Whether you’re a fan of listening to music while you read or simply live in a noisy household, silence may not be something you’re used to finding before hitting the books—but it should be, and it can be. Here’s why you should strive to study in silence, and some tips for actually doing so.

Despite the popularity of study-based playlists on YouTube and Spotify, silence is the best way to retain the information you’re taking in. Don’t take our word for it, take the science.

First, research published in 2019 found that “mental workload and visual/auditory attention are significantly reduced when participants are exposed to noise at 95 dBA levels.” That’s about how loud a blender or a truck is, according to the Center for Hearing and Communication. The 2019 study focused primarily on how noise affects people at work, where people tend to focus on tasks they’ve already mastered; noise can be even more damaging when you’re trying to learn new information. Other research focused specifically on studying has found that noise is even more of a problem: On average, participants experienced a 7% decrease in performance on a test when researchers introduced sounds, compared to silence, according to a 2021 report.

Some research splits it up and examines different effects of noise on learning and information retention in introverts and extroverts, but this is both too detailed and quite irrelevant; the general finding is still that noise is distracting and reduces cognitive ability. Other research splits it up by type of noise. For example, one study found that while silence was beneficial for cognitive tasks, lo-fi music was better than music with lyrics (with the exception of when participants were doing math, when the type of music had no impact).