Every Note, Another Possibility

Sometimes, to think more deeply, we need fewer words and more of the space that music creates.

We spend a significant part of our professional lives thinking, analyzing, planning, and making decisions.

We define problems, investigate their causes, develop strategies, and try to make complex issues as understandable as possible.

We want accurate information, clear messages, and well-defined goals. And rightly so.

Yet there is something I have been reflecting on for a long time:

Clarity of information and message does not always broaden our perspective.

Sometimes, a clearly expressed idea leads us toward the boundaries of a particular meaning. We know what is being said. Often, we also know what we are expected to understand.

New ideas, however, sometimes emerge only when we move beyond those boundaries.

I am not arguing against clarity. On the contrary, I believe good decisions and successful execution require it.

But before we decide, it is just as important to explore different possibilities, discover connections we have not yet identified, and leave room for our own thinking.

So how do we make that room?

What about music?

When we listen to a song with lyrics, we encounter a story the artist is trying to tell. The words can guide the emotion carried by the melody toward a particular narrative.

Of course, each of us can take something different from that story.

But consider instrumental music for a moment.

The twelve semitones of an octave, dozens of instruments, changing rhythms, harmonies, pauses, and melodies weaving in and out of one another...

There are no words telling us what to think.

Yet there can be a powerful sense of emotion and expression.

When a thought is not defined in words, it can sometimes become far more personal.

We might place our own memories inside a piano melody, our expectations inside a rising guitar line, or the problems we are trying to solve inside a recurring rhythm.

One instrument falls back while another comes forward. The rhythm changes. An unexpected harmony appears. There is a pause, and then the music moves in a different direction.

Each of these moments can evoke entirely different associations in the listener's mind.

Two people listening to the same piece may experience completely different stories.

Because while music has something to tell us, we have something to tell it, too.

Every note, another possibility

Music has been an important part of my life for a long time. Not only as a listener, but also as someone who plays instruments and makes music.

Over time, I realized that the way I relate to music also has a place in my professional life.

When I am trying to understand a complex problem, shape the future of a project, or consider different strategic options, I often turn to instrumental music.

It does not always have to be calm music. Sometimes it is an intricate guitar arrangement, sometimes a long instrumental passage, and sometimes a remarkably simple melody.

The opening of a melody can become the beginning of an unresolved issue in my mind.

A recurring rhythm can remind me of a problem I keep encountering.

When a new instrument enters, I may find myself considering a perspective I had not explored before.

I find this experience especially valuable in projects involving many interdependent decisions.

As I think about one decision, the decisions connected to it, or a dependency I may have overlooked, connections sometimes form between the layers of the music and the issues on my mind.

Sometimes I speed up. Sometimes I slow down.

And sometimes, in a space the music leaves open, I look at a problem I have been considering for a long time from an entirely different angle.

Of course, none of this means that music solves the problem by itself.

Music does not give me a solution directly. In fact, that is what I value most about it: it accompanies my thoughts without telling me what to think.

More information, or more room to think?

In his 1978 album Ambient 1: Music for Airports, Brian Eno connected ambient music with the possibility of creating an atmosphere that allows for calm and reflection.

I believe that idea remains valuable in professional life today.

As our responsibilities increase, so does our tendency to tackle problems with more information, more analysis, and more meetings.

But not every problem comes from a lack of information.

Sometimes we already have the information we need.

What is missing may be the connections we have not yet made between those pieces of information.

Research on music and creativity suggests that certain kinds of music can support the generation of alternative ideas. Other studies have found that music can be distracting, particularly during tasks demanding verbal concentration.

So music is not a universal productivity technique, nor is it suitable for everyone or every type of work.

My experience is more specific:

Rather than turning music into constant background noise, I use it deliberately at certain moments as a space in which my thoughts can unfold.

Sometimes I explore an idea with music, then analyze it in silence.

First, I consider possibilities. Then, I clarify decisions.

I believe these two stages complement one another.

Making room for soul and art

In professional life, we tend to measure success through tangible outcomes.

Projects completed, goals achieved, problems solved, efficiency, cost, and time...

All of these matter. For professionals carrying real responsibility, they are indispensable.

But I do not think we should see our work as nothing more than a collection of tasks to complete.

There is a difference between solving a problem and contributing something of ourselves to the solution.

There is also a difference between completing a project and bringing creativity, aesthetic awareness, and an original point of view to the work.

And this is not only an individual matter.

Leadership also means creating room for our teams to bring different perspectives forward, without immediately reducing every idea to a judgment of right or wrong.

Sometimes the barrier to a good solution is not that people do not know what to do, but that they have not had the opportunity to consider what else might be possible.

Music reminds me of this from time to time.

That our thinking is shaped not only by logic, but also by our emotions, experiences, and imagination...

And that the work we produce can be more than technically successful: it can also carry something recognizably human.

Try it this way, just once

One day, when you are alone with a complex problem you are trying to solve, try putting on a piece of instrumental music.

Do not expect every note to tell you something.

Instead, let yourself place your own thoughts into those notes.

Imagine a rhythm as a stage of the problem, a melody as another possibility, or a pause as a question you have not yet answered.

Perhaps you will find a new solution.

Perhaps you will see the problem differently.

Or perhaps you will find no solution at all, but develop a different relationship with the question you are working through.

And perhaps you will bring a little more soul, art, and excitement back into your work.

Because sometimes what we need is not a clearer message, but a space in which we can discover our own meaning.

Every note may hold another possibility, and every possibility another thought.

Sometimes a new perspective emerges at the very moment we begin to listen to our own thinking.

Related research

In considering this personal experience, it is important to remember that music does not have the same effect on every cognitive task. Ritter and Ferguson (2017) found that music evoking positive emotions could support divergent thinking. Threadgold and colleagues (2019), by contrast, found that background music could impair performance on certain verbal creativity tasks.

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