Songs that will MAXIMISE your productivity

According to HR Grapevine, with so many of us currently working from home, employees will likely plug themselves into Spotify playlists to help them get through the working day.

But are your current playlists properly helping you work most productively?

To find out, the loan firm Transmit Startups recently investigated the power of music and revealed the must-have tunes to include in your working from home playlist to maximize productivity.

Songs by Queen, 50 Cent, Kanye West, and Coldplay were among those artists most likely to stimulate productive activity while working from home.

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Marianne Rizkallah, Director of North London Music Therapy, recently told Transmit Startups that listening to music can help people work their way through challenging times and attempt to modify mood or inner feelings.

“Music can put us in touch with what we're feeling at a deeper level, help us connect emotionally to our thoughts and bring us to a place of greater understanding about ourselves,” Rizkallah added.

Which songs will help reduce anxiety?

Employees in certain industry sectors will likely face more stress than others, and this can greatly hinder productive output.

So, if you do find yourself getting stressed out regularly, then the song ‘Weightless’ by Marconi Union has been found to reduce anxiety by a whopping 65%.

And, according to a study by Dr. David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International, this tune was found to be 11% more relaxing than any other song.

Additionally, Coldplay’s ‘Strawberry Swing’ has upbeat lyrics and a higher tempo. Combining these elements was found to promote a feeling of contentment.

Which songs boost creativity?

Research has found that happier music could be your best bet when wanting to enhance creativity.

When this theory was tested by scientists from the Netherlands and Australia, the study found that those who listened to Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons, Op. 8 No. 1, RV 269, “Spring”: I. Allegro’ were 23% more creative than those participants that sat in silence during the test.

Which songs boost confidence?

If you are expected to do a professional pitch to a client during this period of remote working, you are likely to feel anxious about tech complications, poor connections, and distractions from partners or young kids in the house ruining your chances.

So, plugging into some confidence-boosting music beforehand could really help your chances of acing that client pitch.

Researchers from The Society for Personality and Social Psychology asked one group of participants to listen to a high-power music playlist (including ‘In Da Club’, 50 Cent, ‘We Will Rock You’, Queen, and ‘Get Ready for This’ by 2 Unlimited) while the other group listened to ‘low-power’ music, which was identified in an earlier survey.

Both groups were shown the fragment of a word such as ‘P__ER’. The high-power groups were more likely to associate this with ‘power’, while the other group commonly related it to ‘paper’.

In a separate area of the study, participants were asked if they wanted to go first or second in a debate. The research found that those who had listened to high-power music opted to go first twice as much (34%), compared with those who listened to low-power playlists at 20%.

Which songs will help you crunch the numbers?

Trawling through spreadsheets all day and processing data can be a monotonous task at the best of times. So, why not plug into some tunes that will help you crunch the numbers more efficiently?

According to research published in the journal of Neuroscience and Behavioral Psychology, participants who were tasked with identifying Arabic numbers within a random selection of images and were listening to either classical or rock music were 0.2 seconds quicker at completing the task.

Additionally, those listening to classical or rock were 87% more likely to correctly identify the numbers than the group that wasn’t listening to any music.

Elsewhere, if you need to cancel out background noise, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York found that nature sounds, such as rainfalls and trickling water, can help you to keep focused.

Which songs will help you proof-read more quickly?

On a Friday afternoon, getting stuck into a hefty pile of proof-reading may be a good way to finish off the working week and lift a weight off your shoulders when you start back next week.

When researchers tested the effect of dance and electronic music at work, dance music increased proof-reading speeds by 20%, compared to those who weren’t listening to any music.

Additionally, this type of music had a big impact on spell-checking abilities with a 75% pass rate. This was seven per cent higher than those who didn’t listen to any music.

Which songs help you get into a productive mindset?

Source: HR Grapevine

Original Data Source: Transmit Startups