8 ms·

I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for a while now. However, this part of t

by fouric 5y ago

I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for a while now. However, this part of the article was novel: > Other studies suggest that people who frequently “media multitask” (like listening to music while checking email or scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more distracted and less able to focus their attention even when they’re performing only one task. This was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? I guess it's time to throw out my headphones... Well, but that article links to "Multicosts of Multitasking"[1], which references studies made on "heavy multitaskers", defined as having high "MMI" scores. What's MMI? "A high MMI score means an individual engages in a lot of media multitasking (e.g., checking email while also perusing Facebook and watching Netflix), and a low score means he or she does not (e.g., checking email without any secondary media)." Whoa there - checking Netflix and Facebook are completely different than listening to music, and it should be obvious that the former two are mutually exclusive with performing other tasks (simultaneously) - but that doesn't imply the same for music. I think that the HN submission page might be making some unsupported claims... [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075496/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075496/

Pokepokalypse 5y ago
Media multitasking is great. Tragic though, for advertisers.
3pt14159 5y ago
No study will convince me about music and my personal ability to focus. It needs to be the right music (Emancipator, Nicola Cruz, etc) but I can write 2000 to 5000 lines of high quality, tested code with the right song on repeat for the day and I know its the same for many others.
- sg47 5y ago
  I listen to Bach or Beethoven when I need to really focus. Works wonders. I use it sparingly so that I don't get bored.
  - dave78 5y ago
    I used to find that listening to music without lyrics (classical, movie themes, etc.) did it. Lately though I just listen to a local radio station that plays music I like. I think I'm convinced that the difference is how well I know the music - listening to the radio is all songs that I've heard hundreds of times, so I don't think I'm subconsciously spending effort listening to the lyrics since I know them already?
    - 988747 5y ago
      For me my poor English becomes an advantage here - I can listen to rock music and completely ignore lyrics, if they are in English and I don't deliberately focus on them. But if the radio starts playing something in my own language then it becomes distracting, even if I heard the song hundreds times before.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  I just started getting into 20th century Italian film soundtracks for coding. I don't know why, but it's doing wonders for me.
  - prancer_or_vix 5y ago
    Suggestions? Where do you find them?
    - idontwantthis 5y ago
      On Spotify. Piero Umiliani is my favorite so far.
- dboreham 5y ago
  Trance Techno all the way for coding.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    I find techno too engaging most of the time. Progressive and trance are my usual white noise for work
- FalconSensei 5y ago
  > with the right song on repeat for the day that's the key. You are possibly using 'the right song' to isolate yourself, so that helps you concentrate. The fact that it's on repeat also makes you don't pay much attention to it anymore. But try to listen to 'the wrong song', or worse 'the wrong new song', and it's probably going to have some effect. I mostly listen to 'concentration music' and lo-fi without vocals. Put something more complex and with lyrics...
- fouric 5y ago
  Two counter-points: First, the point of a study is to be generalizeable - that is, to apply to as many people as possible, usually other than oneself. If a particular technique applies to you, that's great! However, most people aren't you. Starting with a known general principle/technique (most people can't multitask) will, on average, put you in a better position than randomly picking someone's anecdotal evidence. Second, there are many documented cases where self-assessment of one's own traits or capabilities is inaccurate. Performance while cognitively impaired (alcohol & sleep deprivation), assessment of skill as a novice (Dunning-Kruger), and the ability to multitask are all well-known cases of it, with many more lesser known (e.g. whether one is a "visual" or "verbal" learner[1]) - so, you should be wary about having too much self-confidence in your own capabilities, especially for something as poorly-understood as software engineering. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    > First, the point of a study is to be generalizeable That's why I specified myself. I completely understand the difference between generalizable results and individual results. > many documented cases where self-assessment of one's own traits or capabilities is inaccurate I completely understand that self-assessment is flawed, but there is also something to understanding oneself and trusting a self-assessment that is born out over decades of experience. I have never even come close to being as productive as I can be with the right musical piece and sharing this insight with others may prompt further research that sheds new nuance on the topic.
jklinger410 5y ago
Sorry, there is no way something like Trance music is less distracting than the background noise of real life. Just seems absurd to me.
- kdmccormick 5y ago
  %s/less/more?
- hosh 5y ago
