White noise, music or quiet: test what helps you focus

Part 1 of 5, · The technique

Choose the sound on purpose

You sit down to read a chapter. The house is too quiet, so you put on a playlist. Later you realise you’ve read the same page three times, and you know every word of the last song.

The sound around you is something you can choose and test. White noise is a steady hiss, like static. Pink noise is deeper and may sound like rain.

What the research found

In 2007, Söderlund and colleagues gave children with and without ADHD memory tasks, with or without white noise playing. The noise helped the children with ADHD and made the others do worse. The authors’ idea is that people with ADHD may need more noise to work at their best.

A 2024 review by Nigg and colleagues pooled 13 studies with 335 children and university-age young adults who had ADHD or many ADHD symptoms. They did lab attention tasks with white or pink noise, or with little or none. Noise gave a small benefit.

In comparison groups without ADHD, the noise made results a little worse. The review found no studies of brown noise. Its authors call for more studies to confirm the benefit and find safe volumes.

A 2018 review by Vasilev and colleagues pooled 65 studies of children and adults reading with noise, speech or music in the background, against reading in silence.

Overall, background sound lowered understanding a little. Lyrics and speech you could make out cost the most. Music without words and steady noise made almost no difference. Busy noise, such as traffic or an office, was probably worse than steady noise.

What about ADHD?

The first two studies were about ADHD, and the review found only a small benefit. In a 2024 study by Söderlund and colleagues, 43 children and teenagers with ADHD did a memory task with and without white noise. Across the group, it made no clear difference.

Those with more inattentive traits tended to do better with noise, and those with more hyperactive and impulsive traits worse. The authors call the result for sound tentative. It’s a small study.

Results for schoolwork are mixed. In a 2020 study by Batho and colleagues, 52 teenagers with ADHD read a passage and wrote an essay with white noise, background talking or quiet. Those with white noise read faster and wrote more words, but were no more accurate. Background talking made the tasks feel hardest.

The 2018 reading review took only readers without ADHD or other conditions, so it can’t tell us how lyrics affect readers with ADHD. Our view: treat sound as a small thing to try, not a treatment.

How to do it

• If quiet works for you, keep it.
• If you want sound while you read, pick a steady sound or music without words.
• Keep it low (our suggestion: safe volumes for this use aren’t known yet).
• Save songs with words for when you’re not reading.
• Compare on the same kind of task, and keep what helps.

Part 2 of 5

Try this week

Takes about 25 minutes, twice.

Pick one chapter or article you can split in two. Read the first half in a 25-minute run in quiet. Later, read the second half for 25 minutes with a steady sound of your own, such as white noise or steady rain, kept low.

After each run, write one line: how much went in, and how often you drifted. If one helped, try it a few more times. If neither did, that’s useful to know too.

Part 3 of 5, · On the timer

A quiet run, then one with your own sound

Play your sound from your own app. These steps need you signed in, with the full layout (Settings → What’s on screen → Layout → Full).

1. Pick the subject under Subject. + new adds one.
2. In What are you working on?, type ‘Reading, quiet’.
3. Under Length, choose 25m.
4. Press Start focus and read.
5. If your mind wanders, press I got distracted. The stretch is logged and the clock stops until you press Start focus again. If the timer offers a shorter length, press Keep going, so both runs stay 25 minutes.
6. For the second run, start your sound.
7. In What are you working on?, type what you’re playing, such as ‘Reading, rain’. Keep the same names each time: names you’ve used come back as chips.
8. Under Length, check 25m is chosen.
9. Press Start focus and read.
10. Afterwards, on Chart, click the bar for each run’s day. Runs on … lists each run with its length, how it ended and its name.

Compare a few runs of each before you decide: one run can go well or badly for lots of reasons. The speaker at the top right turns the timer’s own sounds on or off, the break alarm included.

Open the timer to try it