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Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

I often find listening to music while I work increases my focus and productivity.

Have they done comparison of attention with phone held up to ear and hands free? Seems like hands free can simulate talking to a passenger, which is shown to not be as distracting. But I'm thinking the distraction from a phone may come from the anxiety of knowing you have to a) hang up, b) don't want to keep the person on the other line waiting so you attend to them more.

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Music has been found to have some deleterious effects on productivity.

via Eliezer Yudkowsky, since I can't find the study itself right now: "I don't listen to music while working, because of studies showing that, e.g., programmers listening to music are equally competent at implementing a given algorithm, but much less likely to notice that the algorithm's output is always equal to its input."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/16d/working_mantras/

Actually I'd like to add that this only works if I'm in the mood for it. But I feel the reason it increases productivity is because it keeps myself from thinking and finding other distracting things to do. The music I guess is a less distracting distraction. Obviously it may have varying effects depending on the person, and I have no doubt that for a person who has no problem focusing, music, unless classical, would probably have a deleterious effect.

From the article : The problem does not derive from using a hand to hold the phone, but the diversion of attention to the conversation.

Which doesn't necessarily contradict with the high score of the conversing couple. I think that they have a wider peripheral field than one person and they will pick up visual clues from one another - glancing &c. - where the person glancing (or whatever) perhaps didn't even notice.

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