nickernst comments on Working Mantras - Less Wrong
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This is absolutely true. I'm a little shocked at how many programmers and other 'mind-workers' (students are especially bad at this) think that putting on some music is helpful, or neutral. It's neither; even classical music or chants hurt.
(I have no studies handy for this, but I've tried music with Mnemosyne, Gbrainy, and Dual N-back, and in all 3 and all the sessions, my statistical performance was hurt to a greater or less extent.)
I often need to start some work with music, because I constantly have an internal jukebox running. A lot of people listen to music to fuel that narrative illusion, which gives them motivation, and some do so to block out more distracting noise, as conchis mentioned. Mine is a variant on the latter, so I just get something with low information content stuck in my head before sitting down for serious work.
(I make an exception in certain stages of writing fiction, since I often soundtrack scenes as I create them, or even create scenes that fit the melody.)
Yep. Sometimes very distracting, as I do remixes in my head ... might try pink noise and see how that goes :-D