  People have different ways their brain is wired. What’s absurd for you doesn’t make it a good test for universal experience. Trance is distracting for me, but melodic progression works well for me, and sometimes vocal chillout trance. I still have to process random stuff with background noise from an urban setting, even on one of those noise generators. Back when I was living in a more rural setting, the song birds, the wind between the trees, the rain makes for something that is easier for me to focus. That is what works for me. My wife has difficulty concentrating without Netflix in the background.
  - jklinger410 5y ago
    I just feel like the practicality of it is silly. Music doesn't help you focus, compared to what? Pure silence? Music helps me focus more than say, a noisy coffee shop.
- II2II 5y ago
  Given how many people are saying that they need music to concentrate, I was thinking something along the same lines and realized that listening to music doesn't necessarily contradict the study. It may simply be a case of people using music to pull their attention back to the task at hand in cases where the environment would pull their attention away.
- sureglymop 5y ago
  As someone with ADHD, the background noise of real life is really distracting to me. I need noise cancellation headphones which play no sound to really deeply focus.
kenjackson 5y ago
It seems like this would also be task dependent. I've read other studies that listening to music while running helps people run longer, as an example. I know when I (used to) lift weights -- having the right music was a huge motivational factor for heavy lifts. For activities that require more intellectual attention, the articles assertion would be accurate to me personally.
QuercusMax 5y ago
In my personal experience, listening to music is fine (and helps keep me on task while waiting for builds and tests and such) when I'm working on well-understood bits. But if there's something novel or complicated, I have to turn it off or else I just can't get into the right frame of mind.
- pdmccormick 5y ago
  This reflects my experience as well. When I more or less know what I’m doing (where my typing is essentially the rate limiting step), playing familiar music helps me to focus, but when I really need to stop and think about what I’m trying to accomplish, I prefer as much silence as possible (I’ll even switch from headphones to large hearing protection earmuffs, the kind you should wear if you’re working with heavy equipment).
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  I will build on it. Even type of music may make a difference in your mental state. Soothing background piano music may actually help your focus, while lyric heavy cadence of note distractions will do anything but since it is virtually designed for a distraction.
  - burnished 5y ago
    I don't think you can make that kind of broad pronouncement here, lest your next step be to play classical music at plants to demonstrate some kind of preconceived superiority right? For me it feels more about familiarity. If I already have the lyrics memorized then it does not feel distracting whereas unfamiliar music can draw my focus.
  - spfzero 5y ago
    Anything with Lyrics wrecks my concentration. Somehow my mind just can't stop tracking speech. Instrumental is OK, but silence is too. I know lots of people though who must have music on, or they simply cannot concentrate. For them, it might be that the music gives the mind something to hold on to, kind of a rail to help stay on track, and in the absence of that, their mind would wander farther afield.
dboreham 5y ago
For me music is quite different than speech. Background music helps focus. Background speech kills it. Basically my brain tracks one or other source. Either I follow the podcast that's playing, and totally ignore the work task, or vice-versa.
ScoobleDoodle 5y ago
I wonder if it comes down to the intentional, sustained focus of ones attention? Or how does an open office compare to listening to music? For me I sometimes use music to mollify ruminative thoughts or feelings that intrude and distract me. Which results in a net increase in focus. Similar for the din of the open office. When I need deep thinking time both background noise and music are too interruptive or distracting and I need full silence. But I don’t require that level of focus all the time.
smoldesu 5y ago
I'm one of the worst when it comes to media multitasking, I actually watch uncut full-length stream archives at my own leisure alongside podcasts and whatever new music is out. A lot of it is knowing when to listen, not what. It's a lot easier to focus when you designate the music for work time, the podcasts for transit, and the streams for laundry-folding. I found it very liberating when I realized that I could really consume whatever media I wanted, as long as I made sure to fill the appropriate times with things I like.
anaphor 5y ago
I find that I can focus better if I listen to a single track on repeat (I've done it literally for hours). The repetition helps for some reason because you're not surprised.
- anaphor 5y ago
  And if you enjoy piano, there's some music specially created for this purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations
tharkun__ 5y ago
Not novel to me personally at all but I know that other people claim (perhaps rightfully so) that music helps them concentrate. I can't. Especially not with repetitive, melodic music like other siblings say helps them. That's an absolute killer as I starts repeating the melody in my head. Potentially even after I shut the music itself off. My suspicion is that many people have too many other distractions and music helps them because it's less distracting than the other things. Some people say white noise, such as from an AC helps them sleep. It drives me crazy and I can't fall asleep at all. It does beat a busy street with cars zooming by, revving, honking etc. Where music can help if there's a mundane repetitive task I need to just get done, because automating it does not make sense at that point. Certain music helps. Allegedly farmers use the same technique to make strawberry pickers faster. Have you never heard of or witnessed people that turn off their car stereo when they need to drive backwards?
