Does Music Help You Become More Productive?

From Peopleware, which many C-level folks should be beaten over the head with:

    During the 1960s, researchers at Cornell University conducted a series
    of tests on the effects of working with music. They polled a group of
    computer science students and divided the students into two groups, those
    who liked to have music in the background while they worked (studied) and
    those who did not. Then they put half of each group together in a silent
    room, and the other half of each group in a different room equipped with
    earphones and a musical selection. Participants in both rooms were given
    a Fortran programming problem to work out from specification. To no
    one's surprise, participants in the two rooms performed about the same
    in speed and accuracy of programming. As any kid who does his arithmetic
    homework with the music on knows, the part of the brain required for
    arithmetic and related logic is unbothered by music—there's another
    brain center that listens to the music.

    The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The
    specification required that an output data stream be formed through a
    series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. For example,
    participants had to shift each number two digits to the left and then
    divide by one hundred and so on, perhaps completing a dozen operations
    in total. Although the specification never said it, the net effect of
    all the operations was that each output number was necessarily equal to
    its input number. Some people realized this and others did not. Of those
    who figured it out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.

This is a topic that has been studied since at least the 1920s, and there's easily 50 randomized experiments on it, so OP is incomplete to the point of being badly misleading. I've been trying to compile citations in http://www.gwern.net/Music%20distraction but the single best overview at the moment is "The impact of background music on adult listeners: A meta-analysis", Kampfe et al 2011 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ny6r5x32albjn3t/2011-kampfe.pdf

"Background music has been found to have beneficial, detrimental, or no effect on a variety of behavioral and psychological outcome measures. This article reports a meta-analysis that attempts to summarize the impact of background music. A global analysis shows a null effect, but a detailed examination of the studies that allow the calculation of effects sizes reveals that this null effect is most probably due to averaging out specific effects. In our analysis, the probability of detecting such specific effects was not very high as a result of the scarcity of studies that allowed the calculation of respective effect sizes. Nonetheless, we could identify several such cases: a comparison of studies that examined background music compared to no music indicates that background music disturbs the reading process, has some small detrimental effects on memory, but has a positive impact on emotional reactions and improves achievements in sports. A comparison of different types of background music reveals that the tempo of the music influences the tempo of activities that are performed while being exposed to background music. It is suggested that effort should be made to develop more specific theories about the impact of background music and to increase the methodological quality of relevant studies."

(It's worth noting that despite a lot of theorizing and a few results, there's still not a lot of evidence for personality traits mattering much, and it's definitely worth noting that there's a fairly consistent pattern of small negative mental effects even when people claim music helps.)

> If someone wants to interact with you, they will definitely find a way to get your attention

Fair enough. However, this does not account for a whole class of subtle little interactions and questions that might be inconsequential one at a time but add up in aggregate to a whole new useful body of communication.

It's when you turn to a co-worker to ask a quick question and open your mouth and then pause because you see them with headphones on, and then give up on asking the question, because the question is actually tiny.

In many many cases, that's how it should be - people deserve their focus time, and we know how much programmer distraction costs. But there is also huge value in team members being available, in the serendipitous "overheard" tidbits that often save duplicated effort, keep the team cohesive and un-siloed. In kind exchanges, not requests to RTFM.

My point being that some (not all!) periods of time deserve to be "open office hours", where people sacrifice some of their focus and invite others to bug them seemingly frivolously. That means taking off headphones and letting oneself be distracted, soliciting easy quick questions. It may seem to conflict a lot of individual productivity advice, but it can help grow the brain trust of the team as a whole.

I wish I could listen to music at work. But as I'm both an ENFP personality type and former semi-pro composer, I immediately get into the music and analyze chords, rhythm, melodies, counterpoint, filters, compressor settings, room / atmo setup and lyrics. It's fun but I can't work anymore when I listen to anything but my rain & noise montage... :)

>For activities that are not repetitive but also don’t require great creativity, music without lyrics usually works best (classical music, instrumental, electronic…). Listening to words activates the part of our brain associated with language, which may distract us if the activity we are doing involves the use of language (such as writing an article, for example).

I would agree with this. I'll typically listen to very ambient spacey music, something without strong beats or lyrics. Once I hear a person in my music it becomes frustrating. Alternately, I'll choose a few video game soundtracks, out of the belief that they're designed to be engaging without being distracting.

The research in this area is still too inconclusive to prescribe how to listen to music for productivity. Not to mention the act of "listening to music" can vary dramatically from person to person. For some it involves picking music from thousands of choices and making choices takes time and drains valuable mental resources. They start spending more time picking music than getting work done.

One has to wonder, if your goal is productivity, could it be more effective to just have a cup of coffee/tea? Maybe with some cream and sugar to help get some glucose to your brain as well?

