Music and Studying: Are they good together?

  We have already been discussed, the positive mental effects of music. It offers improved mood, increased motivation, boosted memory, better brain stimulation and better management of pain and fatigue.

  So keeping this in mind, many students find listening to music while studying, a better way to study while some find it a distraction and can't concentrate due to music. The same is true with office work or household chores. But in this post, I am more concerned about studying. So, let's see the truth. 

  Music doesn’t affect everyone in the same way, so the answer is far more complicated than a straightforward "yes" or "no."

  It's very hard to study the next day of a sleepless night with homework. But listening to music can easily motivate you to study. And for those who don't prefer listening songs while studying, the same is applicable for study breaks. 

Fun Fact: It's nothing odd or nothing awkward to get Goosebumps while listening to your favourite songs. This just proves that you are so different than others. 

  Music doesn’t just motivate you. It can also help reduce stress and promote a more positive mindset. Research suggests that a good mood generally improves your learning outcomes. You’ll likely have more success with studying and learning new material when you’re feeling good.

  Studying can be stressful, especially when you don’t entirely understand the subject material. If you feel overwhelmed or upset, putting on some music can help you relax and work more effectively.

  In a proven research, it has been concluded that music can help your brain absorb and interpret new information more easily. The researchers found evidence to suggest that music can engage your brain in such a way that it trains it to pay better attention to events and make predictions about what might happen. 

  What does this mean for you? Well, if you struggle to make sense of new material, listening to music could make this process easier. You can also link the ability to make better predictions about events to reasoning skills.

  Music helps stimulate your brain, similar to the way exercise helps stimulate your body. Certain types of music can help boost memorization abilities and other cognitive functions.

  The more you exercise your muscles, the stronger they become, right? Giving your brain a cognitive workout could help strengthen it in a similar fashion. Source

 

  Not everyone finds music helpful for tasks that require concentration. Well, music is also well known to distract and that's why it's helpful for people in depression or sad mood. But that is not something you need when you study. If you are trying to solve a integral calculus problem or a tough physics question, loud music or fast music can distract you from thinking.

  Music also has bad effect during problem solving and learning something via reading. Thanks to its distraction ability. And songs with lyrics are the worst case scenarios.

Fun Fact: You can listen to ad free music with many other benefits on Amazon Prime.

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  So then? Here's a solution: If you are the kind of person who can't tolerate songs while studying, you can listen to any of them during your study breaks or work breaks. But for people who study better while listening music, keep it limited to all other tasks except for problem-solving and reading-learning.

  But so, you can't study with silence. Because you will always have those barking street dogs, screaming kids, hammering renovation, etc. in the background.

  So the type of music you should hear while problem solving and reading is should be a constant music without lyrics like sound of water fall and other natural components or some ambient and smooth background music. Basically, anything that can cancel all other sounds.

  While binaural beat research is still in the early stages, limited researchTrusted Source and anecdotal reports suggests binaural beats could help improve concentration and ability to stay on task, especially for people with ADHD.Binaural beats are an auditory illusion produced when you hear two different sounds at the same time, one in each ear.These sounds have similar frequencies, but they aren’t exactly the same. Your brain takes the difference between these two sound frequencies — say, 187 Hertz (Hz) in the left ear, 201 Hz in the right — and produces a third sound at the frequency of this difference, or 14 Hz. This is the sound you hear. Source

   Music can improve your mood and help you feel more motivated to tackle important tasks, but it doesn’t always work as a study tool. And to maximize its benefits, it's better to keep it limited.

Posts before October 2021 have been marked as "Old Posts". Less likely, but they might have out dated or incorrect information, ugly looking bits of code, no labels, etc. Don't get me wrong, many of these posts are top-notch and interesting too.

I thought it would be better not to delete or revamp these posts, even if they suck. The bitter truth is that old works always suck, but I take that as a positive tool to convey that I am growing. Besides there's no better way to showcase my journey without these old, messy, poorly written posts!

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