- katbyte 5y ago
  Different people are different? I can focus and be productive while watching tv shows or listening to music - but I frequently miss things in the show (which I’m ok with), and I know people who just can’t even have it on nearby without it distracting them from the task.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    That's half my point, yes. Plus the fact that many many people probably just claim it helps them concentrate because it helps them drown out worse distractions. If these other distractions didn't exist, the music however would make it worse. Unfortunately though you can also get used to a certain noise floor though and if that noise floor is gone, that's uncomfortable in its own right. If you've never been, try to find one of those complete silence rooms where even your footsteps 'disappear'. It's deafening. Your TV example I think shows some of this very nicely. You are able to drown out the TV in your head but you aren't able to actually multitask. If you were, you'd know what went on in the show and also get your task done productively. Unless the TV itself drowns out other more distracting things, just not having the TV on would probably be better for concentration. YMMV in case you are so used to all the noise that you need "something there" because otherwise you get say tinnitus. I do the TV thing too sometimes but inadvertently. I watch TV, am a little bored perhaps and start say reading HN and at some point notice that the show is over. I totally drowned out the show.
foobiekr 5y ago
In my experience, music and noise generators help, but silence (and a clean desk, both literally and in terms of visual distraction) helps more. Music, to me, seems to be the perfumed room deodorizer of noisy environments - it drowns out something that’s a problem rather than lending concentration. I understand why people use it in open workspaces. When running or exercising music is great because it distracts the conscious mind and lets you avoid getting lost in thought. I think this is the same task it serves when, for example, coding. But hard tasks require that otherwise distracted mind and that’s where it falls apart. But obviously YMMV.
lmilcin 5y ago
> This was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? I guess it's time to throw out my headphones... Not so fast. Actually, listening can help you focus IF it helps you block some other distraction AND you choose something that you can stop focusing on. When I worked at the office I used headphones whenever I wanted to block off chatter around me. I also have tinnitus -- light music helps me mask it so it stops being distracting.
passivate 5y ago
I tend to be skeptical of most studies that come out of psychology. Over half of them seem to be junk - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 That's not to say other areas are better by default. There is just a lot of junk science out there. "Study says X" is meaningless to me personally. "Study X was reproduced by A, B, C" is something I'd take notice of.
yboris 5y ago
I suspect "music" means different things for people. Any time I have vocals / lyrics in music, it drags my attention away - so I only listen to non-vocal (in my case electronic) music.
- hinkley 5y ago
  When this has come up before there are always a couple people who say they can't listen to music in a language they know, but listening to another language doesn't bother them. For me, and one of the reasons I HATE open office plans, I cannot focus if I can almost hear a conversation. Speaking at a normal tone would be far less distracting. Similarly, someone is speaking in a language with too many borrow words in English. Overhearing Germanic languages in particular, my brain keeps trying to treat it like an English speaker with mush-mouth or having a stroke. If I just squeeze my brain harder with my furrowed brow, it will all make sense.
- mlok 5y ago
  An alternative may be to listen to songs in a language you don't understand.
Blikkentrekker 5y ago
> I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for a while now. However, this part of the article was novel: There is no actual definition of what would constitute a “task” here and that alone makes all of it quite dubious in the way you outline and any other things in how it's often extrapolated.
slightwinder 5y ago
> > Other studies suggest that people who frequently “media multitask” (like listening to music while checking email or scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more distracted and less able to focus their attention even when they’re performing only one task. > > This was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? I guess it's time to throw out my headphones... The part about Movies and Social media makes sense. They are both "heavy" tasks, so they each have their demand. But Music? I would say it depends on the music. Some is distracting, some not. There is optimized music for concentration, usually found in video games. But there is also "heavy" music that demands your attention, IMHO usually those with lyrics, especially inspirational lyrics. I'm curious whether they checked the type of music in those studies.
marcosdumay 5y ago
> Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? All that phrase means is that an habit of listening to music while you do something is correlated with lessen focus while not listening to music. There's no causality there, and there's nothing about how deep is the focus while listening to music.
yumaikas 5y ago
I'd be very heavily interested in how much things like ADHD affects that media-multitasking bit.
skeeter2020 5y ago
>> like listening to music while checking email or scrolling through social media while watching a movie These are definitely not all same, unless you're literally just spinning the mouse wheel like a fidget spinner or watching a Fast & Furious movie. Even more complex music isn't the same as ambient or generic background music.
deleted 5y ago
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hinkley 5y ago
I think they also need to control for a lot of different elements here that they probably haven't in their subject group and methods. Including neurodivergence, but also how engaging the task is. It's not uncommon to hear claims from neurodivergent people about achieving optimal stimulation levels to perform a task. That can be increasing stimulation with music or motion, or decreasing it by blocking out sound with ear plugs. I've seen these play out and it seems to work. I think it's also safe to assume that someone wearing noise cancelling headphones is swapping one set of sounds for a quieter or at least less distracting one. If in fact they aren't just tuning people out by wearing headphones and not playing anything. And even neurotypical people can maintain throughput on a boring task by accompanying it to music. Laborers and militia just being the most obvious in media. I've talked to a couple of neurodivergent people who admit to "singing" a song in their head while working. Just because you don't hear the music, doesn't mean there's no music.
fxtentacle 5y ago
I find that music with lyrics is almost as distracting as people trying to talk to me. But music without lyrics is great to keep me awake. So I guess estimating the true effect of music on productivity will have a lot of variables that need to be accounted for.
p410n3 5y ago
What is "listening" to music though. I remember multiple instances where I put on a Spotify playlist or an album, and went into full-focus for 2hrs, only to realize that I disabled looping and I have actually not heard any music for half the time at least.
joe_the_user 5y ago
"I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for a while now" But what is a task? You emphasize the term and I have a general concept of what a task is in work and other contexts. But that seems too fluid to make broad statements about human behavior - even with studies combining two activities. How do we know one person's doing a task isn't another person's multitasking? It's intuitively plausible that two activities logically will be somewhat harder than doing each in sequence. But are all such combinations identical? A lot of challenging activities do involve the combination of subtasks - firefighters might break into a building looking for survivors while monitoring the situation of the building for safety. Just about any video involves satisfying multiple constraint simulateously, if they didn't, they'd be boring, etc.
MarkLowenstein 5y ago
I find that various white-ish noise sources help me a lot. I've tried everything down to "10 hours of baby crying" [1]. My favorite lately is the La Palma volcano live-streams. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7pj3IHcQw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7pj3IHcQw8
scollet 5y ago
That is interesting. There was a time in my life (when I owned a desktop) that I would listen to music, play a livestream, play a video game cooperatively, and voice chat with my cooperative partner. It was the perfect stimulation that would have me focused deeply on the conversation as the gameplay was the topic du jour. It came second-nature.
dilyevsky 5y ago
Try playing chess rapid/blitz while listening to music or having any background noises whatsoever - the rating drop is instant for me.
tacotacotaco 5y ago
Years ago I read a story from a new animator studying with one of the "Nine Old Men" from Disney, considered to be masters of animation. The student asked his teacher what music he listens to while he animates. The teacher roars back something like, 'I'm not smart enough to do two things at the same time!' Unfortunately I cannot locate the book with this story to get the exact quote. I've told this story to numerous people over the years and every last one of them dismissed it. 'I'm different' or 'actually I'm more focused when I listen to music.' Because additional sensory stimulus somehow allows your brain to dedicate more resources to your primary focus? We are so sure that we are achieving our full potential.
- tacotacotaco 5y ago
  Found it. From The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It is so important that it's lesson one! Abridged: Unplug! Take off your head phones! .... Close the door. Like many artists, I had the habit of listening to classical music or jazz while working. On one of my first visits to Milt Kahl I innocently asked: "Milt, Do you ever listen to classical music while you're working?" "[Expletives]...! I'm not smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time!" Since it came from a genius, this made quite an impression on me. After this I learnt to face the silence and think before swirling my pencil around. My animation improved right away. This has been the case with many artists when I've passed this wisdom along. .... They were even more surprised at the startling improvement in their work. [Image of artist with shirt that reads, "animation is concentration"]

