Living in a fast-paced world is not too easy today. Every day we have to upgrade ourselves to match the rhythm of expectations, desires, productivity and goals. While making ourselves compatible to fit in the world, we duly invite stress with procrastinating things. It is evident; Humans are dealing with a constant state of stress whether be it about achieving the goals of meeting the deadlines.
Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically increased the par of stress and anxiety and turned the life upside down.
This unprecedented time of uncertainty and fear has been raising the level of stress in the human mind and causing the work/life imbalance. Hence, it is affecting the productivity & performance of the individual at workspaces. However, the question here is how to manage stress to increase productivity. Especially, when we’re already dealing with a lot of uncertain emotions due to the pandemic?
But let’s just first understand, what causes stress at workspaces?
Workspace Stress
Workspaces demand us to fulfil certain responsibilities & accomplish the assigned work in a limited time. Henceforth, to accomplish the tasks efficiently, one must need to feel motivated & boosted. But sometimes it becomes quite difficult to stay composed or positive in such an over-pressured environment with tight deadlines, heavy workloads and long working hours.
As a result, these are the things which most of the times pushes us toward the negative sphere & invite stress where one feels immensely de-motivated & energetically drained. As it is that negative emotion which constrains us toward the indecisiveness and forms various difficulties in the way of challenges and narrows our ability to function or think clearly which affects our performance & productivity at workspaces. Although workplace stress is common, the pandemic has drastically shifted the statics of stress. nd reportedly 88% of employees are dealing with extreme stress from the several months which are affecting their mental health and productivity (Ginger report).
Nevertheless, any kind of stress needs to be handled carefully to come out from that havoc and create a sphere for sheer creativity. But how can we disconnect from this stressful environment and open the doorways of creativity?
Music is our saviour
Well, Music is our only saviour. We all know that music is said to be the antidote in any complicated or stressful situation. Whenever we feel exhausted or stressed out in the workplace, we always try to calm ourselves with music. It is our best companion which can express all that we cannot justify/express in words that, sometimes it feels like music is the only way out of any situation. Music also has a profound effect to push away all the negative thoughts out of the mind and allow us to divert all our focus toward achieving the work goals.
The correlation between Music & Productivity
It is evident that listening to music during work is quite common nowadays. It has increasingly become a part of the modern-day workplace. Have you ever wonder, why you in the middle of the work plug-in into the musical ocean of endurance? What is so compelling about music that every time you feel distracted, you engage oneself with a classic or authentic or your favourite form of music?
The reason is, music always helps to mute the noises around you while giving you a way to escape oneself from the tunnel of storms. And soothe the anxious nerves to make you feel more in peace and allows you to work in a more focused manner. It is also evident that music makes your boring or repetitive job feel livelier. In another word, Music creates an ideal environment for you to accomplish all those important tasks that are lined up in front of you.
Various researches have shown that, listening to music during work increase your productivity.
As Dr Lesiuk also said in his work based on ‘how music affects the workplace performance’-
“Those who listened to music completed their task more quickly and come with better ideas than those who didn’t because music has improved their mood”.
Although, it’s not the music itself that help to increase productivity, instead of the improved mood & overall wellbeing created by listening to music results in the increase in productivity. It’s not a surprise that music enhances the ability to store more information than usual. As music can let you zone out from the busy territory and bring the liveliness in the employers. Also, music medically has been linked to strengthening cognitive ability.
Although, Music efficiency has also depended on the variability & creative demand of the task. Let’s take an example – imagine if you’re writing a new article from scratch, you need consistent concentration & focus to produce reasonable content which eventually demands a lot of creativity, whereas, answering your mail is mundane work that does not. It is also seen that music with lyrics hinder productivity more than it helps. Some music can actively make a negative impact on the ability to deal with a specific kind of work.
Lyrics can keep deviating the focus from essential projects when you’re trying to make a strategy for the upcoming events, Like two employees putting across a point regarding the digital content at the same time but eventually making no sense, losing focus and creating a jungle of words.
So the major question arises over here is then ‘what kind of music helps in increasing the productivity of an employee at work?’
Henceforth, music with lyrics is surely distracting but music which is based on instrumental songs work best for positively affecting productivity.
This kind of songs rest all the disturbing thoughts and provides you with a soothing vibe to concentrate on your work more actively & came out with better creative ideas. Above all this, have you ever notice that music influences your behaviour? Whether you ever realize it or not but music does make an impact on the way you behave at the workplace. Most of the stores like Walmart, H&M, Forever21 and various other stores use music to give a relaxing feeling so that you can shop with a relaxed and free mind. As music has always kept the spirit of employees high & make them much more productive by nature.
Henceforth, music is the longest & earliest phenomena that allow us to keep waving in the world of sheer creativity and enhance our ability to focus only on the goal.
It has always been our best companion under any circumstances. Maintaining a focus or generating a sense of calmness. In the end, music is our only saviour.
If you have any ideas or comments on the same, feel Free to hear below!
You Matter To Us!
Written By: Hardeep Kaur
