What kind of music makes you most productive at work? Here’s what the science says

Jamming out at a concert puts music front and center in a person’s life, but only for a moment. Most of the time, music serves more as sonic wallpaper, spicing up the background while we go about the business of our day. For many people, that includes working. But is a particular kind of music better for boosting productivity?

Deciding on which music to have cranking through the day’s tasks, though, is something America’s Air Podded workforce may not be doing with much intentionality. The choice could be informed by mood, by recent album reviews, by Spotify’s algorithm, or any number of other factors. But according to a new study, you may want to consider two important variables: predictability and novelty.

“Music is just such an emotional medium,” says Yiren Ren, a sixth-year PhD student in Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology. “It can not only modulate how you feel at that moment, it can also modulate the memory you’re recalling at that moment and how you perceive that memory itself.”

As a composer and a scientist, Ren has long been interested in how music interacts with our brains. She recently put her interests into practice, conducting a series of studies with Georgia Tech cognitive neuroscientist Thackery Brown, who runs the university’s MAP (Memory, Affect, and Planning) Lab. One of the studies examined how music affected a subject’s ability to process or remember new information.

To determine whether different rhythms and melodies made an impact on people’s cognitive abilities, the scientists asked 48 participants to learn sequences of abstract shapes while listening to different types of music. The study revealed that familiar, predictable music strengthened the participants’ ability to keep sequences straight, while familiar music tweaked to be more atonal put a roadblock in the participants’ path.

If predictability in music helps cognitive clarity and productivity while performing tasks, it shouldn’t surprise anyone who gravitates to familiar favorites during the workday. But there’s also something to be said for listening to new albums on the clock.

While predictable music can lead to greater cognitive clarity, music that is novel to the listener may, in some ways, allow them to stick with a task longer because it contains surprising elements that can jar listeners out of complacency. Or at least that was the impact it seemed to have on some participants in the study.

This side effect led Ren to reexamine her love of jazz. The scientist grew up in China and only discovered jazz’s eclectic rhythms after moving to the U.S. It quickly became a staple in her catalog of music to play while working. Now, she understands why.

“The syntax of jazz was just a new world to me when I discovered it, and I still cannot predict it,” she says. “It gives me a fresh surprise all the time, and I think that kind of surprise adds a little uncertainty and hits the sweet spot of good mood, good attention, and focus on the task.”

Listening to the same kind of music all the time, though, would remove some of that novelty. And the same music doesn’t translate well across all tasks. Ren shared some recommendations based on both her studies and personal experiences around which types of music help with productivity when it comes to specific types of work.

Correspondence

Whether you’ve reached inbox infinity or just have several Slack conversations that need immediate attention, Ren has a tip: Consider listening to music with lyrics in a foreign language (or music without any lyrics at all). Song lyrics in your native tongue can get tangled up with the words you’re reading and formulating responses to, creating a hurdle, rather than guardrails, to getting work done. Lyrics you can’t quite understand, on the other hand, just add another element in the wall of sound.

Coding

While doing any coding work, Ren reaches for fast rock music. Propulsive rhythms are what get people dancing, she says, and having fast rock play in the background while coding never fails to get her fingers pumping.

Writing

Scientists have long debated the Mozart effect, which describes how listening to Mozart’s symphonies tends to invite higher cognitive skills than other music. “Researchers think it’s because Mozart’s music triggers a good level of attention and arousal,” Ren says, “but not too many disruptions or too much tension.” While the scientist does indeed find classical music to be perfect for accompanying focused writing, she prefers Beethoven or Chopin for the job.

Of course, as helpful as music can be for amping up attention and focus, it isn’t always necessary.

“Sometimes, the best music to work to,” Ren says, “is no music.”