marvelless Mark; Rock Star Motivational Speaker