by fouric 5y ago

Pokepokalypse 5y ago

Media multitasking is great. Tragic though, for advertisers.

3pt14159 5y ago

No study will convince me about music and my personal ability to focus. It needs to be the right music (Emancipator, Nicola Cruz, etc) but I can write 2000 to 5000 lines of high quality, tested code with the right song on repeat for the day and I know its the same for many others.

sg47 5y ago
I listen to Bach or Beethoven when I need to really focus. Works wonders. I use it sparingly so that I don't get bored.
- dave78 5y ago
  I used to find that listening to music without lyrics (classical, movie themes, etc.) did it. Lately though I just listen to a local radio station that plays music I like. I think I'm convinced that the difference is how well I know the music - listening to the radio is all songs that I've heard hundreds of times, so I don't think I'm subconsciously spending effort listening to the lyrics since I know them already?
  - 988747 5y ago
    For me my poor English becomes an advantage here - I can listen to rock music and completely ignore lyrics, if they are in English and I don't deliberately focus on them. But if the radio starts playing something in my own language then it becomes distracting, even if I heard the song hundreds times before.
idontwantthis 5y ago
I just started getting into 20th century Italian film soundtracks for coding. I don't know why, but it's doing wonders for me.
- prancer_or_vix 5y ago
  Suggestions? Where do you find them?
  - idontwantthis 5y ago
    On Spotify. Piero Umiliani is my favorite so far.
dboreham 5y ago
Trance Techno all the way for coding.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  I find techno too engaging most of the time. Progressive and trance are my usual white noise for work
FalconSensei 5y ago
> with the right song on repeat for the day that's the key. You are possibly using 'the right song' to isolate yourself, so that helps you concentrate. The fact that it's on repeat also makes you don't pay much attention to it anymore. But try to listen to 'the wrong song', or worse 'the wrong new song', and it's probably going to have some effect. I mostly listen to 'concentration music' and lo-fi without vocals. Put something more complex and with lyrics...
fouric 5y ago
Two counter-points: First, the point of a study is to be generalizeable - that is, to apply to as many people as possible, usually other than oneself. If a particular technique applies to you, that's great! However, most people aren't you. Starting with a known general principle/technique (most people can't multitask) will, on average, put you in a better position than randomly picking someone's anecdotal evidence. Second, there are many documented cases where self-assessment of one's own traits or capabilities is inaccurate. Performance while cognitively impaired (alcohol & sleep deprivation), assessment of skill as a novice (Dunning-Kruger), and the ability to multitask are all well-known cases of it, with many more lesser known (e.g. whether one is a "visual" or "verbal" learner[1]) - so, you should be wary about having too much self-confidence in your own capabilities, especially for something as poorly-understood as software engineering. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  > First, the point of a study is to be generalizeable That's why I specified myself. I completely understand the difference between generalizable results and individual results. > many documented cases where self-assessment of one's own traits or capabilities is inaccurate I completely understand that self-assessment is flawed, but there is also something to understanding oneself and trusting a self-assessment that is born out over decades of experience. I have never even come close to being as productive as I can be with the right musical piece and sharing this insight with others may prompt further research that sheds new nuance on the topic.

jklinger410 5y ago

Sorry, there is no way something like Trance music is less distracting than the background noise of real life. Just seems absurd to me.

