
The Best Music for Productivity? Silence - artsandsci
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/the-best-music-for-productivity-silence/509948/?single_page=true
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woliveirajr
> So (...) if listening to music while working is so bad, why do so many of us
> do it? Simple: We like it, and we can’t tell it’s messing us up.

More or less. Sometimes, as the minutes tick, musing that I was enjoying
become a distraction and then a source of irritation, and I urge to turn it
off.

That's why I think the ideal solution is just to work from a quiet ambient,
including your house. Everybody sitting near to each other and making noise is
just good when you need to exchange ideas, discuss something. But being inside
your own silent bubble is better.

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maxander
It really depends on what work you're doing. Source: I forgot my headphones
today, and here I am posting on HN rather than focusing on real work.

I found out a long time ago that listening to any music at all impedes my
writing ability; whatever module of the brain is responsible for evaluating
what I'm saying is jammed by the positive evaluations of what I'm listening
to, and without aesthetic feedback one's output is lackluster at best. Code
requires a different kind of aesthetic judgement, so this doesn't necessarily
apply for programming- but there again, I concur with at least one point in
the article; music with _lyrics_ messes with my ability to code. Again, it
seems as if there's some brain module that can't handle the two demands at
once very well.

You know what music works best (IMHO) for distraction-dampening while
retaining all necessary brain functions? House. No lyrics (usually), an
energetic beat, and it constantly skirts the edge of unacceptable
repetitiveness while at the same time having a texture sufficiently complex to
(in the article's interesting phrasing) "keep you psychologically aroused."

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JBReefer
Are you sure that it's not sitting in a bullpen next to the sales guys? I know
that ducking footballs and ignoring constant shouting really make me and the
other 20 devs here more productive.

