4 ms·

The Best Music for Productivity? Silence

7 points by artsandsci 10y ago

woliveirajr 10y ago
> So (...) if listening to music while working is so bad, why do so many of us do it? Simple: We like it, and we can’t tell it’s messing us up. More or less. Sometimes, as the minutes tick, musing that I was enjoying become a distraction and then a source of irritation, and I urge to turn it off. That's why I think the ideal solution is just to work from a quiet ambient, including your house. Everybody sitting near to each other and making noise is just good when you need to exchange ideas, discuss something. But being inside your own silent bubble is better.
JBReefer 10y ago
Are you sure that it's not sitting in a bullpen next to the sales guys? I know that ducking footballs and ignoring constant shouting really make me and the other 20 devs here more productive.
maxander 10y ago
It really depends on what work you're doing. Source: I forgot my headphones today, and here I am posting on HN rather than focusing on real work. I found out a long time ago that listening to any music at all impedes my writing ability; whatever module of the brain is responsible for evaluating what I'm saying is jammed by the positive evaluations of what I'm listening to, and without aesthetic feedback one's output is lackluster at best. Code requires a different kind of aesthetic judgement, so this doesn't necessarily apply for programming- but there again, I concur with at least one point in the article; music with lyrics messes with my ability to code. Again, it seems as if there's some brain module that can't handle the two demands at once very well. You know what music works best (IMHO) for distraction-dampening while retaining all necessary brain functions? House. No lyrics (usually), an energetic beat, and it constantly skirts the edge of unacceptable repetitiveness while at the same time having a texture sufficiently complex to (in the article's interesting phrasing) "keep you psychologically aroused."

7 points by artsandsci 10y ago

> So (...) if listening to music while working is so bad, why do so many of us do it? Simple: We like it, and we can’t tell it’s messing us up. More or less. Sometimes, as the minutes tick, musing that I was enjoying become a distraction and then a source of irritation, and I urge to turn it off. That's why I think the ideal solution is just to work from a quiet ambient, including your house. Everybody sitting near to each other and making noise is just good when you need to exchange ideas, discuss something. But being inside your own silent bubble is better.

JBReefer 10y ago

Are you sure that it's not sitting in a bullpen next to the sales guys? I know that ducking footballs and ignoring constant shouting really make me and the other 20 devs here more productive.

maxander 10y ago

It really depends on what work you're doing. Source: I forgot my headphones today, and here I am posting on HN rather than focusing on real work. I found out a long time ago that listening to any music at all impedes my writing ability; whatever module of the brain is responsible for evaluating what I'm saying is jammed by the positive evaluations of what I'm listening to, and without aesthetic feedback one's output is lackluster at best. Code requires a different kind of aesthetic judgement, so this doesn't necessarily apply for programming- but there again, I concur with at least one point in the article; music with lyrics messes with my ability to code. Again, it seems as if there's some brain module that can't handle the two demands at once very well. You know what music works best (IMHO) for distraction-dampening while retaining all necessary brain functions? House. No lyrics (usually), an energetic beat, and it constantly skirts the edge of unacceptable repetitiveness while at the same time having a texture sufficiently complex to (in the article's interesting phrasing) "keep you psychologically aroused."