kdmccormick 5y ago
%s/less/more?
hosh 5y ago
People have different ways their brain is wired. What’s absurd for you doesn’t make it a good test for universal experience. Trance is distracting for me, but melodic progression works well for me, and sometimes vocal chillout trance. I still have to process random stuff with background noise from an urban setting, even on one of those noise generators. Back when I was living in a more rural setting, the song birds, the wind between the trees, the rain makes for something that is easier for me to focus. That is what works for me. My wife has difficulty concentrating without Netflix in the background.
- jklinger410 5y ago
  I just feel like the practicality of it is silly. Music doesn't help you focus, compared to what? Pure silence? Music helps me focus more than say, a noisy coffee shop.
II2II 5y ago
Given how many people are saying that they need music to concentrate, I was thinking something along the same lines and realized that listening to music doesn't necessarily contradict the study. It may simply be a case of people using music to pull their attention back to the task at hand in cases where the environment would pull their attention away.
sureglymop 5y ago
As someone with ADHD, the background noise of real life is really distracting to me. I need noise cancellation headphones which play no sound to really deeply focus.

kenjackson 5y ago

It seems like this would also be task dependent. I've read other studies that listening to music while running helps people run longer, as an example. I know when I (used to) lift weights -- having the right music was a huge motivational factor for heavy lifts. For activities that require more intellectual attention, the articles assertion would be accurate to me personally.

QuercusMax 5y ago

In my personal experience, listening to music is fine (and helps keep me on task while waiting for builds and tests and such) when I'm working on well-understood bits. But if there's something novel or complicated, I have to turn it off or else I just can't get into the right frame of mind.

pdmccormick 5y ago
This reflects my experience as well. When I more or less know what I’m doing (where my typing is essentially the rate limiting step), playing familiar music helps me to focus, but when I really need to stop and think about what I’m trying to accomplish, I prefer as much silence as possible (I’ll even switch from headphones to large hearing protection earmuffs, the kind you should wear if you’re working with heavy equipment).
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I will build on it. Even type of music may make a difference in your mental state. Soothing background piano music may actually help your focus, while lyric heavy cadence of note distractions will do anything but since it is virtually designed for a distraction.
- burnished 5y ago
  I don't think you can make that kind of broad pronouncement here, lest your next step be to play classical music at plants to demonstrate some kind of preconceived superiority right? For me it feels more about familiarity. If I already have the lyrics memorized then it does not feel distracting whereas unfamiliar music can draw my focus.
- spfzero 5y ago
  Anything with Lyrics wrecks my concentration. Somehow my mind just can't stop tracking speech. Instrumental is OK, but silence is too. I know lots of people though who must have music on, or they simply cannot concentrate. For them, it might be that the music gives the mind something to hold on to, kind of a rail to help stay on track, and in the absence of that, their mind would wander farther afield.

dboreham 5y ago

For me music is quite different than speech. Background music helps focus. Background speech kills it. Basically my brain tracks one or other source. Either I follow the podcast that's playing, and totally ignore the work task, or vice-versa.

ScoobleDoodle 5y ago

I wonder if it comes down to the intentional, sustained focus of ones attention? Or how does an open office compare to listening to music? For me I sometimes use music to mollify ruminative thoughts or feelings that intrude and distract me. Which results in a net increase in focus. Similar for the din of the open office. When I need deep thinking time both background noise and music are too interruptive or distracting and I need full silence. But I don’t require that level of focus all the time.

smoldesu 5y ago

I'm one of the worst when it comes to media multitasking, I actually watch uncut full-length stream archives at my own leisure alongside podcasts and whatever new music is out. A lot of it is knowing when to listen, not what. It's a lot easier to focus when you designate the music for work time, the podcasts for transit, and the streams for laundry-folding. I found it very liberating when I realized that I could really consume whatever media I wanted, as long as I made sure to fill the appropriate times with things I like.

anaphor 5y ago

I find that I can focus better if I listen to a single track on repeat (I've done it literally for hours). The repetition helps for some reason because you're not surprised.

anaphor 5y ago
And if you enjoy piano, there's some music specially created for this purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations

tharkun__ 5y ago

Not novel to me personally at all but I know that other people claim (perhaps rightfully so) that music helps them concentrate. I can't. Especially not with repetitive, melodic music like other siblings say helps them. That's an absolute killer as I starts repeating the melody in my head. Potentially even after I shut the music itself off. My suspicion is that many people have too many other distractions and music helps them because it's less distracting than the other things. Some people say white noise, such as from an AC helps them sleep. It drives me crazy and I can't fall asleep at all. It does beat a busy street with cars zooming by, revving, honking etc. Where music can help if there's a mundane repetitive task I need to just get done, because automating it does not make sense at that point. Certain music helps. Allegedly farmers use the same technique to make strawberry pickers faster. Have you never heard of or witnessed people that turn off their car stereo when they need to drive backwards?

