When I was in high school, my math teacher would play Mozart during tests, claiming it would help us. It would drive me crazy, and I doubt that my grades improved as a result of the distraction.
For what it's worth, I have a BMus in Piano Performance. I love music... but never as "background noise"!
But I'm a musical illiterate
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OTOH, yeah there are definitely times when I prefer peace and quiet.
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.
For people who can't listen to music: how about noise generators (e.g. https://mynoise.net/) to drown out ambient noise?
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.
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.
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.
Though I cannot listen to anything spoken word like podcasts or talk radio. Drives me absolutely nuts.
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.
I do have noise canceling headphones and I like them, but they don't really do a lot for people talking.
> we have found that the most effective music to aid prolonged periods of intense concentration tends to have a mixture of the following qualities:
Drones
Noise
Fuzz
Field recordings
Vagueness (Hypnagogia)
Textures without rhythm
Minor complex chords
Early music (Baroque, lute, harpsichord)
Very few drums or vocals
Synth arpeggios
Awesome / daunting / foreboding
Walls of reverb
However, I also suffer from an inability to get things done with people talking - I'm constantly inadvertently eavesdropping on my coworkers' conversations. I find that I have to push white noise up to uncomfortably dangerous levels to drown out conversation - your audio processing systems tolerate shockingly high SNR - but changing, musical audio like this is harder to tune out than thunderstorms or waterfalls and therefore permits me to turn down the volume.
I just wish someone would build an audio-cancelling headset, instead of the usual noise-cancelling ones that take away background noise but let voices come through clearly...
That's probably then reason. The more you know about music and music production the more it consumes resources of your brain.
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.
My Bose QC35 set is ~4 years old, on their second set of muffs and only play sound when I fly, once or twice a year.
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.
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.
Still - I can barely code or work in general without music. Not any music though, that's for sure.
Just like for the parent poster, I recommend in-ear headphones. You put them in the ears, and that's all. Listen to all the sound of no one talking and nothing playing.
Have you tried white noise instead?
Haven't been diagnosed, but attention span is pretty short.
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.
Me: Single source only, absolutely can't listen to music while trying to code or read. I have used 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.
Also, the idea of you fine tuning certain individuals out is hilarious to me. Nice job on saving your sanity!
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.
1. Get any in-ear earbuds (for noise even cheapy ones are fine, for music pick whatever type you like).
2. Get the foam tips to fit them: https://www.complyfoam.com/products/t-series/
3. Put some hearing-protection ear-muffs on top
A tiny amount of noise will make all other sounds disappear at this point.
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.
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.
Softly-spoken words in a language I do not understand seem to work.
It may be that I am just selecting for sounds that I can ignore. When I really need to concentrate I, like the OP of this thread, prefer silence, though, unlike the OP, I am not musically knowledgeable.
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.
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.
I don't think she had ADHD though so maybe it was different for her and more of a sensory thing. I just appreciate that you two are so different (in this aspect) and still able to respect and adapt to each other's differences.
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.
FTR I partially make a living as a musician, so maybe that's why?
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.
For me, I can kinda participate in a dialog when distracted, but I'm definitely not pulling my weight in such cases, so the person on the other end has to do all the work.
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!
In the noisy clusterfuck of sound our open office is, listening to music is a soothing balm.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh1Kbh5Ln8tMJ_h7IykOFkg/vid...
https://soundcloud.com/featurecast/featurecast-keep-it-comin...