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Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design o

by jwr 13y ago

Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions. In my case, listening to music while programming has a very pronounced effect: I will spend 30 minutes crafting a function that will do something. The function will eventually work. And then I will stop listening to music and several minutes later notice that the function was entirely unnecessary, because I can make an architectural or data structure change instead and avoid writing the function altogether. This is something I am unable to do while listening to music. Once I noticed this, I started being careful: I'd listen to music while configuring routers, but not when planning and designing the changes. You get the idea. So, before you start listening to music while working, I'd advise you to check if your brain works the same way (the effect might not be exactly the same for everyone). These days I mostly use natural sounds (the Naturespace app for iOS is great) and good headphones to mute background noise.

LatvjuAvs 13y ago
Same, by working with something I am familiar with and have almost mechanical memory, no problems listening any music. That includes working on coding, but I have done it before. By creating "new/bespoke" functionality, then I have to switch off music. To read complex document and make my own judgement I need to switch off music. And same problem applies with office work noise.
throwaway183 13y ago
Music engages your creative hemisphere. Do you have a source for this?
- jwr 13y ago
  This precise statement is easily verified (just google it). But I thought I had a source for the "listening to music hampers your creative ability" statement, and I can't seem to find it. You could reason that if you engage the brain with something, then it cannot do another thing at the same time. So if you engage the areas responsible for creative thought processes, these areas will not be available for other tasks. Obviously this might not be the same for everyone, I'm just cautioning people and urging everyone to do some testing. Another example is that many people (including myself) can't dictate, for the same reasons. In my case, whenever I use dictation, I later go back and re-read what I wrote and it is always disappointing. It seems the areas of my brain that process speech are also needed to form thoughts into sentences and I just can't do both well.
  - devindotcom 13y ago
    No, I don't think you can reason that. The brain is engaged in so many simultaneous activities that it is nearly impossible to count or even categorize them. Our understanding of how we think is very poor, and the brain very robust. Moreover, brains and minds are so variable that exception is the rule. Talking about what works for you and making something that helps you (and may help others) is great, but framing it with dubious extrapolations is, I think, misleading.
  - ebiester 13y ago
    It's a matter of practice. I've seen quadriplegics do dictation just fine. You just have to train yourself to think a different way. This may not be an efficient use of your time. (I find that I can do dictation, but it takes much more effort than typing.)
- sgift 13y ago
  Peopleware, Page 78, "Creative Space": "During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests on the effects of working with music. They polled a group of computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent room, and the other half of each group in a different room equipped with earphones and a musical selection.Participants in both rooms were given a Fortran programming problem to work out from specification. To no one's surprise, participants in the two rooms performed about the same in speed and accuracy of programming. As any kid who does his arithmetic homework with the music on knows, the part of the brain required for arithmetic and related logic is unbothered by music —there's another brain center that listens to the music. The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The specification required that an output data stream be formed through a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. For example, participants had to shift each number two digits to the left and then divide by one hundred and so on, perhaps completing a dozen operations in total. Although the specification never said it, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to its input number. Some people realized this and others did not. Of those who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room." (I hope this still counts as fair-use) The whole part "Creative Space" is longer than my excerpt, so if you have access to Peopleware I recommend reading all of it.
  - dhimes 13y ago
    link: http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_12 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_12
WA 13y ago
That is a very interesting comment. I think my brain works similarly. I will pay more attention to that.
biswajitsharma 13y ago
If this is true, this is a brilliant comment!
lampe3 13y ago
my brian works the other way around: i cant be creative in silence. I need to listen to music but the music has to be without vocals. if there are vocals that i understand i to much focus on the vocals. I talked about some other Coders about that. About 20 People. The strange thing was that 7 need music that pump them up like rock or something like that. 7 need relaxing/chillout music( iam in that group) and 6 of them need silence. So i think there is no general way of what you can listen or not to.
shrikant 13y ago
I strongly agree with this. Even if it's only ambient music (mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872706), I still use it only for situations involving mundane things like documentation. Otherwise I greatly prefer silence. My SO though, is exactly the opposite. She just can't get any work done in silence, and needs relatively fast music with vocals. Although it does need to be music that she's already familiar with, otherwise she gets distracted by having to listen to the lyrics.
- dhimes 13y ago
