Poll: Your preferred music for working?

Post by kittxkat » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:00 PM UTC

billybob wrote: post #15

rmccue wrote: post #5

Personally, it's whatever I can listen to that I can't sing along to. That can either be something purely instrumental (most of Pendulum's songs, e.g.), something in a different language (Sigur Ros), or mashups (Girl Talk).

This. I program, which means using words (naming variables and methods, etc). If a song has words I can understand, it seems to distract the language part of my brain too much. So instrumental music works best for me. Silence is the very best thing, but music is better than background conversation.

Post by dpkendal » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:13 PM UTC

mva wrote: post #12

haha, no eletronic music in the list? Silly Americans ;-) I vote for minimal techno

Post by toyg » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:26 PM UTC

wladimir wrote: post #23

toyg wrote: post #9

I subscribe to the view that music hinders concentration more than it favours it. Your brain is forced to multitask, which is inherently more difficult than concentrating on one line of thought. However, I have seen it working in a pavlovian way, signaling to the brain that "it's time to work". This can be useful when conditioning people who struggle to concentrate for long periods.

The problem is that in many cases you have to choose between assorted office/home background noises or music. In which case music (at least, known and predictable music) probably hinders concentration least.

Post by ard0r » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:41 PM UTC

Post by fratido » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 1:48 PM UTC

ard0r wrote: post #37

Recently I've been tuning in to rainymood.com for some background noise to drown out the chaos where I work. It's about a 45 minute track of a thunderstorm. Edit: fixed link, thanks for the correction.