Nothing is more dreary on a rainy, cold winter’s day than arriving at a chilly office to a room full of desks occupied by silent clerks all wired in to their own little musical microcosms through headphones as they type away at Heaven only knows what, being very productive — but probably not all that excited or thrilled to be there. Despite that, the music that people listen to on their personal headphones, maybe using Pandora or Spotify, is uniquely their own. For example, I have a workmate who resides about three feet from my desk. Often, he prefers to listen to Dub Step music during the day. I, on the other hand, can often be found tuning into talk radio or listening to Classical music, and someone else across the room loves Country.
In our office we have a company Pandora account, and often what really gets us going on a blah kind of day is finding a good station that everyone can enjoy. It doesn’t always pan out that way. One day, someone decided that going back to the 1980s would be a fantastic idea, but after about four hours of Rick Astley, The Bangles, and Duran Duran I was ready to pull my hair out and go hide under a rock. We have our days! But mostly, it can be easy to find good neutral music that most people won’t be utterly disgusted with.
First, just avoid all forms of Rap. Or really heavy Metal. Or even Pop/Rock with explicit lyrics. If you go for a band like Cold Play, Foster the People, or The Script, you’re likely to hit into some music that’s rather benign for the most part, but still trendy and fun. You don’t want to exclude anyone by putting on something with really foul or discriminatory language, or something really twangy in a room full of urbanites who clearly aren’t the Country type. And you don’t want to bore everyone with Classical music and make the place sound like some stuffy bank.
Listening to music while working has been shown to increase levels of dopamine, a very important “feel good” neurotransmitter in the brain, to the point where it actually improves concentration in adult sufferers or attention deficit disorder. Who doesn’t want to be more productive on the job? I think we all do, and so the value of music to that experience is certainly nothing to sneeze at.
