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Do Headphones Help Or Hurt Productivity?
Hugh Pickens writes "Derek Thompson writes that there is an excellent chance you are wearing, or within arm's reach of, a pair of headphones or earbuds. To visit a modern office place is to walk into a room with a dozen songs playing simultaneously but to hear none of them. In survey after survey, office workers report with confidence that music makes us happier, better at concentrating, and more productive. But science says we're full of it, writes Thompson. 'Listening to music hurts our ability to recall other stimuli, and any pop song — loud or soft — reduces overall performance for both extroverts and introverts.' So if headphones are so bad for productivity, why do so many people at work have headphones? The answer is that personal music creates a shield both for listeners and for those walking around usm says Thompson. 'I am here, but I am separate. In a wreck of people and activity, two plastic pieces connected by a wire create an aura of privacy.' We assume that people wearing them are busy or oblivious, so now people wear them to appear busy or oblivious — even without music. Wearing soundless headphones is now a common solution to productivity blocks. 'If music evolved as a social glue for the species — as a way to make groups and keep them together — headphones allow music to be enjoyed friendlessly — as a way to savor our privacy, in heightened solitude,' concludes Thompson. 'In a crowded world, real estate is the ultimate scarce resource, and a headphone is a small invisible fence around our minds — making space, creating separation, helping us listen to ourselves.'"
"Ghetto Blaster"
or
"Boom Box"
if you prefer, cracker.
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Never been known to fail..."
I would expect
silence > music > office noise
... compared with the random office noises around you, a reliable predictable set of stimuli is easier to tune out. Music is almost white noise when contrasted with folks taking loud phone calls about medical problems, unattended phones ringing at their desks, and so on.
I do find music - especially music I like - to be distracting. Which is why I often listen to white (or brown) noise on my headphones in the office. Blocks out office noise without being distracting.
They help depending on what you listen to, but a high-bran diet will likely do more.
While working with headphones may be a bit distracting and reduce productivity I find the noises that I would hear without the headphones to be more distracting. Finding a quite workplace is not as easy as it should be.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
I know that listening to headphones makes me less productive--but it's more productive than having to listen to all the inane chatter around my cubicle along with people dropping by to talk, cell phones ringing, etc...
I'll take slightly unproductive headphones verses the really unproductive office environment...
that's why most people I know that listen to music while working/coding do not listen to pop (or vocal music in general), but to classical, trance etc. also the article says that silence is better than music in general, which is likely true, but among music and office noises (with random conversations/noises) I am sure people are more productive with music vs without
-- the cake is a lie
... but it's a lot less damaging than listening to 6 conversations among people around me. Personally I like "earplug" style headphones which block out most of the noise; then I can use very quiet music to mask the rest.
Listening to a white or pink noise may, in a noisy environment, improve concentration.
Unfortunately I work in an open concept office, so it's either headphones or listen to everything else around me, which is infinitely worse.
Ever notice how the people who decide on an open concept office usually have a door to theirs?
Robots don't need headphones.
Unfortunately I can't find any information about what sort of music they tested. For example, if someone is singing, it can be very distracting; in a way pure instrumental music isn't. Also the type of instrumental music may matter (modern or classical, slow or fast, etc.).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Besides the standard parental "You'll hurt your ears!", the main reason is that it's been obvious to me since they became popular that constant ear bud usage is antisocial, and as long as I have control over my kids, I'll do everything I can to prevent it (even if that means listening to music I can't stand being played from a stereo).
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Listening to music or Talk radio or audiobooks stops me from wasting time on the internet, and thus doing some actual work. (puts on headphones) (resumes coding)
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
...idiot MBA-wielding managers didn't keep shoving people into morale-destroying open-plan offices, they wouldn't have to wear headphones to get a modicum of privacy.
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Seems to me like they picked something random that they could measure, and are then trying to generalize it to be something that matters for work. I'm not seeing how the ability to "recall other stimuli" is a test for productivity. I would think it would be more along the lines of "generate a bunch of code."
I find that music helps me for certain things. Normally I don't listen to music at work, unless it is noisy or I just feel like it. My headphones generally sit on my desk except when I'm using them for work, like editing video.
