18 ms·

Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? My attention goes straight to the music, and I can't concentrate on the task at hand! When I w

• wry_discontent 7y ago
  This is interesting to me, because I almost exclusively enjoy music as "background noise." The only time I really listen to music by itself is if I'm at a concert. But I'm a musical illiterate
  • Filligree 7y ago
    There's tons of different kinds. Here's one I've been enjoying lately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPugYPbO66E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPugYPbO66E Pay attention to the lyrics. Treat it as a story, and try to guess at what's happening. There is a canon answer -- Aviator's albums are in fact all stories -- but try to come up with your own before you look for it. Everyone sees something different in the lyrics.
    • wry_discontent 7y ago
      I can't listen to lyrics because I find it hard to a) parse them at the speed they come out, and b) hearing them through the distortion of them being sung. I also get distracted very quickly. I do not know most of the words to my favorite songs.
      • Filligree 7y ago
        This is, again, situational. Try it~
        • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
          I also don't parse singing as language intuitively. It might be a result of context-based parsing mixups in human brains, so it may not be so easy to just try.
• ArtDev 7y ago
  Blame the open office standard. It's the only way to filter out voices, I have found.
• asdkhadsj 7y ago
  It depends on the music for me. Music really tones in my moods. I use it as a tool to motivate my life, for whatever I'm aiming at. This applies to programming for me because sometimes I need music that promotes creative thinking. Sometimes research. And sometimes, my favorite, hammering out the code because I have a rock solid idea on implementation and trajectory. The wrong music in any one of those steps is actively harmful to my work. The right music promotes it. Silence on the other hand is weirdly deafening to me, usually. Sometimes I have to pause my music and talk myself through a problem, and sometimes in doing that I forget to turn the music back on. I frequently find myself 1 hour later, super tense in the shoulders and all around stiff. It's a weird and stressful state. The silence is too loud.
• nvirDoomed 7y ago
  Do you think it has to do with analyzing the songs? I do that with some music especially with classical.
• rb808 7y ago
  With Lyrics I get distracted, with music it helps me.
• kraigspear 7y ago
  You're not alone.
• paggle 7y ago
  It’s because of your music education that you become an active listener and can’t use the music as just noise.
  • konart 7y ago
    It has nothing to do with it. I've spent 7 years in music school too, with violin as an instrument of choice. I still do play it sometimes too. Not to mention al the concerts I visit. Still - I can barely code or work in general without music. Not any music though, that's for sure.
• travisjungroth 7y ago
  I’m guessing music transmits a lot more “information” to you than the average person. It’s hard to have something you love as a background. I love scuba diving. If there was a monitor with rotating images of underwater scenes, I wouldn’t just think it was pretty. I’d be glued to it figuring out where they took the shot, wondering how deep they were and wishing I was there. I’m guessing something similar happens with you and music.
  • tombert 7y ago
    Not the OP, but I think you might be onto something. I'm not a huge music-theory guy or anything, but it's virtually impossible for me to "tune out" music; I think I subconsciously like to dissect it a bit. However, if someone were to put on virtually any sporting event on the TV (without announcers and assuming you didn't have a bunch of people cheering or anything like that), it would have almost no affect on me, since I don't really care at all about sports.
    • amatecha 7y ago
      Oh yeah, you know how people put on music to relax and go to sleep (with the music set on a timer)? It doesn't work, it keeps me awake.. I analyze every detail, think about how they made a certain sound or how something is placed in the mix... That said, at the same time I pretty much have to listen to music while working, otherwise my brain is like 1/2 as functional. No clue why.
  • aasasd 7y ago
    There's definitely truth in that. After learning to drive, I found that the sense of vague-but-uninformative flow in the sight of traffic, that ant-like busyness, is gone. Now it all has meanings. Worse, I'm now hypnotized by scenes of cars trying to pass each other in the one-lane driveways below my apartment. A trainwreck of five cars going one way, three the other, and two coming in from the side, might keep me at the window for half an hour.
    • wholinator2 7y ago
• tombert 7y ago
  You're not the only person; it's why I absolutely despise open offices. I have trouble getting things done with people talking, and "just putting on headphones" doesn't really work because I have trouble focusing on anything but the music. The closest thing I'll do to address my particular problem is find audio of stuff like thunderstorms or waterfalls and more ambient stuff. Personally, I find that much easier to tune out.
