Entertainment >
Music (Other)
Get a Widget for this title
RSS FeedIs listening to music at work calming or distracting?
Results so far:
| Calming | 81% | 777 votes | Total: 962 votes | |
| Distracting | 19% | 185 votes |
Calming
Write now
Print
Invite a writer™
Add to FavoritesMusic calms the savage beast, it once was said. A day without music would be one less fun thing to have in our lives. Just as we have rhythm in dancing, we also apply music to our work. Music being played at a reasonable level of volume can make the work day go by much faster and with harmony.
If you work in a office environment, music can calm your nerves and relieve the stress of being bottled up in a cubical for eight hours. Music on elevators and in Doctors offices have the calming effect to a person that is nervous and fighting anxiety about their situation.
Factories where many things are moving around you and over you can be played in moderation and giving respect to the hazardous work environment. In many ways, music is our friend in the work place. Respect for others and how you play your music at work can be beneficial to you, but may be distracting to others.
If we were not able to play radio music in the work place, we would find other avenues to add music anyway. We would sing and whistle or hum to a tune we could just not get out of our heads. I think it distracts our minds positively, when we have repetitious jobs that require we do the same things over and over.
Music makes us happy, makes us forget the mundane work we do during the day. This leads us back to the reasons why a happy employee, is a productive employee. Music is like that morning cup of coffee or espresso. You just do not function until you have had that first cup.
Music calms us on the way to our jobs, while we are at our jobs and relieves the stresses of the day, on the way home. There are worse things in the work place that distract us, music is not one of them.
The lack of music is the distraction and the people who do not have access to music are the culprits. Concentration without a outlet for distracting the mind can lead to arguments and disruptions to others.
Music is the human way to keep the mental stimuli active and our minds sharp. The brain is the greatest multitasker in the world. It can do many things at once and cope with a job at the same time.
Just thinking about work with out music, makes me remember the song, "Bye, Bye American Pie" and the verse "The day the music died". I think most people feel the same way. A day at work with out music, is like a day without sunshine.
People in prison have music, why should hard working people not have the same opportunity and be productive at the same time?
Learn more about this author, Rex Coker.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Distracting
I feel like a horrible old curmudgeon for saying this, but I find listening to music intensely distracting while I'm at work.
I work in an office. In the sales part of an office, to be precise. As it's a publishing company there's a lot of floaty creative types around in the other departments, and so they have the option to have iPods pumping out music all day to keep them energised and motivated and all that stuff. Classic rock and Britpop indie tracks roll down the corridors as they get on with their work, it sounds great.
So, because it would not be 'fair' otherwise, we also have an iPod dock belting out tunes in the sales office. The members of the sales team who own iPods (clue: not me) take it more or less in turns to plug their devices in. Their personal music players, playing their music libraries while we work. In a telesales office.
Obviously it's distracting. My entire job requires me to be on the phone to people all day, and to be able to hear what they're saying. The Killers and Britney Spears screaming in my ear does not help with this. And I don't think clients are too impressed on the other end of the line.
Not only that but this is the personal collection of colleagues, not family-friendly radio. We're constantly having to charge across the room to change track because Eminem is about to launch into an uncensored swear-fest while we're trying to close down a 20,000 deal. It just doesn't give a good impression of our professional demeanours.
Then there's the inescapable fact that we all have massively different taste in music. The age range in our office is probably only about eight years, but we've got chart-obsessed teenyboppers, RnB enthusiasts, gangster rap wannabes and... me. I'm happy listening to Leonard Nimoy and the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins with its tube middle eight, or to the entirety of Bat Out of Hell, but put 'that' Katy Perry song on again and I swear I'll put someone through a window.
I may have some of the weirdest tastes in the office, but I'm not the only one who objects to the songs that are played. Overplayed rubbish from Katy Perry, Kings of Leon, The Killers, Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse spews on and on until even the people that like that sort of tosh can't take any more. It starts arguments, it keeps people from focusing on work and it just really annoys me.
I find music at work a constant source of irritation. A positive barrier to productivity and an endless source of petty arguments and distractions. I can appreciate people working in other fields might find it calming, but it's ridiculous in a sales environment. So there.
Learn more about this author, Kenneth Andrews.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.
Difference of opinion? Debate now.