However for some tasks, music seems to help focus me. Design type tasks would be like that. Most recent was when I ported the website for my parents store over to a new shop platform. I had to redo a lot of the HTML, redesign the layout to work with the store widgets and so on. I put on headphones, queued up music, and slammed it out in like 4 hours in the middle of the night.
I didn't need to block out noise, I was up visiting them, in their guest room, in the the middle of the night. They were sleeping, nobody was around to bother me. However the music helped focus me, helped me slam the task out.
First person shooters are another area. My friends tell me I play noticeably better when I listen to music in the background.
Consider the results of an experiment I first saw described in Peopleware (scroll down to "Creative Space"). The researchers compared performance at Fortran programming between people in quiet rooms and people in rooms with music. The good news is that performance was about the same. The bad news was:
There was a hidden wildcard. The specification required an output data stream be formed through a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. Although unspecified, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number was equal to its input number. Of those students who figured this out, the overwhelming majority came from the quiet room.
The part of your brain that listens to music is apparently also the part that notices odd things in your code, and it can't do two things at once.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
...to open plan offices; it's the only way to get work done.
I disagree with the findings. In my experience most people wear headphones to drown out the noise generated in an office environment. It doesn't take too many days of listening to your neighbor on the other side of your cube wall talk to his wife about whats for dinner or your other neighbor who loves to hum to his music before you run out and buy a pair of noise cancelling head phones. Maybe If the CEOs would try and do a little work outside of their corner windowed office with the door shut things might change.
I don't know what the article is going on about but my experience is 100% the opposite.
I play crap I like to drown out the distractions. If I played crap I did not like then it would be the distraction.
This has nothing to do with "friendlessly".
A friend of mine keeps having us synchronize play times and then she types the chorus to me in chat.
And how many chat windows does everyone here have open when they have their headphones on? There's nothing about "solitude" there. We're communicating and interacting.
But we're doing it without the background noise.
I had a co-worker who always listened to NPR through her headphones at work. I have no idea how she ever got anything done.
Like most people I know, I tend to listen to instrumental music (classical, bluegrass, whatever) when working or studying. Silence would probably be better but unfortunately I've never had a working environment where silence was an option. I'd like to find whoever came up with the concept of an open office plan, lock him inside an elevator, and then blast top 40 music at him 24/7, for his sins.
Depending on your job, being productive sometimes means being creative. Music helps. Feeling good during your work might make you like your work more. And thus more willing to go the extra mile when the need arises. Music helps.
I do turn off the music when I really need to concentrate. Whenever needed.
Now be silent, I need to concentrate on my music.
I wonder more people using headphones is also a result of the move from dedicated offices to cubicle farms. A lot of the offices I've worked in were so noisy and distracting, I've often used headphones not because I felt like listening to music, but to drown out the noise.
I've seriously considered getting a pair of ear protection headphones like an airport worker and just using those. Or noise cancellation headphones.
I think it depends on the activity. When I'm reading, I agree that music can interfere with storage and recall. However, when I'm coding / writing, music over headphones gives a big performance boost. It gives the isolation described in the article but the additional "arousal" from the music helps me get into the flow and I am significantly more productive. I have to do disagree with the OP on the interpretation of this study. Performance of recall-based concentration is not the same as performance for creative tasks. So go to the library when you want to read, but strap on those headphones when you want to get some work done.
As others have pointed out, music is probably a far better distraction than random noises that people around you are making with their discussions and what not.
What I do is to put a song on repeat. There are a bunch of songs that I have heard so many times that I don't even notice that they're playing anymore, and that allows me to concentrate on whatever it is I'm trying to figure out.
When I hear people talking or walking around or anything that I cannot control, I'm distracted because I'm trying to figure out what is causing that noise and am taken out of my "figure things out" shell.
I almost strictly listen to electronic music when writing code. Not the tuc-tuc-tuc jumpy-jumpy techno kind, but psychedelic trance, Goa or progressive trance. Anything with singing happens (if it does) when I am writing mails or have to do some non-coding (e.g. configuring) activities.
I do find music helpful with repetitive coding tasks. When I am stuck I prefer dead silence, but when you do routine stuff you did 1000 times it really helps to get the stuff done. That is when I prefer some really progressive stuff. When it is creativity time, it is goa/psy on the menu.
