
Ask HN: How would you manage listening to music while reading books? - omarsamfirst
As the title saying, does listening to music while reading books or just taking any informational queues really affects one&#x27;s mind in the process of skill acquisition? Does it have a tremendous negative return to one&#x27;s mind and longterm memory?
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informatimago
You have to distinguish instrumental music from vocal music and songs.

Listening instrumental music and reading should use different parts of the
brain, is it should be compatible.

However, what will occur memory wise, is that that music will be associated
with what you're reading. So you will remember that music when you'll remember
or read that text again, and you'll remember that text when you'll listen to
that music again.

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mcfrankline
Not an expert on Cognition or anything.

This only works very well with novels. When i was younger, i made a quite
terrible habit out of this. I read the entire Wheel of Times Series with "He
lives in you(Diana Ross version). It got so bad, i couldn't read any Wheel of
Time book without playing that. I read the initial Mistborn set with Viva
Forever etc etc. I put a stop to it a few years ago.

What you have to realize is that, this works with only soft reading when you
don't really need much "brain power" to process what you're reading. Playing
epic music while reading Epic fantasy helps with the visualization process and
scene buildup.

I don't see how anyone is going to retain long term memory playing Viva
Forever while reading Donald Knuth's TAOCP but it's just MO. If you want a
more indepth look at the topic, you should try out Barbara Oakley's "A mind
for numbers". Touches briefly on these kinds of background distraction while
reading/learning.

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omarsamfirst
Somehow I've tried that with just one novel, but Im still curious how other
personality manages to read while in autopilot listening to music in terms of
deep learning.? Maybe, it really differs for everyone?

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eswat
This only works for me in certain situations and I’m not sure why.

If I’m in a coffeeshop and there’s a hum of noise I want to drown I’ll listen
to some music. AFAIK I have no problems focusing or collating the text while
doing this.

But if I’m at home, where there’s no noise other than occasional traffic, and
try to listen to music, I tend to lose focus and seek to multitask with
something else. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m thinking it’s because my mind is looking for a mellow state to get into
while reading a book. The music in the coffeeshop example ends up just being
whitenoise but becomes more of a conscious burden when I’m already in a quiet
environment. This behaviour is also very different if I program, where
listenin to music always seems to put me in a the right state.

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omarsamfirst
I kinda feel that state every once in awhile, maybe there are just particular
moment in time where brain can interpret all those chunks of information
together with active music playing on the side.

