> Does listening to music while working serve as a distraction, or motivation? There was a study which determined that people do mundane, routine work equally

> Does listening to music while working serve as a distraction, or motivation? There was a study which determined that people do mundane, routine work equally well with music or without it, but if the work required creative thinking, music lost to no music. A possible conclusion is that music engages the regions of the brain which are required for creative thinking. That's just one study, however, and I doubt that I would be able to find a link to it now. Personally I find that if I turn on “Techno Live Sets”[1] when mashing the buttons, I'm risking doing all the work that's to be done, in one day. On the other hand, some neo-prog post-industrial breakbeat doom would regularly steal my attention. But I've already listened to months if not years of techno cumulatively, while I'm very much in the market for some post-industrial breakbeat doom. Also, I have a distinct thing about voice in music: the clearer the words, the less suited the music is for the background. Mumbling to complex hip-hop rhythm ok, clear and loud declamation not ok. Most notably, I can mostly turn off my attention to words in English, which is the second language for me, while my native language gets straight into my brain's speech recognition centers—I've been suffering from this quite a lot when around TV or pop music. Inane lyrics in my language immediately throw me into stupor of trying to find any sort of reason behind them, while I'm comfortable with any random drivel in English until I explicitly try to decipher it. I've also noticed that I can consume text in my native language pretty fast without any conscious effort, while I can't really skim text in English—I have to pay attention or I drift off. It seems like for the second-language English, parts of the brain that transform it into meaning have to be consciously engaged, while the native language gets the treatment on the subconscious low level. [1] recommended! https://www.techno-livesets.com/ https://www.techno-livesets.com/