I also happen to wear my Bose Quiet Comfort without music from time to time. If there is noise, they are perfect cancelling it out. It does not take out speech directed to me, but works pretty OK with regular chatter, air conditioning, fans of machines, cars outside, weather (Costa Rican rain can be LOUD) and my favourite: our monthly generator test when they open up the container sized unit and run the diesel engines for 15-30 minutes.
For showing you are busy you usually put "go away" , "coding" or "write a mail instead" as an autoresponse in our internal jabber client. If they see you in headphones only emergencies warrant bothering anything else is jabber, email or our ticketing system.
I've found that any music with recognizable words is too much of a distraction. My brain gets stuck keeping along with the song instead of working on the code.
So most of my "coding music" consists of soundtracks - both film (complete Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, plus a few others) and video game (every Final Fantasy, every Zelda, and a bunch more). No words for my brain to get distracted by parsing, and no more accidentally typing in the lyrics to "Flight of Icarus" instead of actual code.
Weirdly, it only happens for words I can understand. Languages I just flat-out don't know, like German or Japanese, are fine. And any Latin mangled badly enough for me to not understand it (see: most modern songs in Latin (I'm looking at you, Uematsu - that is NOT where the emphasis goes on "interius"!)) also flies right by. I've even discovered that incomprehensibly-sung English gets ignored as well, although I simultaneously discovered that I do *not* like death metal.
A co-worker years ago wore a Walkman. He confided in me that they had no batteries in them. It allowed him to ignore the boss while he worked.
Yes, my headphones are making me less productive, at losing my shit on everyone around me.
...if you're working on something that requires you to listen to what's coming through the headphones. Examples: an audio recording of the contract or document you're reviewing, learning a foreign language, learning a new song if you're lucky enough to be employed as a musician, audio feed for a virtual meeting, etc.
But yeah, "background music", either via speaker or headphone, is otherwise usually about as conducive to productivity as leaving a television on within visual range. I think the reasons that we keep answering those surveys otherwise, is really that on at least a subconscious level we want to be paid for listening to music we like. While increasing productivity is usually beneficial to the company's bottom line, often things that decrease productivity make one's office a much more enjoyable place to be.
Generally, the office music station is set to the eighties, but occasionally it's "ABC Lounce Music" off iTunes, or the seventies, or when one of us does some particularly outstanding feat, a station of our choice. We do have personal headphones, but that's for webinars and junk that other people probably don't want or need to hear.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
A Pink Noise Generator is wonderful! ("Pink" noise is a different set of frequency bands tuned to cover up conversation. "White" noise is roughly equivalent to radio static; it sounds a bit harsh.)
When ours shuts off after hours, if I'm still at my desk, you get a weird "open" feeling when it shuts off. And, if somebody else is still there, I can clearly hear them from across the cube farm.
As for creating privacy, nonsense I say. Just try scratching your nuts "in private" or farting and see if the women in the office don't complain to the boss.
The only true test for something creating privacy is if you can drink a beer while sitting in your underwear while doing it.
I can't hear this discussion..let me take out my buds. (written listening to Alice in Chains with android and some skullcandy buds)
Silence is a state of mime.
...so I am not a passive listener. There is no such thing as "background music" for me. I can either listen to music or concentrate on the task at hand. I supposed it could be considered a curse (like perfect pitch, which I do not have, thank gods), but I cannot imagine life any other way.
The headphones just mean "leave me alone"
I frequently work with headphones on and my office door closed, and still people peek in and see the situation, then knock and insist on being let in just to engage in idle social chit-chat. Music playing through the headphones has little to no effect on this situation I've been able to observe.
...by treating it as BGM for mundane tasks?
I hate wearing headphones. They suck. I hate having to listen to something. However, the people in my work area are so fucking loud, it is just ridiculous. They have hour-long speaker phone conferences all fucking day. Sometimes they are so loud, I have difficulty listening to what is on the headphones, even at full, ear bleeding volume. No one, the people involved, nor the top management, including the CIO, understand the negative impacts, or if they do, they certainly don't care.
We have two offices currently going unused. I've begged top management to either move two of us "need quiet" people in there, or at least move the two loud fuckers who are on the speaker phone ALL FUCKING DAY to the offices. However, they refuse. Why? Because offices are for managers, and none of the people involved are managers. In the meantime, we have a low productivity environment and offices that are going unused. They've BEEN unused, since I got here - except for the 3 months that I was assigned to an office because I was doing "confidential" work. Once that project was over, I got put back in the noise infested shithole, for no reason other than "offices are for managers."
