How lo-fi music is increasing student productivity
The new age of virtual school has caused me to spend countless hours doing work on my laptop. Being open to distractions on my devices with no consequences, it has been hard to stay on task while doing assignments. My lack of focus was in desperate need of a solution and lo-fi music saved the day.
While there are many study hacks college students have gone through, listening to lo-fi music has been proven to be a successful one. According to Hyde School, one survey states 86% of lo-fi music listeners have seen an improvement in their productivity and study habits.
Lo-fi music is a composition of sounds, such as light distortion, jazz beats and sounds of nature. There are little to no lyrics – it’s just you alone with the music.
Lo-fi is short for low fidelity, which means low quality. The Music Origins Project states that this term was first commonly used in the 1950’s when many young people would make their own music with the gear available to them. With the rise of hip hop and new technology, lo-fi is now also referred to as “chill-hop” with it taking inspiration from jazz, rock and rap of previous decades.
The popularity of Lo-fi music has less to do with interest in the genre and more to do with its effect on productivity. People commonly use lo-fi music to help increase their focus when doing tasks, such as studying.
Environmental management freshman Fiona Reyes said she listens to lo-fi music everyday when she does homework.
“I listen to it the most when I have to read or write for school because I really need to concentrate and lo-fi helps keep out the other noise,” Reyes said.
According to Inc.com, lo-fi can put the brain in a “productivity trance.” This type of music gives enough stimulation to the brain for it to tune out stress without creating distractions, so people can be productive.
The non-climatic, repetitive nature of lo-fi music has been criticized for being boring when in actuality, that is what helps people focus. The bland, endless loops allow listeners to focus more on the work and not be thrown off by any sort of surprises in the music.
ChilledCow is one popular lo-fi music channel people use. It has 7.46 million subscribers on Youtube and their lofi hip hop music playlist has 4.78 million likes on Spotify.
“I used to watch a lot of day in my life vlogs and, in one of the vlogs, the girl put on music from the ChilledCow channel on Youtube,” Reyes said. “It was the one of the girl writing with headphones on, writing next to her cat – I feel like everyone knows that.”
So whenever you’re faced in a studying rut, I suggest plugging in your headphones and listening to some ChilledCow. Let the soothing music put your mind in a focused state and just relax.
