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Music can make you more productive
But it has to be the right music for the task
Music and Studying: My First Experiments
I first read about music and the brain back in junior high. This was way before parents were playing Mozart for babies.
I was intrigued. Would music help me do better on tests?
As the eldest child of Indian immigrants, this was of monumental importance. My parents were not happy unless I brought home an A… An A+ was really what they expected.
I tried studying to different types of music but didn’t notice an improvement in my grades.
So I forgot about it, until years later, at MIT.
An Experiment with Fraternity Guys
In a psychology class my sophomore year, we had to do a research project. I told my two partners about my earlier experiments with music.
“That sounds really cool,” said one of my team-mates, a slender blond. “But we’d need a lot of test subjects for the results to be meaningful.”
“That’s not a problem,” said my other team-mate. “I’ve got plenty of fraternity brothers who’d be happy to help out, as long as we feed them.”
