Everyone can all agree that music plays an important part in our everyday lives. Whether it’s letting off some steam, relaxing or just to let go and dance the night away! Let’s admit it. We all prefer to have our headphones on, dancing around the room like a crazy person rather than hitting the books and finishing a week over-due assignment in silence. The only thing that would be on your mind is the last song you’ve listened to, occupying a lot of time instead of the learning. It’s exhausting trying to balance work life with relaxation time especially when you have test the next day but can only focus on the number of minutes that you have left until you are allowed to sleep.
Well, I have great news! Researchers supports what we know from personal experience: Music greatly affects and enhances our learning and living! One of the joys of life can be one of the joys of learning as well. Researchers claimed that music actually helps us learn because it will–
- establish a positive learning state
- create a desired atmosphere
- build a sense of anticipation
- energize learning activities
- change brain wave states
- focus concentration
- increase attention
- improve memory
How cool is that?!
But before you whip out those headphones, there’s also a down side to it. Researchers found that people, while studying and listening to music in the background, can easily get distracted whether it’s music they enjoy or not. Think about it like you are trying to study or do your homework but your friend is constantly talking, wanting you to engage in the conversation. You can easily lose track of what you were doing.
Fortunately, there’s some good news. The University of Dayton found that students performed better at spatial and linguistic processing if Mozart was playing in the background. So maybe having instrumental music can help performance better, since it doesn’t have any distracting vocals.
I know must of the youth doesn’t particularly like classical music but it does have to be! Any type of instrumental music can keep you focused and help retain more while studying. Here’s some suggestions in helping you choose your studying music:
- Choose an instrument you like to here.
- Listen to the acrostic version of your favorite songs.
- Play an instrumental playlist from your favorite shows, movies cartoon, etc.
Having a long playlist of your studying music ready to go can also decrease the amount of time needed to change it every time as well. For example, here’s my studying music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu2TL0710qU
Now, with this new information, you can get out your headphones, search for your personal studying music and hit those books!