  • inform880 7y ago
    I would invest in a pair of nice noise canceling headphones. They work wonders for me and are a must have in open offices.
    • cel1ne 7y ago
      Did you read parent poster? What good are noise-cancelling headphones if you can't listen to music because it's distracting?
      • notkaiho 7y ago
        You can use them to tune out noise around you. It muffles conversations, keyboard clacking, people sniffling, airconditioning noise, etc.
      • ssb1 7y ago
        They're cancelling noise whether or not you're listening to music ;-) Sweet sound of silence.
      • somehnguy 7y ago
        Noise cancelling headphones can cancel noise without any music playing. It's not 100%, but they'll get rid of like 80% of the background noise without playing anything. To get that last 20% yeah you need something playing to help mask it(even at an extremely low volume). Sometimes I wear mine with nothing playing while at work just to get rid of random office chatter.
      • Wohlf 7y ago
• Thinkx220 7y ago
  You're not the only one. I'm this way too. However, I can listen to music while doing system admin stuff but for anything else I need absolute silence.
• thirteenfingers 7y ago
  I'm a pianist with an active performing schedule and I'm the same way. I'll listen to music at work if I have relatively mindless tasks to get out of the way, but when it comes to actual coding or anything requiring careful thought, forget it. All music ends up being distracting, either because I really enjoy it or because I find it really annoying. I'd be curious to know if there are any serious musicians here who can concentrate on writing code or any other similarly mentally-intensive task while listening to music.
  • jlarcombe 7y ago
    I can... not sure if I qualify as a serious musician, but reasonably so. My favourite for programming is Renaissance-era choral polyphony, but I'll listen to anything depending on mood!
  • bnycum 7y ago
    I've played guitar and bass for 15+ years, and I can't work without listening to music. Sometimes it feels like there is 20 voices in my head when working, like while trying to develop a report I'm constantly juggling the all thoughts of the queries, design, database updates, etc. Music makes my brain tend to focus on the task at hand. Though I cannot listen to anything spoken word like podcasts or talk radio. Drives me absolutely nuts.
  • mcqueenjordan 7y ago
    I've played piano for 15 years, and I prefer listening to music. Although, some of my musician friends say it's more noise than music... https://whoami.sh/thought/flow-playlist https://whoami.sh/thought/flow-playlist
• MadWombat 7y ago
  You are not alone. I went to a music school majoring violin for eight years. Not quite the same as having a BMus in US, but a long way in the same direction. Music is never a background to me. I will occasionally switch music on while working, but with the specific purpose to switch my mind. Usually either when I am trying to work out the best solution to some problem and I need to get away from it for a second or when I am task switching.
  • larrywright 7y ago
    Sample size of two, but considering you and parent are both musicians I wonder if that’s the reason you pay more attention to the music?
• davidw 7y ago
  I don't lose focus so much if it's music I know really, really well. I've heard it so many times that I'm not really attentively listening to it, if that makes sense? OTOH, yeah there are definitely times when I prefer peace and quiet.
• MayeulC 7y ago
  I am more or less the same... I never really got into listening to music, so I tend to be quite illiterate when it comes to the groups or albums everyone knows. But when there's music, I like to enjoy it thoroughly, concentrating on it. I cannot really control it, and it's impossible for me to focus on code or reading when there's music playing around. I contrast this with most of my friends that seem to listen to music almost the whole day. As a cautionary tale, I used to have very good hearing as well, probably because I didn't listen to music or go to concerts as much as my peers. I think I lost that, mostly as a result of joining my university's brass band... Use earplugs if you do. I could only fully concentrate in very silent environments (almost anechoic), but nowadays I'm doing better as a result (and I now hear this buzzing noise floor when things get too silent). And I now have trouble hearing people in noisy environments: hearing loss impacted both my ability to pick faint noises, and to differentiate noise sources. I still have average hearing, I think, though I should get it tested. Unsure if I can get it back.
• rob74 7y ago
  For me, it depends: having to hear music from other people drives me crazy, but as long as it's my own music (over headphones of course), it really helps me concentrate. For people who can't listen to music: how about noise generators (e.g. https://mynoise.net/ https://mynoise.net/) to drown out ambient noise?
