If you’re part of the group of people who listen to music while working on a task, chances are, you help your brain to focus more. Thus, you work faster. But the question is - what amount of noise can your brain handle and how does noise cancelling headphone come into the picture? Background noise tends to confuse our brain to focus on several things happening at the same time: your music, the chatty background, other people’s music etc. This then takes up energy from the brain which can rather just be used to work on a project.