There is a very important point missing from this: volume. Despite the decibel range being vast, you really only have three options when choosing the volume of your music in regards to how it affects your brain.

At higher volumes, music will drown your internal monologue. If you find that your brain tends to constantly bikeshed instead of being productive, louder music will probably help with this. The downside is that if you are the type of person who focuses on lyrics instead of melody, you may find yourself more easily distracted by them. Something else to consider is that music containing very loud bass (think dubstep) might actually be detrimental to focus at higher volumes.

At lower volumes, the issue with lyrics goes away, but your internal monologue persists. A counter-intuitive benefit (though usually at very low volumes), is that you tend to lose a lot of the quieter frequencies in the music, and your brain starts to process everything differently while it attempts to fill in the blanks or discern unintelligible lyrics. This can actually lead to more creative potential for some people. I can reliably recreate this on-demand, and it has greatly helped with both songwriting and programming over the years. Though, to be honest, I end up blasting death metal 99% of the time, because it's just more fun when it's loud.

Then there is the Goldilocks zone. The perfect volume for you, and you alone. It is a very small decibel range and can be very difficult to find, especially considering the drastically different audio production between albums. But if you can manage to find it, you'll notice that lyrics and dynamics don't distract you, it drowns out the monologue, and likely helps with creativity.

Source: None. This is completely anecdotal, albeit from many people.

Many people are less productive while listening to music. They get less done, but because the day feels shorter they feel more productive.

I am going to venture a guess here that the type (and volume) of music you listen to vastly affects your output productivity. I know people that write code to loud death metal. You see them hammering their fingers on the keyboard obviously in sync to the music, their feet making beats on the floor. Other people listen to altrock or whatever the kids listen to these days; I'm such an awful hipster. I feel like I can guarantee these people aren't making breakthroughs.

I cannot listen to any kind of music while programming except ambient/chillout electronic (Solar Fields, Carbon-Based Lifeforms, Sync24, Aes Dana, Asura, etc). This music has no lyrics, and most importantly gets me into flow extremely quickly and keeps me there longer than if I didn't listen to music. When I am in flow, I have personal "genius breakthroughs", full stop. If there is a benefit to working in a quiet room, I have never noticed it over the twenty years I've been programming.

Sometimes when i am lazying around and increasing my chances to miss what i have planned for i simply put on songs like "Eye of the Tiger" or "Start me up". This helps lift up my subconscious and i am back in the groove. I usually work by putting on some heavy metal, and unlike others it helps me concentrate much better. I believe it depends on person to person how one perceives the music. You need to find the right kind of music that uplifts you. Definitely melodic music or music w/o lyrics can work on certain situations (as per studies), however, if you ask me, i will tend to listen to my kind of music. So, i have 2 perspectives here: 1. When i am totally unwilling to work and yet have to work - i listen to meaningful rock songs, that lifts me up. 2. When i am already in the groove, i put on some heavy metal to continue the streak.

I don't really care. I'm GOING to listen to music while I do some of my best work, while doing my best to quickly break for necessary communications. If a team doesn't appreciate it, then I don't really belong there. The Broken Bells and Thom Yorke are my most valuable co-workers.

This is very personality dependent, which the article didn't mention (I don't think). As an INTJ music almost always is helpful, except for maybe extremely challenging tasks. However, often to see those challenging tasks in a different light, music is helpful.

Replace "listening to music" and "headphones" with "working remotely" and it makes a sound argument too:

Some companies and managers don’t like you listening to music. They argue that your headphones will isolate you from possible important interactions with others and that a person who spends their days listening to music cannot do their job well. These are not solid arguments for me. If someone wants to interact with you, they will definitely find a way to get your attention.

Something interesting, and backed by some clinical research: 'rhythmic entrainment'.

https://brainshiftradio.com/about.html

Their web app plays 2 tracks simultaneously: rhythm & ambient. Personally, I listen to 'focus' tracks constantly while working.

Focus At Will is excellent for this. The site curates music to match your timeframe for working and your goals for attention throughout the session. I'm a paying customer. https://www.focusatwill.com/

I've mentioned it a while back on a different HN post, but I used to listen to music while programming and found it both soothing and helpful, but after starting to take Provigil on a daily basis, I found that listening to music became too distracting and I had to stop.

Music help to block out other noise and distraction. Yeah it help productivity.

i like to think that music makes me more productive as a sysadmin, but it really doesn't. i'll start thinking about the song i'm listening to more than the task i'm performing. it reduces my alertness and productivity.

however, the act of simply having headphones on my head makes me a great deal more productive! the number of drive-bys i receive at my desk drops dramatically when i go into antisocial mode.