  • notkaiho 7y ago
    Thank you for the mynoise recommendation, this is great!
• s_dev 7y ago
  >Am I the only person who can't listen to anything while coding? Listen to music without human voices. Lyrics are distracting. Maybe use OST music for films and games. This music is designed to not to compete for your attention with whatever you're watching or examining.
  • larrywright 7y ago
    Same here. I use Brain.Fm and a number of playlists that have instrumental jazz (Miles Davis, Bill Evans, etc), and television/film scores (anything by Alexandre Desplat is great).
  • philsnow 7y ago
    I get a lot of mileage out of listening to music without words in a language I'm even marginally familiar with. I don't know Korean well enough to even lex the syllables out of the audio stream, so kpop works really well for me for work listening.
• slx26 7y ago
  I write some music and been playing in bands for years, but I can't stand having music in the background (decent OSTs and a few others are excluded from this classification, as they are there for a reason and I'm listening actively). in fact, I very, very rarely listen to music. when I do, it's either because I know exactly what I want to listen or because I'm searching new music. I recently discovered I have a tendency to unconsciously listen to everything around me and analyze it, aggravating my mental fatigue. now I try to be careful and avoid doing that.
  • larrywright 7y ago
    I made this comment elsewhere, but I’m wondering if this is due to you being a musician. Somewhat related: I’m an amateur photographer and have studied photography extensively. When I see pictures I can’t help but mentally pull them apart to determine how they were made. Seems like musicians might have the same inclination.
• DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  It depends on what my current task is. If it's something tedious, i.e. robotically making some kind of change throughout a code base, then my attention span can handle the additional load and the music may help me not procrastinate. But for anything involving serious thinking, all forms of music I've tried are too much of a distraction. I have ADD, which may be a factor.
  • alecmg 7y ago
    Similar for me. Track has to be something very familiar and with a steady rhytm. Task has to be something semi-mechanical, like implementing an idea in code with no additional thinking required. Haven't been diagnosed, but attention span is pretty short.
    • DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
      May want to get evaluated for ADD. My worklife improved greatly once I had a diagnosis, because at least for me there are some meds that truly help.
• toyg 7y ago
  Have all my upvotes. I just cannot work with music on. I work from home and silence can be depressing all day long, so I make a point of turning on the radio in breaks, but never when I code.
  • larrywright 7y ago
    Something I’ve used to break the silence: police and fire scanner traffic. It’s just enough to cut the silence and not as distracting as the radio.
• carwyn 7y ago
  I can only listen to certain types of music, usually instrumental. Can't listen to anything with vocals in it.
• DanitaBaires 7y ago
  You're not alone. To me is a matter of if I have to _think_ on what I'm doing or not. During graphic design work, music allows my mind to wander and be more creative; I could say I _need_ it. But during coding is more difficult: I can listen at low volume some instrumental music while coding CSS and HTML; but for Javascript or other programming languages I need no music (but not necessarily silence, I can code with mild background noises).
• pier25 7y ago
  > I have a BMus in Piano Performance That's probably then reason. The more you know about music and music production the more it consumes resources of your brain.
• kongfucius 7y ago
  I like working while having music as background noise but with a couple rules: no vocals and not many instruments. I tend to listen to atmospheric, jazz, hotel lobby music (but I cant take out Morcheeba or Portishead from my playlist, it deserves my divided attention).
• Keloo 7y ago
  me as well. but I found some exceptions like Wardruna. :)
• basq 7y ago
  I'm the same way. My partner is able to do all her homework while listening to music or playing a show in the background. I was somewhat envious, until I looked at some studies that suggest while it's possible, it's not ideal, and can reduce information retention. As to why some people have an easier time doing it than others, no clue. I have a background in music so I suspect that plays some role. I need absolute silence in order to concentrate.
• jingw222 7y ago
  For me it's only gonna work if the music have already been what I use on repeat while doing other mundane tasks, like white noises sort of thing. Otherwise distraction for sure.
• jgwil2 7y ago
  If I could have absolute silence I would take it. Unfortunately, music is often then only option to block the constant noise and chatter in an open office. Have you tried white noise instead?
• peruvian 7y ago
  How about this - I can't focus with office noise but I can focus while listening to podcasts. Makes no sense!
