It's a question I get pretty often.
Can listening to music help you study more effectively
or is it just a distraction?
Well as the journalist H.L. Mencken once said,
"For every complex problem there is an answer
"that is clear, simple, and wrong."
I've been curious about this question myself for years
and I've always kind of secretly hoped that the answer
came down in favor of music because I have almost always
studied with music.
But from the research I've done so far,
the only thing I can confidently tell you at this point
is that we don't actually know.
There are answers going in both directions
and to give you some more detail,
we're going to dig into that research in a minute here,
but first I want to preface this with my own experience
because as I said, I've almost always studied with music.
I've got like a borderline unhealthy obsession
with trying to find new study music
and I've spent more hours than I count
digging through the charts on Sputnik Music
or going through music forums trying to find new stuff.
And when I've studied or done homework,
it's always almost with headphones on
or something coming out of my speakers.
So here's what I found works well for me.
For tasks that require low mental effort
or tasks that deal with very tangible information
that I already am very familiar with,
high energy music can get me energized
and helps me get into the flow state faster.
I'm talking stuff like statistics homework or accounting
or programming, things where I know basically
what needs to be done and it's just a matter
of manipulating numbers or code to get it done.
And if you want some recommendations for albums
for this kind of work, I can give you a few here.
Pomegranate Tiger's "Boundless" is a new one
I've been really digging lately.
Also The Algorithm's "Polymorphic Code".
Any of the instrumental tracks off of
the Metal Gear Rising soundtrack.
I absolutely love that thing.
And Tides Of Man's "Young and Courageous".
All great albums that you should definitely check out.
However, once we get into tasks that are more cerebral
or more conceptual or if I'm trying to wrap my brain
around something more unfamiliar,
I really need to have either very calm music
or silence.
And if you want a few recommendations for tasks like these,
I can give you Austin Wintory's Journey soundtrack,
any of the Kingdom Hearts Piano Collections albums,
Olafur Arnalds' "The Chopin Project",
or Theophany's amazing Majora's Mask tribute album
"Time's End".
Regarding silence, studying in silence
can work really well for me at times,
but other times it gets really distracting
because my brain starts picking out
all of the little intermittent environmental noises
that you can't really control.
It's almost as if my brain knows it's trying to use silence
to concentrate better, so it starts like picking
those things out and being like like, uh uh,
it's not actually silent man.
Kind of like what happens if I tell you,
whatever you do, do not think about fluffy red pandas.
What are you thinking about?
So if you have this problem as well,
calm music isn't the only solution.
You can also try like a white noise generator
like SimplyNoise or an environmental sound generator
like RainyMood or Coffitivity.
Basically, if you deliberately set up the noise yourself,
I found that it kind of helps to calm that distraction
a little bit.
So the other question I get a lot is,
is lyrical music fine or does it have to be instrumental
all the way?
And what I found is for that former type of work
where it's either low or mental intensity,
your very math or logic based,
lyrical music is fine, cause I can pretty much tune it out
and just kind of focus myself on that work,
but once we get into the more conceptual work
or especially when I'm reading,
it has to be instrumental all the way.
Anything with lyrics will pull at my attention
and distract me a ton.
And this experience is actually right in line
with the opinion of the late Stanford University Professor,
Clifford Nass, who was known for his research
into multitasking.
And Nass said, "Music with lyrics is very likely
"to have a problematic effect when you're writing
"or reading, but probably less of an effect on math
"if you're not using the language processing parts
"of your brain."
Okay, so we've gone over what works for me
and I can confidently say through years of experimentation
that it's probably gonna keep working for me this way
in the future, but what does science have to say about it?
Well as I eluded to in intro, the answers are kind of mixed.
For example, one study done in 2013 at
The University of Maryland, tested 32 students
on several different math tests in different
music conditions.
They had silent music, high intensity music,
and low intensity music.
And what they found is that the students scored best
under the silence condition with the low intensity music
beating out the high intensity music for second place.
And by low and high, I mean like classical piano music
versus death metal.
So they didn't really have like a nice balance
between the music.
They went in one extreme to another extreme.
Still, that's irrelevant to the fact
that the silence condition beat out both music conditions
in that study.
However, another study in France
done with 249 participants, found that the students
who watched a lecture while listening to classical music,
scored better on a subsequent test
than the students who watched that same lecture
while listening to nothing.
So the answers differ.
And to my knowledge, there hasn't yet been
a truly large scale study on music's effect on the brain.
But with the results we have right now,
I think we can still make a couple of different conclusions.
First it seems clear that high intensity music
or music with lyrics, aren't really good choices
when you're reading or when you're doing something
that has to do with language or when you're trying
to wrap your brain around something that's totally
unfamiliar to you.
Secondly, more generally, it could be
that music is a kind of a give and take thing
when it comes to your brain.
It might be that in an objective sense, it is distracting,
but it also raises your positive emotions,
it can lesson your anxiety,
and it raises your motivation to stay focused.
The net benefit or net deficit, is going to depend on
who you are, what kind of work you're doing,
and what the specific kind of music you're listening to is.
And that third factor, the specific type of music
brings up another question.
Can music be specifically designed to increase
your brain's performance?
Well stay tuned because in next week's video,
that's exactly what we're gonna be covering.
In the meantime, if you want to check out
any of those albums I mentioned earlier,
they're gonna be linked up in the blog post for this video
along with my ultimate study playlist on YouTube here.
And if you want to discuss this video or get more
music recommendations from other students,
you can check out the official discussion thread
for this video in the College Info Geek Community
link down below.
That is it for this week's video, so hopefully
you found it useful, and if you did
you can give it a like to support this channel.
I would really be curious to hear what your experience
with studying with music is.
So let me know either in the discussion thread
or in the comments down below.
And as always, thank you so much for watching
and I will see you next week.
Hey there guys, thank you so much for watching this video.
Now if you want to get new videos every single week
on being a more effective student,
you can click that big red subscribe button right there
and also I wrote a free book on earning better grades
so you can click the picture of the book
if you want to get one.
Also, if you want to find the blog posts for this video
with links to a lot of the playlists I mentioned
and some studies I've talked about as well,
the orange button right there.
In last week's video I talked a bit more
about the College Info Geek Community
I just launched, so check it out
if you want some more details on that.
If you want to connect, I'm in the community all the time,
but I'm also on Twitter and Instagram at @TomFrankly,
or you can leave a comment down below.