Find Focus With Music

Quick Win

Carefully chosen music may help you focus on a task. Finding the right tunes for the job is key.

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• Consider your task. If you’re cleaning the garage or weeding the garden, lively music may energize you and keep you focused. Calmer melodies may be better for reading or reviewing bills. For tasks that need deeper focus, instrumental pieces may be less distracting than music with lyrics.
• Choose songs you know and like. It makes sense that unfamiliar music would be distracting — your brain is working to listen and process. Familiar tunes can more easily play a supporting role to the task at hand.
• Use music as a break. If you prefer to work in silence, consider adding music to your breaks. Just a few minutes of listening may help you perform better when you get back to the work.

Why

In a study of 65 older adults, researchers found that background music was better for memory performance than no music and white noise, as reported in 2014 in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. Among nearly 100 surgeons, those who worked with background music that they chose performed more quickly and accurately, with less stress, than those who worked with music someone else picked, in a study reported in 2020 in Surgical Endoscopy.