• tbirdz 7y ago
  I can't listen to music at all when I'm designing the code, and I find it very distracting. Designing interfaces/APIs/etc is a higher bandwidth activity for me, and requires more focus, so music is a distraction. But when I'm implementing the design, I find music very helpful. Just turning the code from design to actual code takes less focus from me, so I can end up getting distracted by other things in my environment if I don't have something else that can "fill up" the remaining amount of mental attention bandwidth. Also podcasts work even better than music for this.
• bloopernova 7y ago
  My wife and I have ADD in different areas/amounts. The difference between us in the way we use and react to sound is, in my rather biased opinion, fascinating: Me: Single source only, absolutely can't listen to music while trying to code or read. I have used https://mynoise.net/ https://mynoise.net/ and the Android app to drown out environmental noise when I'm working around others. I'm very easily distracted by noise, especially things like speakerphone conferences. Music to me is a single focus thing, I can't do anything else and have to focus only on the music. Her: can hold a conversation with me while listening to a podcast and simultaneously playing a phone game. Music is very much something that happens while she is busy doing other stuff, even when it's her favourite songs and she's rocking out singing along. It was a revelation to her when we discussed this. She was completely unaware that to me, trying to hold a conversation if I was already listening to music was almost painful. She's adjusted her expectations and knows that if my good headphones are on, it's my music time. We both love music so much, it's an integral part of our gen-x upbringing, yet our different attention problems lead us to consume it in very different ways. (and, yes, she's awesome. I'm amazed daily by her and count myself incredibly lucky to find someone as kind, understanding, funny, loving, sexy and brilliant as her) sorry if that's TMI.
  • mrandish 7y ago
    I'm very much like you describe yourself. There are only a few very ambient musical tracks to which I can do concentrated work while hearing. Interestingly, I can't even do that much on the first listening of them. It's only when I've heard them a bunch of times and they are already familiar. Then my brain can focus on other things. However, even in that case, my sense is there is still a cognitive 'tax' going on. I don't get as much done or think as deeply even with familiar ambient music. I also can't have the radio on in my car if I plan to actually think. It's hard for me to even imagine how people are able to concentrate with active music playing or, worse, a television show running in the room. I'm always reminded how different I am every time I stay at one of those hotels that has a communal free breakfast area. They invariably have TVs tuned to those 'happy babble' morning talk shows and most people seem to have no problem working, reading, or carrying on a conversation with it running constantly into their brain. Apparently, some of us are just made differently. I have an occasional multi-hour drive I need to do and I will sometimes listen to music, a good podcast or an audiobook but I'm actively listening to it. Most often though I drive in complete silence and just think. Some of my friends are surprised by this and can't imagine just sitting in silence that long. However, I love it.
• aidenn0 7y ago
  When I am doing a task that requires full mental thought, I need silence. However, for more repetitive or mundane tasks, I need music to drown out the various stray thoughts in my head that would otherwise distract me from the task at hand. For really repetitive thought-free stuff (e.g. mopping a floor), music that I would listen to while just sitting down is fine. For less repetitive stuff, either something with a set pattern (like 8-bar blues) or something I know well enough to "tune out" when I need more focus on the task at hand is better.
• alfalfasprout 7y ago
  tl;dr you may have ADD
• archagon 7y ago
  I can only listen to instrumental songs that I'm really used to.
• ibrault 7y ago
  I can write code when I'm listening to music perfectly fine but as soon as I need to document anything, like a docstring, informative comment, etc. I need to pause the music, my brain just shuts down as soon as it needs to switch to writing English.
• manifestsilence 7y ago
  For me, music is often the lesser of two evils compared to the background noise of the open office or the noise of the conversation going on in my own head. It also gives me a happiness fix which helps me not burn out and distract myself in other ways. For me, it really depends on my mood and what I'm working on which type of music is appropriate. Some days it's rap and the flood of words doesn't get in the way even. Other days it has to be instrumental bluegrass or similar.
• Uhuhreally 7y ago
  completely agree. Silence is the only way to code
• _nothing 7y ago
  Music helps me drown out surrounding noise/distractions and energizing music can pump me up, but I also get distracted by playlists because each new song triggers a novelty response in my brain and will distract me (especially if I start wanting to sing/dance to it). What I've been doing that's actually been quite effective is I'll just loop the same energizing song over and over for the entire work day, sometimes even for multiple days. For me it helps keep me energized while also letting the song fade into the background since it's on repeat. I'm sure many people would not be able to stand this, but it's been the perfect solution for me.
