Study lessons [PART 1]: How to study while listening to music

I am beginning a series which will expose students and everybody to the study methods I exploit personally that works wonders for me. My high School and College academic life would not have been fun if not for these methods. Let’s jump right into the part 1 of the series. The one we are going to treat today is “studying while you listen to music”.

We are living in a world that's dominated by noise. There's practically noise everywhere you go, unpleasant sounds; from industrial machines, automobile engines, motorcycle engines, conversations by people among others. This will be frustrating some times because as human beings we'd like some quiet time to ourselves (both during the day and night time). This is so as to aid reflection on our lives and to accelerate a positive decision making.

However, realistically, we will only achieve an ideal quiet time in the dark when most are sound asleep. Nevertheless, some smart people are ready to cough out large sums of cash to create a soundproofed room to keep external sounds away, this is often similar technology that's utilized in recording studios called the isolation booth [where the vocalist(s), drummer (s), guitarist(s), keyboardist(s) is acoustically isolated] which keeps out external sounds and confine the interior sounds, designed for having a lesser amount of diffused reflections from walls thereby making a great sounding room.

Students and some other people don’t have the resources required to make this isolation booth, so an alternative is devised. Though some students are quite comfortable while studying during a noisy room, but for the sake of scholars and people that prefer a quiet room, they will consider my recommendations.

 When I say studying while you listen to music, I sincerely was referring to purely instrumentals, i.e. music without lyrics attached to it. This is often so because the lyrics can interfere with the concepts/topics you're trying to digest. So, for this, I highly recommend instrumentals by the famous German composer: Yiannis "Yanni" Chryssomallis. I chose him because his instrumentals compositions are quite rich and satisfying and depicts its title; a number of his evergreen instrumentals includes; “Swept away”, “Nightingale”, “Renegade”, “Flight of fantasy”, “Someday” amongst others.

It is noteworthy that each one the recommendations you see during this post has worked greatly for me and it'll  probably work for anyone that applies it. Though there are many instrumentals churned out by Yanni, there's a specific one I even have fallen crazy with which is: “Nightingale”. The instrumental is simply so wonderful. There are three (3) summarised steps for this study method:

1. Noise from the environment tends to poke into your study. So as a remedy, you begin by eliminating the noise by replacing it with the instrumentals. Try your best possible to concentrate on the instrumentals (it might be Yanni’s compositions or the other good instrumentals compositions by other artiste you like) employing a headset/earpiece so as to get a deep feel of it all.

2. Now shift your full concentration to the text you are studying. What happens is that you feel like you are in a different noiseless room.

3. Take 5-minutes break at intervals to stay refreshed and reduce fatigue. While taking the break, still listen to the instrumental. This somewhat compels you to recollect what you’ve read before taking the break.

4. As you progress in your study, while listening to the chosen music, you'll realise that a cool ambiance has been created and your brain is subconsciously taking note of this ambiance. At a later time, once you attempt to recall what you read earlier, it won’t be stressful, because the brain features a way of bringing the knowledge to bare using that ambiance as a trigger.

The brain was ready to do that, because your concentration while studying wasn’t jeopardized. There you've got it! Studying while listening to music are often an excellent plus for your study time and will work to give you upgrade in your G.P.A. Try it today and let me know what you think in the comments below. If you have been using this method already, you can share your experience in the comment section.  Stay tuned for the subsequent study lessons.

Thanks for reading!

See you on the next one!