  For me, 'white noise' - type sounds- sounds of rainfall, waves, etc. [1]- help me focus. I usually work with nothing, bu one day when working in a noisy environment I discovered that putting headphones on and listening to 'sound of nature' tracks worked very well. So well, in fact, that now when I get stuck or am just having trouble focusing for any reason I do this. [1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days.
  - quesera 13y ago
    > [1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days. Yikes. What terrible branding! "Green noise" is better, sort of honest, and obvious.
    - dhimes 13y ago
      They are engineering terms, not marketing terms. The 'colors' are to give you an analogy of sound frequencies in the spectrum: White is a blend of all (audio) frequencies with equal intensities; with pink noise, the intensity falls off at higher frequencies (1/f), and with brown noise the intensity falls off faster at higher frequencies (1/f^2).
      - oblique63 13y ago
        Yep. More detail (with samples) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise
methodin 13y ago
I am curious why something engaging your creative brain would prevent you from being creative - I would think it would do the opposite? *edit: Did you mean to say it "can kill your ability to think outside the box"?
- narcissus 13y ago
  I presume the idea is that with music engaging that portion of the brain, it's not able to work on other things that require creativity. It's essentially burning cycles that could be used for something else (and I know that's a horrible analogy). Kind of like how (for me, at least!) it's nearly impossible to effectively read and have a conversation at the same time as they are using the same language part?
ctdonath 13y ago
Depends on the music. Most pop or classical music demands your attention; you'll pay good money to go to a concert where you sit in a chair and pay attention for a prolonged period. Dance/trance/techno provides high energy as a driver of activity, not a focus; you'll go to an event (dance) to focus on the activity, with the music as background motivation. Hence I listen to trance podcasts, getting the push and occupying a busy-but-unrelated-to-programming part of my brain, while also drowning out background noise (factory, sales guy on phone at next desk, ...).
- cboppert 13y ago
  Hmm, interesting. I always liked listening to classical while studying because there are no vocals, it's very relaxing, it gets rid of the back ground noise, and I can just work away. But I can see where you'd want to listen to classical, all those ups and downs, it tells a story if you listen closely. Trance would probably work but I don't tend to like electronic music quite as much.
antimagic 13y ago
For me, the key is to not listen to new music whilst trying to do creative work. If I'm listening to an album that I have been listening to for the last 6 months, it can be the perfect foil to the incredibly noisy open plan offices I have worked in for the last 15 years of my career (managers, for goodness sake please stop making open plan offices!) Nothing beats the overriding hum of a server room though - Pure white noise at loud enough volumes that you can't talk easily with other people. Stick some ear plugs in to dampen the volume a little, and you're set to go.
kunai 13y ago
I think it depends on the type of music you listen to. For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uCL1_YcRwk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uCL1_YcRwk is always able to get me to stop thinking about other things and concentrate on the task at hand. I notice I do much, much better on exams when I listen to music (esp. jazz) while I'm studying; perhaps it blocks out all other thoughts, focusing my attention on the core material that is really required for maximum productivity and retention.
Ensorceled 13y ago
I've noticed the same effect but kind of the other way around. When I'm doing programming that requires thinking outside the box and creativity, music is ANNOYING and disruptive. I love listening to music while pixel juggling UI's or fixing bugs but as soon as I start working on a scheduling algorithm or something similar I have to turn the music off.
kps 13y ago
I prefer silence, but since the open-plan fad holds sway here, I've found rain to be the most effective substitute. The best rain track I've found so far is 57 at http://archive.org/details/Sounds_of_Nature_Collection http://archive.org/details/Sounds_of_Nature_Collection
- saidajigumi 13y ago
  Thanks for posting this. I needed a reminder of the great stuff lurking in the Internet Archive's "stacks".
- justin66 13y ago
  This is super cool. Thank you! I have to admit I don't get the joke about crickets...
- karthikv 13y ago
  This is a fantastic collection. Thanks for sharing this!
- moultano 13y ago
  Check out gordon hempton: http://soundtracker.com/ http://soundtracker.com/ He makes fantastic binaural nature recordings. The advantage of binaural recordings is that they have an amazing feeling of "space" so that you forget that you are wearing headphones and that you aren't sitting in a forest. I've made some of my own as well. https://soundcloud.com/moultano https://soundcloud.com/moultano
  - kps 13y ago
    Very nice — I'm working to your Fall Creek right now (my code's compiling). Do you use a commercial dummy head or something less costly?
    - moultano 13y ago
      I salivated over a dummy head for years until I found this: http://3diosound.com/ http://3diosound.com/ All of these were recorded with the original model of it.
kvcrawford 13y ago
Personally, I frequently switch between music and silence. Putting on some music stokes my motivation and productivity, getting me started on a task. As soon as I hit a problem that requires more brainpower, I hit pause to let myself think—just like turning down the music in your car so you can parallel park.
coldtea 13y ago
>Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions. Studies might suggest so, but irl programmings have been creating very cool stuff with music blazing from the speakers. From Notch to JZW.