  • catchmeifyoucan 7y ago
    I do the same!
• shams93 7y ago
  I had this problem at a job where music was piped in, at one time I was a professional musician so I'm trained to hyperfocus on the song at hand when listening, I like having background noise but listening to actual music is distracting.
• cjsawyer 7y ago
  My go to is meditation music, hums, drones, no drums, and no vocals. It’s like white noise but less grating.
• wishinghand 7y ago
  Back in high school and some of University I used to be able to listen to music while working, but no more. If I need some noise then the stuff I listen to is so minimal it could hardly be called music.
• thiagomgd 7y ago
  I also have some difficulties doing "brain work" while listening to music for the same reasons, I just start paying more attention to the music. I'm a hobbyist musician and have been playing trumpet and saxophone since I was around 8~10. I wonder if that changed the way I (or we) perceive music
• djaychela 7y ago
  No, me neither. Unless I'm working on something brainless and repetitive (I'm currently doing formatting for a book I'm writing, and using my old version of Indesign which means a lot of repetition of the same thing as it doesn't have the ability to set sane defaults!), I can't listen to any music - either the music gets my mind, or the job does and then I'm not listening. FTR I partially make a living as a musician, so maybe that's why?
• victorthehuman 7y ago
  Generally agree, but I also need to drown out my coworkers. Found that NIN-Ghosts type of music to work the best, that repetitive/drony music gives me the space I need to think.
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• toomanybeersies 7y ago
  I can't work without music, it drives me crazy. I have ADHD, so working in an environment with lots of voices and other sounds is impossible for me. I've also got tinnitus, so working in silence will drive me insane too. I'm listening to music for upwards of 12 hours a day. It also helps that I have a real passion for music, mostly techno and psytrance, and also DJ and produce, so I love it.
• excursionist 7y ago
  I can listen to music when doing easy/repetitive work - it actually makes it seem less dull. When working on something hard or reading/learning something I can't listen to music.
• northwest65 7y ago
  I listen to Kizomba (Portuguese) or Salsa/Bachata (Spanish) music while I work. I enjoy the rhythms, but I can't speak either of those languages, so I get the enjoyment without the distraction.
• elamje 7y ago
  I always like pointing software engineers and people who need to focus to this playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/61RNVG9yeQpFBRi8OAVC9I?si=dQ8ersK9Rfqs5G5OmNl0aA https://open.spotify.com/playlist/61RNVG9yeQpFBRi8OAVC9I?si=... Before this, I could not listen to music and code at the same time AT ALL. Then, I found a coding playlist with only full length albums with very little vocals, and I changed. I recently created my own flavor of the playlist with only albums that have a consistent flow from one song to the next. Give it a try and fork it to make your own version!
• chrisweekly 7y ago
  Same for me -- EXCEPT for certain Brain.fm tracks, and my carefully-curated "flowstate" playlist consisting of a few dozen familiar tracks w/ no lyrics and a steady beat. These are only sort of "music" to me; they're _strictly_ for use as background for focus, w/ noise-cancelling headphones, and I don't listen to them for any other purpose.
• Aeolun 7y ago
  If the world is silent, then not listening to anything is better (for my programming). In the noisy clusterfuck of sound our open office is, listening to music is a soothing balm.
• wildrhythms 7y ago
  I studied music classically from a young age, and I absolutely cannot listen to music while programming (or writing, etc) I immediately fall into studying the music. I truly believe this is a phenomenon among musicians.
• stanmancan 7y ago
  It depends on the music. Electronic music with no vocals really helps me concentrate. As soon as there’s vocals I’m doomed.
• csomar 7y ago
  Have you tried Deep House? Deep House and Jazz/Blues are the only genre that work for me while coding.
• g_sgoil 7y ago
  If it's late at night then you need something to keep you awake and focused. I stumbled across this on cmd.fm and then found it on soundcloud. When I need to stay awake and blast through some work and really make some progress, I go straight for a featurecast mix. The one below is relentless (in a good way). https://soundcloud.com/featurecast/featurecast-keep-it-coming-mix?in=featurecast/sets/mixes https://soundcloud.com/featurecast/featurecast-keep-it-comin...