[MUSIC PLAYING]
Over the next 30 seconds, I'm going
to drastically change your mood no less than three times.
Ready?
Here we go.
Unless you live alone on a sprawling ranch in Wyoming,
your brain is processing an endless barrage of noises
throughout the day.
Everything from the music coming from your roommate's
bedroom to early morning construction workers,
to the office microwave during the lunchtime.
But one type of noise that has proven
to be your brain's biggest challenger.
And that's intermittent speech.
In the sounds of that other conversation have completely
zapped your ability to absorb anything I'm saying.
Has it been 30 seconds yet?
[BELL DINGS]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
See how that works?
We all know how different sounds affect our moods.
Think about music.
Depressing music makes you sad.
So that's why I emailed bands from the 2000
or on your breakup playlist.
Upbeat music gives you energy, which
is why top 40 hip hop is blasting at the gym.
Can't fall asleep.
Throw on the peaceful sounds of the ocean.
We are highly attuned to any and all auditory input.
But what about the sounds we hear
at work, the place we spend a third of our lives?
Are there sounds we can count on to increase productivity?
Do all of those focus playlists actually help
us tune out distractions?
The answer depends on three factors.
One, the type of work, two, the type of noise,
and three, the type of person.
The first factor, the type of work, plays the biggest role.
If your job requires more cognitive tasks,
think reading and information retention,
writing, working through math problems,
researchers found that silence is almost always
the best way to go.
So the name of the game isn't defined
what sounds boost your cognitive performance.
It's to avoid the ones with the worst
impact on your performance.
And by far, the biggest performance killer
is intermittent speech.
That's when we overhear conversations
in short snippets.
Like people walking and talking in and out
of conference rooms all day, or when you only
hear one side of a conversation, like someone on a phone call.
The most distracting sounds of all
though are the sounds which we're
programmed to pay attention to.
Number one, conversation.
We're programmed to decode language.
It's absolutely in our genes.
The debilitating effect of intermittent speech
on cognitive productivity plays on our brains
natural drive to fill in gaps of information.
Psychologists have found that it's actually easier
to ignore a conversation when you can hear both speakers
for an extended period.
But when you only hear one side of a phone conversation, what
they dubbed a halfalogue, the study
showed that performance went down.
They concluded that our brains are wired to seek out
missing information.
And so we eagerly anticipate the arrival of that information,
even if it causes us to get distracted and miss a work
deadline.
Intermittent speech happens to be the most common noise
in open office environments.
And now that some 80% of offices have them,
the risk of attention interception is even higher.
This could explain why a massive study out of Stanford
found productivity shot up 30% among remote workers who
aren't distracted by the slices of conversation
they overhear from coworkers throughout the day.
OK.
So other people's conversations are tough to deal with.
But it's not like hearing Amanda from HR
describe a tuna melt she had for lunch is something we actively
seek out.
So what are the sounds we do seek out, like music?
Music is an interesting one.
With an infinite range of songs and sounds to choose from,
it's hard to imagine there aren't a few differences in how
they affect productivity.
No way a piercing ballad has the same effect to some lo-fi tune,
right.
If you're doing focused brain work, you're studying,
you're trying to write, you're trying to read a report,
the music can distract you from that
and not elevate your attentional set
in a productive or helpful way.
Typically, music with lyrics, music that you're really into,
is not going to help you focus.
There have been hundreds of studies of college
students studying to music.
Again, overwhelmingly, the evidence
is that studying with music is bad in almost every case.
Ultimately, experts still say silence is the way
to go if we want to get through those comprehensive cognitive
tasks.
There are a litany of studies to back that up.
But what about those skilled workers whose jobs
require more repetitive tasks, like
driving a delivery truck across the country
or performing quality checks in a car factory.
Does music have the same effect on those jobs?
If you're doing something monotonous and repetitive,
say you're driving a truck on the interstate,
you need to keep your arousal level up
or you're going to doze off.
And so there music, or an audio book,
or sound can be helpful because it's stimulating.
It's getting your neurons active and firing.
And neurosurgeons are almost always playing music.
What truck drivers and brain surgeons have in common
is repetitiveness.
Great.
So brain surgeons and truck drivers,
feel free to pump up the volume.
But the rest of us are in a bit of a bind.
Today's workspaces are noisy and distracting.
So what can you do to boost your productivity?
If you are stuck in an environment that's
noisy and distracting, then I have a little acronym
which may help you.
It's MBA.
Not a university degree.
A simple process.
The M stands for Moves.
A lot of companies are getting wise to the fact
that they need to create different environments
for different kinds of working.
So perhaps, there's somewhere quieter you could go.
If you can't move, then the B stands for Block.
Require putting headphones on to block the sound out
from around.
If you put music on those headphones,
then you're replacing one distraction
with another to a degree.
Great sound to put into headphones
would be biophilic sound, like birdsong, for example
at nature's alarm clock.
And if you can't block, you can't move,
the only thing you can do is the A is Accept.
Instead of getting angry and resentful,
take a deep breath, say, well, this is where I am.
I can only do my best.
So I'm just going to get on with it.
And that improves your productivity
dramatically compared to sitting there fuming.
Sometimes, our best bet to win the war against the disruptive
phone calls and loud sneezes of our deskmates
might be to load up our devices with sounds we enjoy
and will distract us the least.
And while that narrows your options by quite a bit,
you may find your concentration and productivity
greatly improved.
If you like what you heard, please like and subscribe.
Shearson Ballard has the same effect as some wave lo-fi--
low key lo-fi.
[LAUGHS] Back to some wavy lo-fi tune, right?
Lo-fi.
I said it again.
[LAUGHTER]