It's ridiculous. Headphones do not help. I can't wait to quit this fucking job - just as soon as it is convenient. In the meantime, I am working at 50% capacity (at best), because I can sit here for hours and not be able to concentrate enough to do any work.
On the upside - I've discovered the Alex Jones radio show and I can keep myself entertained all day.......except when it is too loud to hear, even with headphones.
When you need to concentrate, just close your door. Instant privacy and silence, and it's a clear sign to others that you're working on something and shouldn't be bothered.
Oh right, people don't get offices anymore because of the vast performance improvements from the open collaborative workspace where anyone can interrupt you at any time for any inane reason. They even interrupt you inadvertently when they are talking to coworkers
I think the reason is that, in fact, they do improve productivity in many real world work environments. Not because "listening to music" improves productivity (which, as TFA notes, it doesn't), but because it decreases productivity less than the office chatter that it often serves to mask.
Effective active noise-cancelling headphones without music would be even better, but active noise cancelling headphones that work to shut out distractions when they aren't being used to play music (etc.) are more expensive.
I use my Bluetooth headset paired with my office phone and my cell phone. I usually have music going if I am not on a call.. Takes all the surrounding distractions away and lets me concentrate on what I need to do...
Gary
Headphones became more popular in response to the "open" office BS that sprang up. Put a bunch of people together and it gets noisy. That noise is both distracting and annoying. Headphones are distracting but not annoying, so they're getting used.
I don't need them, because I'm in an old building and still have an office door. Close the door and noise goes away.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
So, how many people in open plan offices actually get to enjoy silence? What other stimuli does everyone need to be able to recall to be productive in the workplace? And what about creative jobs? I have my doubts that pure silences is always better to sir your creative juices than listening to something that inspires you.
Hell, just for programming I feel more motivated to keep pecking at the keyboard when I have a beat to move with. I won't listen to a lot of vocal stuff, but even if I have the opportunity to sit in absolute silence, I think my mind would start wandering a bit too much. Sure happens to me a lot at home when I work on hobby projects. I often have periods of music and no music at home, and I always seem to get more done with the music.
I'm usually more productive with music going, it clears the mental fog. I just use my headphones to keep from bugging others with my music (also so I don't have to filter my music to "work appropriate" songs). I usually need to hear what's going on too so I turn on the mic on my computer. If I feel like blocking out the background noise I can just mute the mic.
This is certainly not written for what I do.
I spend the whole day learning new languages and interpreting others. No headphones? Nothing gets done.
I use headphones. They're bulky, but they don't itch and fall out of your ears like those earbuds. I've got a nice pair from Sony. Clear sound, just the right size, and functional. I don't see why it matters whether or not we use headphones.
However, this conversation regards to matters concerning communication. I have no idea how many people chat to each other, but I can tell you from all of my friends, my social contact is nilch. I try calling them only to get pushed aside. I send emails that are never answered. They even close the IM window whenever I try to say my greetings
In this increasingly technological world, we have removed almost all forms of verbal communication with nonverbal or written communtication. Why write thirty pages about a product when a couple pictures along with some graphs can easily convey the message and then some? Why waste energy speaking when you can simply use a power point demonstration to give a lecture?
If they do allow headphones, then people will have to be bothered by constant shoulder tapping. If they think that productivity increases, I have to agree with them. If you are happy, then you work better. However, this is quality rather than quantity, but I won't get into that. People want to dig a niche out in a way to give themselves a sense of uniqueness. Let them have headphones? Work's not getting done anyway because people will just piddle on Facebook or WoW or something.
I've never fired a gun, but one of my coworkers at my first job gave me a pair of (what I believe are called) shooting earmuffs. They do a great job of giving me my own space to work in without damaging my hearing. If you want something more extreme, combine with earplugs.
Did anyone actually read the linked article?
Even the article doesn't support the broad conclusion. For a given test, music made performance worse. It's ridiculous to extrapolate that to any kind of real-world situation. WTF? And people here express a belief in science!
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11767/1/Will-Background-Music-Improve-Your-Concentration.html
Sad to say that we have headphones because we work in cheap space that does not shield us from noise or each other. If you had a better way to control noise, you would not need them.