by jwr 13y ago

LatvjuAvs 13y ago

Same, by working with something I am familiar with and have almost mechanical memory, no problems listening any music. That includes working on coding, but I have done it before. By creating "new/bespoke" functionality, then I have to switch off music. To read complex document and make my own judgement I need to switch off music. And same problem applies with office work noise.

throwaway183 13y ago

Music engages your creative hemisphere. Do you have a source for this?

jwr 13y ago
This precise statement is easily verified (just google it). But I thought I had a source for the "listening to music hampers your creative ability" statement, and I can't seem to find it. You could reason that if you engage the brain with something, then it cannot do another thing at the same time. So if you engage the areas responsible for creative thought processes, these areas will not be available for other tasks. Obviously this might not be the same for everyone, I'm just cautioning people and urging everyone to do some testing. Another example is that many people (including myself) can't dictate, for the same reasons. In my case, whenever I use dictation, I later go back and re-read what I wrote and it is always disappointing. It seems the areas of my brain that process speech are also needed to form thoughts into sentences and I just can't do both well.
- devindotcom 13y ago
  No, I don't think you can reason that. The brain is engaged in so many simultaneous activities that it is nearly impossible to count or even categorize them. Our understanding of how we think is very poor, and the brain very robust. Moreover, brains and minds are so variable that exception is the rule. Talking about what works for you and making something that helps you (and may help others) is great, but framing it with dubious extrapolations is, I think, misleading.
- ebiester 13y ago
  It's a matter of practice. I've seen quadriplegics do dictation just fine. You just have to train yourself to think a different way. This may not be an efficient use of your time. (I find that I can do dictation, but it takes much more effort than typing.)
sgift 13y ago
Peopleware, Page 78, "Creative Space": "During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series of tests on the effects of working with music. They polled a group of computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent room, and the other half of each group in a different room equipped with earphones and a musical selection.Participants in both rooms were given a Fortran programming problem to work out from specification. To no one's surprise, participants in the two rooms performed about the same in speed and accuracy of programming. As any kid who does his arithmetic homework with the music on knows, the part of the brain required for arithmetic and related logic is unbothered by music —there's another brain center that listens to the music. The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The specification required that an output data stream be formed through a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. For example, participants had to shift each number two digits to the left and then divide by one hundred and so on, perhaps completing a dozen operations in total. Although the specification never said it, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to its input number. Some people realized this and others did not. Of those who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room." (I hope this still counts as fair-use) The whole part "Creative Space" is longer than my excerpt, so if you have access to Peopleware I recommend reading all of it.
- dhimes 13y ago
  link: http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_12 http://javatroopers.com/Peopleware.html#Chapter_12

WA 13y ago

That is a very interesting comment. I think my brain works similarly. I will pay more attention to that.

biswajitsharma 13y ago

If this is true, this is a brilliant comment!

lampe3 13y ago

my brian works the other way around: i cant be creative in silence. I need to listen to music but the music has to be without vocals. if there are vocals that i understand i to much focus on the vocals. I talked about some other Coders about that. About 20 People. The strange thing was that 7 need music that pump them up like rock or something like that. 7 need relaxing/chillout music( iam in that group) and 6 of them need silence. So i think there is no general way of what you can listen or not to.

shrikant 13y ago

I strongly agree with this. Even if it's only ambient music (mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5872706), I still use it only for situations involving mundane things like documentation. Otherwise I greatly prefer silence. My SO though, is exactly the opposite. She just can't get any work done in silence, and needs relatively fast music with vocals. Although it does need to be music that she's already familiar with, otherwise she gets distracted by having to listen to the lyrics.

dhimes 13y ago
For me, 'white noise' - type sounds- sounds of rainfall, waves, etc. [1]- help me focus. I usually work with nothing, bu one day when working in a noisy environment I discovered that putting headphones on and listening to 'sound of nature' tracks worked very well. So well, in fact, that now when I get stuck or am just having trouble focusing for any reason I do this. [1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days.
- quesera 13y ago
  > [1] I think this is called 'brown noise' these days. Yikes. What terrible branding! "Green noise" is better, sort of honest, and obvious.
  - dhimes 13y ago
    They are engineering terms, not marketing terms. The 'colors' are to give you an analogy of sound frequencies in the spectrum: White is a blend of all (audio) frequencies with equal intensities; with pink noise, the intensity falls off at higher frequencies (1/f), and with brown noise the intensity falls off faster at higher frequencies (1/f^2).
    - oblique63 13y ago
      Yep. More detail (with samples) here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colors_of_noise

methodin 13y ago

I am curious why something engaging your creative brain would prevent you from being creative - I would think it would do the opposite? *edit: Did you mean to say it "can kill your ability to think outside the box"?

