The Sounds of Music at Workplace

The Sounds of Music at Workplace

-Sethu Baburaj PGP13 131

Introduction:

Music is as much of a science as it is an art. In this rat race we call life; we have increasingly in numbers taken refuge in this science. Some do it to relax, some do it to focus and some do it just to get away from it all for a moment’s solitude. From the Walkman era of the 80’s portable music systems have become a part of our everyday lifestyle – the random walk down the road, a day at the park, hitting it out at the gym and while grinding away at work. Intuitively, it was known all along that certain kinds of music tend to influence your productivity – the war songs and cries while marching towards a battle, the sing-a-longs while doing manual labor or the songs sang fiercely during intense competitions. A case in point for the latter would be the annual snake boat races in the backwaters of Kerala, where the songs sung by the rowers are a part and parcel of the sport.

Recently researchers across the world have been conducting studies and experiments to find specific, quantifiable relationships (if any) between music and one’s productivity. Results have been mixed but still to a long way prove that there indeed exists a correlation between music and productivity. In this write up I will briefly cover the general history and early researches done in this area and then go on to cover two areas of research and experiments and their results; namely the effect of different types of music on productivity and the effect of music on productivity of different types of personalities, namely introversion and extroversion. And to conclude I will present the results of a survey conducted among the students of IIM Kashipur to detect patterns in their musical style preferences (if any) when working (if at all they prefer to listen to music when working) and their personality types. This will also in a way test the theories that have been formulated in this research area. The survey and its...