Should I listen to music while studying?

Page 42, three times

Sam is in Year 11 with a history test on Friday. At nine he puts his earbuds in, starts his favourite playlist and opens the textbook.

He gets to the bottom of page 42 and cannot say what it was about. He reads it again, and then the chorus comes round.

Forty minutes in, he is still on the same chapter. He decides he is just bad at focusing.

Turning the music off feels worse. The quiet is boring, and boring is what the music was there to fix.

Two sets of words, one head

In 2014, Nick Perham and Harriet Currie at Cardiff Metropolitan University gave 30 university students four short reading tests. Each one was read with a different sound: quiet, music with no words, songs they loved, and songs they disliked.

Quiet and the music with no words came out about the same, around six answers right in ten. With lyrics, it fell to under four in ten.

Liking the songs made no difference. Their own favourites hurt reading as much as songs they disliked.

The students could feel it, too. They rated the songs with lyrics as far more distracting than quiet, and guessed their own scores lower with them on.

The researchers explain it like this. Reading means turning words into meaning, and lyrics are words too. Your head keeps pushing the song away, and the pushing costs part of the page. Earlier studies the authors cite found the same with people talking in the background.

One page each way

You do not have to give up music. Find out what it does to you, with two pages from the same chapter.

For page two, pick an instrumental playlist: lo-fi, a film score, or the instrumental version of your own songs. Silence works too, if you can stand it.

Pick two pages that feel about as hard as each other, so the test is fair. Count the lines, not how neat they are.

If you have ADHD and quiet feels unbearable, that is fine. The music without words kept its beat and still did about as well as silence.

Two lists on the desk

Sam tried it on Wednesday. His first list had three lines. His second had seven.

He had not been bad at focusing. He had been reading against a second set of words.

He kept the playlist for the walk home and read with a film score. Page 42 went in on the first go.

Tonight, look up the instrumental version of one song you love and save it. That is the first step.

Plan2Ace

A playlist with no words and a pen are enough. Plan2Ace runs the block for you.

Put on your no words playlist and start a twenty five minute focus block in the Study Hall, with other students working alongside you. Prefer a kitchen timer? The method is the point.

A few more questions