Relate this to the recent article about productivity boosts due to working at home and think about it from a noise perspective. You have more ability to control noise in your own home.
You might say the headphones allow us to guard the quality of the hours we are working, so we don't have to increase their quantity.
I am not kidding, I am working from a basement because it's silent, and rarely have music on; read: maybe a few times in 2-3 months(!). It's good to read that I am actually right on this: music distracts. And if it doesn't it's because I am not hearing it; in which case it's just "audio-wallpaper".
FWIW, no I am not living with my mum. I am married, and we have 2 children.
Perl Programmer for hire
I categorize music into two major classes: "work music" and "non-work music". "Work music" is music that is suitable for work. It must not call too much attention to itself; most of my work music is instrumental, and most of it is familiar to me from having listened to it many times.
Some of my music has crazy sound effects or other avant-garde stuff that makes it unsuitable to be used as work music. Some of it is great for waking you up when you are sleepy, but far too distracting to be work music. (You might be different from me; maybe you can concentrate while rocking out to loud, hard music. I can't.)
Some of my favorite work music is "jazz fusion", jazzy music with a strong beat (the name means "fusion of jazz with rock-and-roll").
Yeah, maybe it is theoretically best to be in an acoustically quiet environment with no distractions. But my familiar work music is much less distracting than all the sounds of the people around me. And I'm in a relatively quiet office environment; I'm one of the lucky ones now.
Back when I spent a year as a temp, and I had to share a single office with one, later two, and eventually three other people? Only my music and some Sennheiser HD-280 pro headphones saved my productivity and my sanity. (Sennheiser claims 30 dB of acoustic isolation from the HD-280 pro headphones. That might be high, but they do a great job overall of blocking out background noise.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
How music affects job performance depends a whole lot on what kind of work you're doing. What you need (if anything) is much different for an engineering design job where you need to be concentrating on precise visual and logical content than for the supermarket bakery job I used to have, or driving, or reading a lot, or other things. And even though you haven't figured out that "rap" long ago became the old-school stuff that informs hip-hop, and is no longer the noise that kids are listening to today (:-), I find it extremely distracting for many kinds of work because it's highly verbal as well as percussive.
I used to live somewhere that the Grateful Dead Hour was on in the evenings when I'd be using the computer. It was usually really pleasant, but occasionally I'd notice that I'd drifted off mentally during a jam and hadn't actually typed anything in 15 minutes. Jazz can do the same thing. Pop does a lot less of that, because it's mostly intended for short-attention-span radio.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
that ambient noise raises stress because your mind is always working on filtering it out, resulting in stress. Don't ask where though, I don't remember but studies be damned, I know when I'm working if I have headphones, I'm always less distracted by nearby conversations.
My kingdom for a donkey!
I'm still wearing my headphones at work. It seems that the every noise get magnified in an office. There was this one dizzy broad that I worked with. She had these really long fingernails and all day long I would hear the clickity-click of her typing and it drove me nuts. Cellphones...stupid conversations...music blocks out all of that and I feel more productive and less irritated. So I use them.
I don't believe this to be true for many creative jobs. When I am working on a drawing or a 3D model I find I can often put myself in the zone better when I'm listening to music than when I'm not. When I have to do a task that takes a bit more effort from the left side of the brain I completely agree with the article's conclusion.
I find that hard rock, which I love to listen to in the car, tends to distract me more in the office... I have to fight the tendency to sing along. Then I discovered ambient music, and for those workplaces that have the bandwidth available for streaming music, I find that there are Shoutcast streams that work very nicely for me. And if not, I can always break out my Gregorian chant CD's.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
People claim to concentrate better because they like to work with the music on. I am sure they like it but not so sure that headphones improve productivity. However, when I am outside doing carpentry work (building hay sheds and the like), I like a radio or blaster going and I really thing my accuracy/productivity goes up. Headphones would be too much even if they were safe in that situation. With an ambient source of music/sound, I can work and be aware. With headphones, I lose a sense of where I am. Same thing happens to me in the office so I just don't use headphones. OTOH, with low walled cubes and lots of speakerphone meetings going on and other noise, headphones can be a real refuge. Perhaps noise-cancelling ear protectors would be better though.
