Turn On, Plug In, and Then Tune Out

More and more workers using headphones to groove to music and block out workplace distractions
Christopher Hutsul, Staff Reporter – The Toronto Sun

Question: When is a door not a door?

Answer: When it’s a set of headphones.

If you work in a cubicle or an open-concept office space, you know privacy can be hard to come by. So you plug in your headphones, log onto an online radio station and get lost in your work …

In doing so, you tell the world to leave you alone.

It’s one of the reasons headphones have become as common in the office as the Post-it Note.

We’ve come a long way from the early days of the Walkman, when the use of headphones in the workplace was both impractical and frowned upon.

A few years ago, computers equipped with a CD drive rarely had the muscle to play music and conduct official duties all at once.

But today, we have access to online radio stations, powerful computers and discreet MP3 players, such as the iPod Bianca Bickmore uses at a downtown graphic design studio.

“When I look around, I see a bunch of heads bopping to different beats,” she laughs.

At any given time, half of the six employees in the office are grooving to music on headphones.

Bickmore says she’s plugged in to music at work 95 per cent of the time. Just like grabbing a coffee in the morning, setting up play lists on her MP3 player is a part of the daily ritual. If she’s looking for something different, she plugs her silver Sony MDR V700 headphones, “which block out everything,” into her computer and seeks out streaming radio stations such as Groovesalad — one of the many stations offered by Apple’s iTunes software.

Bickmore says the ritual makes her “become one with the machine.”

“It helps me concentrate,” she says. “I can block out the things that are going on around me.

“If I don’t have my headphones with me, or if I forget them at home, I just go nuts.”

But headphones have been known to drive bosses nuts, too. There are dirty looks for brazen young staffers who plug themselves in for a little virtual isolation. A manager might consider the act unprofessional, or wonder whether the employee should be enjoying him or herself so much on the company’s dime.

“If you make yourself unavailable for most of the day, off in seclusion, you’re going to damage relationships,” says Lisa Wright, a business etiquette consultant. “You’re saying, `Just stay away’ and, once it becomes a habit, it’s like closing the door all the time. It’s hard for people to knock on that door.

“They don’t care that you’re enjoying yourself. That’s not at the top of their agenda.”

But output is. And experts say music can contribute greatly to a person’s productivity.

That was the thinking in the World War I era, when factory managers used the day’s crude phonographs to flood plants with music to stimulate the workers. Even today, it’s common to hear Muzak – or some kind of easy listening – in office spaces.

Dr. Leonid Kayumov, assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Toronto, has studied the effect of music on the human brain and thinks the headphones-at-work phenomenon is a kind of coping strategy.

“It might look unprofessional, but speaking physiologically, music can be stimulative and relaxing,” he says. “It’s a healing means for the diseased mind, and these are hectic, stressful times.

“As a coping strategy, it’s useful, and not every boss would know that music has such great potential.”

Ackley Gaskin, who works for a marketing firm in Mississauga, says his boss doesn’t mind his constant headphone usage.

“He’s cool. He doesn’t care at all.”

Both Gaskin and Bickmore choose what music to listen to based on their moods. In other words, if they were to arrive at work feeling lethargic, they might choose to listen to something lively.

Or they may choose something mellow when agitated.

“The music I would listen to reflects how I’m feeling,” says Gaskin.

“It helps me focus entirely on my work. I feel more involved.”