By Alyona Golovanyova
Think about the last time you were walking down a busy street, sitting in a car, or just cleaning your room
while you were listening to music. With the right soundtrack on, have you ever felt like you have been in
another world, never really noticing the time and what you were doing, but then you turn off the music and
reality suddenly feels grey? It just feels like music brings actual life.
Music has always been a way of expression, as well as a scrapbook of who we are and used to be. Specific
songs can express what we are feeling, like listening to Tate McRae and Zara Larsson’s songs to elevate
your confidence or Noah Kahan and Frank Ocean’s sensual songs to relax. Music doesn’t only reflect our
feelings; it guides us and our emotions. When we pair songs with mundane tasks, we project the mood of the
music to the environment around us. A slow ballad makes rain against a window feel like a tragic scene,
while a fast-paced song with energizing lyrics makes a grocery run feel like a high-stakes missions or a
hallway like a runway.
The music we choose represents our mood, or it can even change our mood, energizing or motivating us to
stand up and do the task that we have been postponing to do. Yet, the very mechanism that makes music
such a powerful motivator makes it equally potent as a distraction from the real world. When we rely on
sound to alter our internal state, we run the risk of tuning out the external environment entirely. We retreat to our imaginative world, not noticing the details of what is going on around us: the hum of the room, the
conversation of people nearby, or somebody calling our name.
But let’s be honest: we’ve all used music to be our life-hack force to be productive.
You’ve been staring at the pile of laundry for days, feeling too unmotivated to deal with this. But then you
put your headphones on and immediately you’ve not only folded all your clothes, but also scrubbed the
kitchen, answered the unanswered messages and emails, and cooked the dinner. Sometimes, we may even
feel like we cannot do anything without music on. For example, a lot of students have confirmed that they
need a calm, or sometimes uplifting, soundtrack to do an assignment or just practice some tasks.
However, there is a slight flip to this trick.
The same playlist that helps prevents procrastination can instantly kidnap your attention. One minute you’re
using the sound to focus, the next you are inside your head or dancing in your room instead of doing
something that you’ve planned.
That’s the funny paradox of sound: it can pull us out of the slump, but if we aren’t careful, it turns reality
into the background noise while we star in a music video that no one else can see. Nevertheless, music will
stay with us, continuing to affect everyone’s lives no matter what we are doing.