FWIW: Another common thing I hear from people is that they are good "multi-taskers" and although some people are better than others at juggling tasks, I have yet to meet anyone whose productivity is better when they multitask than when they single-task serially. That is, when they concentrate on one task only and see it through with minimal task switching. Obviously there are realities and not everyone can single task because the jobs are not always set up that way. However, when I do my manager thing and work to remove barriers so the productive people can fly, top of my to-do list is to reduce the complexity and variety of responsibilities covered by a role.
The hard part is initially getting people to focus and not be distracted by other demands. Many IT people (myself included) are OCD / ADHD symptomatic to some extent so there can be difficulty. Incoming phone call redirection and police tape help. After a couple of weeks in the work protection program, most people show real signs of reduced anxiety and have better project task completion. I keep metrics. Single threading works.
Nice thing about OC symptoms is the obsessive part takes over when the distractions are controlled. The compulsive part is productive as well because if the environment is limited (good project management) the project person will be very thorough about covering all aspects that come his or her way.
Funny though, although telephones seem to be productivity damaging, IM is just the opposite. IM seems to hit a sweet spot for communication without being too distracting. Email is better than phones but sometimes people get caught up in message threads. Voice calls are the work of Mordac the Preventer.
IMHObservation anyways.
Feel free to disagree but I get great results. BTW, I never tell people they are bad at multitasking; I always say they are great at it but I would like to get them to focus for a purpose, temporarily.
Also, I often hear that women multitask better than men but that is not my experience. We are all bad at multitasking although in somewhat different ways. I don't publicly say this. The only thing worse would be starting a religious argument.
I work in my own office which is relatively quiet, but I can hear the raido from the production floor through the wall. Not ALL of the song, just certain pitches which manage to be the most annoying and piercing. I hardly play any music but I have a playlist that I turn on to drown out the music I find really annoying.
Without headphones I would not be able to pretend I can't hear the idiot that is trying to talk to me over my left shoulder.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
"No Headphone"
I do not wear headphone, and in my office and in my home I do not turn on the radio either
When I surf online, I do not stream any music
I carry out my work without having to listen to any "background noise", and I find that I can focus better without hearing anything that's annoying
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Thinking about how awesome batman is while you work might help or hurt productivity (depending on your job) but there's no rules against that. It just doesn't make enough of a difference to matter.
Personally I *hate* white noise generators. We had one installed in our office and now I constantly think there's a fan running, like I left the oscilloscope on or something. But I think I'm just strange, because I have some ability to tune out conversations and other non-stationary noise much more easily than a steady, constant noise.
I know I'm the odd one out and it seems like most other people in the office quite like the white noise generator, but it really does bother me pretty much every day.
:(){
I use an artificial rain storm I downloaded a few years ago from http://simplynoise.com/ . I see they have a new version.
I use headphones in the office. They have developers mixed in with everyone else, phone reps, managers, everyone but sales staff. So it can get very noisy.
I tried white noise, pink noise and brown noise, (which they also have), but all hurt my ears after a while, when using headphones. I find the artificial rainstorm does not. I put it in a repeating loop and it takes care of suppressing office noise. this is especially effective when combined with noise cancelling headphones.
I find music too distracting, whether rock, classical or something else, like Phillip Glass, Sigur Ros, etc. People do not believe me when they ask what I am bouncing around to in my chair and I say Naqoyqatsi or Edgar Meyer. But the rainstorm does not distract and does allow me to concentrate.
At least in the UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5061004/Woman-who-plays-classical-music-to-soothe-horses-told-to-get-licence.html
Rosemary Greenway has been playing passages of opera and orchestral symphonies on the radio to the animals at her stables for more than 20 years, convinced that it helps soothe them.
While not all of her staff are quite as fond of the output of Classic FM as she is, Mrs Greenway, 62, kept the radio tuned to the station religiously while mucking out because of the apparent benefits.
But she has dropped the practice after being told that she must pay a £99 annual licence fee as it constitutes a "performance".
Because her stables, the Malthouse Equestrian Centre in Bushton, Wilts, employs more than two people it is treated in the same way as shops, bars and cafés which have to apply for a licence to play the radio.
I find the most productive ambient noise to be the steady, mindless thrum of a few dozen server fans. It's like a soft cloak of white noise being thrown over your head.
