Up Your Productivity…with Loud Music? - Netted
Article • August 14, 2013

Up Your Productivity…with Loud Music?

Focus@will streams music to make you productive

Author Stephen King says he works to loud music to get focused; to him, it’s just “another way of shutting the door.”

A team of scientists and UCLA researchers used the same idea to build Focus@will, a free tool for the Web, Android, and iPhone that streams attention-enhancing tunes.

Focus@will is, at first look, little more than motivational music for working. Dig deeper, though, and you’ll see the science behind it is ironclad (just look at those footnotes, for goodness sake).

The app’s creators call the stream “music you hear but should not be actively listening to.” Every track – organized in categories like classical, ambient, and cinematic – has been slightly edited or remastered to hit the right balance: not so bland that you tune out, but not so interesting that you notice it.

Supposedly, if you stick with it you can concentrate for a monk-like 100 minutes.

Which explains how King writes so many books.