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

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."