katbyte 5y ago
Different people are different? I can focus and be productive while watching tv shows or listening to music - but I frequently miss things in the show (which I’m ok with), and I know people who just can’t even have it on nearby without it distracting them from the task.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  That's half my point, yes. Plus the fact that many many people probably just claim it helps them concentrate because it helps them drown out worse distractions. If these other distractions didn't exist, the music however would make it worse. Unfortunately though you can also get used to a certain noise floor though and if that noise floor is gone, that's uncomfortable in its own right. If you've never been, try to find one of those complete silence rooms where even your footsteps 'disappear'. It's deafening. Your TV example I think shows some of this very nicely. You are able to drown out the TV in your head but you aren't able to actually multitask. If you were, you'd know what went on in the show and also get your task done productively. Unless the TV itself drowns out other more distracting things, just not having the TV on would probably be better for concentration. YMMV in case you are so used to all the noise that you need "something there" because otherwise you get say tinnitus. I do the TV thing too sometimes but inadvertently. I watch TV, am a little bored perhaps and start say reading HN and at some point notice that the show is over. I totally drowned out the show.

foobiekr 5y ago

In my experience, music and noise generators help, but silence (and a clean desk, both literally and in terms of visual distraction) helps more. Music, to me, seems to be the perfumed room deodorizer of noisy environments - it drowns out something that’s a problem rather than lending concentration. I understand why people use it in open workspaces. When running or exercising music is great because it distracts the conscious mind and lets you avoid getting lost in thought. I think this is the same task it serves when, for example, coding. But hard tasks require that otherwise distracted mind and that’s where it falls apart. But obviously YMMV.

lmilcin 5y ago

> This was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? I guess it's time to throw out my headphones... Not so fast. Actually, listening can help you focus IF it helps you block some other distraction AND you choose something that you can stop focusing on. When I worked at the office I used headphones whenever I wanted to block off chatter around me. I also have tinnitus -- light music helps me mask it so it stops being distracting.

passivate 5y ago

I tend to be skeptical of most studies that come out of psychology. Over half of them seem to be junk - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248 That's not to say other areas are better by default. There is just a lot of junk science out there. "Study says X" is meaningless to me personally. "Study X was reproduced by A, B, C" is something I'd take notice of.

yboris 5y ago

I suspect "music" means different things for people. Any time I have vocals / lyrics in music, it drags my attention away - so I only listen to non-vocal (in my case electronic) music.

hinkley 5y ago
When this has come up before there are always a couple people who say they can't listen to music in a language they know, but listening to another language doesn't bother them. For me, and one of the reasons I HATE open office plans, I cannot focus if I can almost hear a conversation. Speaking at a normal tone would be far less distracting. Similarly, someone is speaking in a language with too many borrow words in English. Overhearing Germanic languages in particular, my brain keeps trying to treat it like an English speaker with mush-mouth or having a stroke. If I just squeeze my brain harder with my furrowed brow, it will all make sense.
mlok 5y ago
An alternative may be to listen to songs in a language you don't understand.

Blikkentrekker 5y ago

> I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for a while now. However, this part of the article was novel: There is no actual definition of what would constitute a “task” here and that alone makes all of it quite dubious in the way you outline and any other things in how it's often extrapolated.

slightwinder 5y ago

> > Other studies suggest that people who frequently “media multitask” (like listening to music while checking email or scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more distracted and less able to focus their attention even when they’re performing only one task. > > This was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? I guess it's time to throw out my headphones... The part about Movies and Social media makes sense. They are both "heavy" tasks, so they each have their demand. But Music? I would say it depends on the music. Some is distracting, some not. There is optimized music for concentration, usually found in video games. But there is also "heavy" music that demands your attention, IMHO usually those with lyrics, especially inspirational lyrics. I'm curious whether they checked the type of music in those studies.

marcosdumay 5y ago

> Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? All that phrase means is that an habit of listening to music while you do something is correlated with lessen focus while not listening to music. There's no causality there, and there's nothing about how deep is the focus while listening to music.

yumaikas 5y ago

I'd be very heavily interested in how much things like ADHD affects that media-multitasking bit.

skeeter2020 5y ago

>> like listening to music while checking email or scrolling through social media while watching a movie These are definitely not all same, unless you're literally just spinning the mouse wheel like a fidget spinner or watching a Fast & Furious movie. Even more complex music isn't the same as ambient or generic background music.