narcissus 13y ago
I presume the idea is that with music engaging that portion of the brain, it's not able to work on other things that require creativity. It's essentially burning cycles that could be used for something else (and I know that's a horrible analogy). Kind of like how (for me, at least!) it's nearly impossible to effectively read and have a conversation at the same time as they are using the same language part?

ctdonath 13y ago

Depends on the music. Most pop or classical music demands your attention; you'll pay good money to go to a concert where you sit in a chair and pay attention for a prolonged period. Dance/trance/techno provides high energy as a driver of activity, not a focus; you'll go to an event (dance) to focus on the activity, with the music as background motivation. Hence I listen to trance podcasts, getting the push and occupying a busy-but-unrelated-to-programming part of my brain, while also drowning out background noise (factory, sales guy on phone at next desk, ...).

cboppert 13y ago
Hmm, interesting. I always liked listening to classical while studying because there are no vocals, it's very relaxing, it gets rid of the back ground noise, and I can just work away. But I can see where you'd want to listen to classical, all those ups and downs, it tells a story if you listen closely. Trance would probably work but I don't tend to like electronic music quite as much.

antimagic 13y ago

For me, the key is to not listen to new music whilst trying to do creative work. If I'm listening to an album that I have been listening to for the last 6 months, it can be the perfect foil to the incredibly noisy open plan offices I have worked in for the last 15 years of my career (managers, for goodness sake please stop making open plan offices!) Nothing beats the overriding hum of a server room though - Pure white noise at loud enough volumes that you can't talk easily with other people. Stick some ear plugs in to dampen the volume a little, and you're set to go.

kunai 13y ago

I think it depends on the type of music you listen to. For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uCL1_YcRwk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uCL1_YcRwk is always able to get me to stop thinking about other things and concentrate on the task at hand. I notice I do much, much better on exams when I listen to music (esp. jazz) while I'm studying; perhaps it blocks out all other thoughts, focusing my attention on the core material that is really required for maximum productivity and retention.

Ensorceled 13y ago

I've noticed the same effect but kind of the other way around. When I'm doing programming that requires thinking outside the box and creativity, music is ANNOYING and disruptive. I love listening to music while pixel juggling UI's or fixing bugs but as soon as I start working on a scheduling algorithm or something similar I have to turn the music off.

kps 13y ago

I prefer silence, but since the open-plan fad holds sway here, I've found rain to be the most effective substitute. The best rain track I've found so far is 57 at http://archive.org/details/Sounds_of_Nature_Collection http://archive.org/details/Sounds_of_Nature_Collection

saidajigumi 13y ago
Thanks for posting this. I needed a reminder of the great stuff lurking in the Internet Archive's "stacks".
justin66 13y ago
This is super cool. Thank you! I have to admit I don't get the joke about crickets...
karthikv 13y ago
This is a fantastic collection. Thanks for sharing this!
moultano 13y ago
Check out gordon hempton: http://soundtracker.com/ http://soundtracker.com/ He makes fantastic binaural nature recordings. The advantage of binaural recordings is that they have an amazing feeling of "space" so that you forget that you are wearing headphones and that you aren't sitting in a forest. I've made some of my own as well. https://soundcloud.com/moultano https://soundcloud.com/moultano
- kps 13y ago
  Very nice — I'm working to your Fall Creek right now (my code's compiling). Do you use a commercial dummy head or something less costly?
  - moultano 13y ago
    I salivated over a dummy head for years until I found this: http://3diosound.com/ http://3diosound.com/ All of these were recorded with the original model of it.

kvcrawford 13y ago

Personally, I frequently switch between music and silence. Putting on some music stokes my motivation and productivity, getting me started on a task. As soon as I hit a problem that requires more brainpower, I hit pause to let myself think—just like turning down the music in your car so you can parallel park.

coldtea 13y ago

>Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions. Studies might suggest so, but irl programmings have been creating very cool stuff with music blazing from the speakers. From Notch to JZW.