It seems that no one has mentioned this so I'll add. There was a study back in the 1960s which has shown that listening to music was actually detrimental to pr

It seems that no one has mentioned this so I'll add. There was a study back in the 1960s which has shown that listening to music was actually detrimental to programmers' productivity. The results were kind of popularized in the book Peopleware and by Joel Spolsky (see e.g. here: https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-Joel-Spolskys-assertion-that-programmers-are-limited-mentally-when-they-listen-to-music-while-coding https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-is-Joel-Spolskys-assertio...). My personal experience confirms this. While I can successfully fix things or TDD something I already have a good reasoning about while listening to music, more difficult programming tasks require more focus which I can get only in silent conditions (which may be hard to find, alas). The most important thing with music to me is that it shouldn't capture my mind. In other words, I shouldn't be noticing it. There is a nice tool I've successfully been using for years: https://www.focusatwill.com/ https://www.focusatwill.com/, it looks like no one has mentioned it yet also. It is paid (though cheap) and it helps me tremendously, especially in noisy environments (office). They are marketing themselves as science-based, has a few channels, including the ones aimed specifically for those who suffer from ADHD. Their music selection is quite nice and they also take the idea of distractions seriously: if you find a track is distracting you (basically, if you catch yourself actually listening to it instead of focusing on work), you click "Next" and this track will never be played again.