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hinkley 5y ago

I think they also need to control for a lot of different elements here that they probably haven't in their subject group and methods. Including neurodivergence, but also how engaging the task is. It's not uncommon to hear claims from neurodivergent people about achieving optimal stimulation levels to perform a task. That can be increasing stimulation with music or motion, or decreasing it by blocking out sound with ear plugs. I've seen these play out and it seems to work. I think it's also safe to assume that someone wearing noise cancelling headphones is swapping one set of sounds for a quieter or at least less distracting one. If in fact they aren't just tuning people out by wearing headphones and not playing anything. And even neurotypical people can maintain throughput on a boring task by accompanying it to music. Laborers and militia just being the most obvious in media. I've talked to a couple of neurodivergent people who admit to "singing" a song in their head while working. Just because you don't hear the music, doesn't mean there's no music.

fxtentacle 5y ago

I find that music with lyrics is almost as distracting as people trying to talk to me. But music without lyrics is great to keep me awake. So I guess estimating the true effect of music on productivity will have a lot of variables that need to be accounted for.

p410n3 5y ago

What is "listening" to music though. I remember multiple instances where I put on a Spotify playlist or an album, and went into full-focus for 2hrs, only to realize that I disabled looping and I have actually not heard any music for half the time at least.

joe_the_user 5y ago

"I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for a while now" But what is a task? You emphasize the term and I have a general concept of what a task is in work and other contexts. But that seems too fluid to make broad statements about human behavior - even with studies combining two activities. How do we know one person's doing a task isn't another person's multitasking? It's intuitively plausible that two activities logically will be somewhat harder than doing each in sequence. But are all such combinations identical? A lot of challenging activities do involve the combination of subtasks - firefighters might break into a building looking for survivors while monitoring the situation of the building for safety. Just about any video involves satisfying multiple constraint simulateously, if they didn't, they'd be boring, etc.

MarkLowenstein 5y ago

I find that various white-ish noise sources help me a lot. I've tried everything down to "10 hours of baby crying" [1]. My favorite lately is the La Palma volcano live-streams. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7pj3IHcQw8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7pj3IHcQw8

scollet 5y ago

That is interesting. There was a time in my life (when I owned a desktop) that I would listen to music, play a livestream, play a video game cooperatively, and voice chat with my cooperative partner. It was the perfect stimulation that would have me focused deeply on the conversation as the gameplay was the topic du jour. It came second-nature.

dilyevsky 5y ago

Try playing chess rapid/blitz while listening to music or having any background noises whatsoever - the rating drop is instant for me.

tacotacotaco 5y ago

Years ago I read a story from a new animator studying with one of the "Nine Old Men" from Disney, considered to be masters of animation. The student asked his teacher what music he listens to while he animates. The teacher roars back something like, 'I'm not smart enough to do two things at the same time!' Unfortunately I cannot locate the book with this story to get the exact quote. I've told this story to numerous people over the years and every last one of them dismissed it. 'I'm different' or 'actually I'm more focused when I listen to music.' Because additional sensory stimulus somehow allows your brain to dedicate more resources to your primary focus? We are so sure that we are achieving our full potential.

tacotacotaco 5y ago
Found it. From The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. It is so important that it's lesson one! Abridged: Unplug! Take off your head phones! .... Close the door. Like many artists, I had the habit of listening to classical music or jazz while working. On one of my first visits to Milt Kahl I innocently asked: "Milt, Do you ever listen to classical music while you're working?" "[Expletives]...! I'm not smart enough to think of more than one thing at a time!" Since it came from a genius, this made quite an impression on me. After this I learnt to face the silence and think before swirling my pencil around. My animation improved right away. This has been the case with many artists when I've passed this wisdom along. .... They were even more surprised at the startling improvement in their work. [Image of artist with shirt that reads, "animation is concentration"]