A recent survey of happiness used a phone app that beeped randomly once a day or so. On the prompt the the subject would report their current activity and self-rate their happiness. Results: The most happy people were: engaging in sex (gap) People listening to music (gap) People doing other stuff. So, a very good reason for listening to music at work is that you can't have sex. Or looking upwards, you'll probably feel better, and cope with work better with the negative aspects of work if you can listen to music. You may be partially distracted but you'll feel better.
A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim. -- George Santayana
and any pop song - loud or soft - reduces overall performance for both extroverts and introverts.
So, listen to classical.
Have gnu, will travel.
For programming it depends on the task. If it's a mindless repetitive job then some music with a driving rhythm is ideal. If it requires a lot of thought then silence is probably better. There's also a difference between new and familiar music.
If you're in an open-plan area then anything is better than hearing your annoying colleagues on the phone or discussing a problem with each other - the human brain is tuned to focus on speech, which is why music may be distracting as the author claims.
Also, different people respond very differently to music and have very different emotional profiles in general. A study such as this may give an average result but that's no reason to encourage managers to ban or enforce music for everyone.
I find the more recognizable words there are or the more focus on the vocals the harder it is to tune out and use as background music. Growly metal with good drums/guitars is my favorite but I also like some electronica as well. If the task doesn't take much concentration I may switch to rock. Hip-hop is the hardest to tune out and I've heard many with the same opinion.
Note that I enjoy hip-hop it is just very much a language/vocal-centric genre much like pop and I think that is the key (for me at least).
A free pair comes with working in the Apple design-graphics lab. 50 people sitting in an open 200x200 room and no cube walls.
The privacy angle is a good point. We don't have offices any more, we don't even have cubicles. Sometimes I need to wall myself off from the guy at the desk next to me.
I have a perhaps peculiar affliction: the sound of a human being speaking or singing cuts right to the core of my processing center and disrupts any attempts at clear thought or thorough investigation. i am uniquely affected by this sound. i contend that this is not some isolated phenomena but rather directly related to millions of years of evolution training me to hear the sound of my fellow humans attempts to communicate with me.
basically, the radio drives me batty. tv is worse. all of these talking voices will be the death of anything intelligent or thought-out.
down with the excessive oppressive presence of human voices talking and singing (often selling something)
hooray for silence.
oh. did i mention that i record/produce music?
People talking about their medical issues, people talking about The Game or The Fishing, people clipping their fingernails (WTF!).
So I put on my Finnish Death Metal Polka (Finntroll, yes, better than it sounds) and go code.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I get what you mean and it's very common and trendy to describe being task focused that way, but when people that don't get what you mean read something like that they don't understand it's a metaphor and get the impression that we are all writing about it at the level of crippling mental illness where the person with the problem cannot function in a workplace or within society.
We are perpetuating the myth that people that work with computers are insane little Morlocks that are to be pitied and watched carefully. When obsessing about detail is what is needed to get the job done that does not mean the person doing it has a crippling disorder that prevents them from leading a normal life at home. Polar explorers were not called OCD despite their tasks (especially preparation for an expedition) requiring levels of obsession and attention to detail far beyond anything seen in nearly every IT workplace. We are not insane just because the job needs some focus and do it better without interruptions.
I agree with everything else (apparently studies show humans all suck at multitasking and those that appear to be able to do it are just far better at doing each of those tasks individually). The multitasking thing really hit me watching a teenager that was convinced that she could multitask well but was just doing a lot of things very badly at once. Our perceptions are often very different to what the measurements show or an outside observer can see.
An addiction is a compulsive behaviour that is reiforced by a positive physical reward.
The NEED fo music while doing other things is equivalent to the NEED to smoke cigarettes,
or drinking beer while working.
I each case the brain's function is divided between the dependency fulfillment activity
and the actual work at hand.
Other addictions include, Facebook, Crackberry, Email, IM, coffee, socializing.
Most people don't recognize thier addictive behaviours because our society has made
'official' dependencies that are officially stamped as *addictions*. This does not make
the others any less so.
To get to the point, headphones do not contribute to effective work habits. Having said this
it's probably not anymore efficient to have a high;y addicted music user freaking out due to
lack of endorphines.
I work in a software development environment that embraces Agile principles. We wear multiple hats. We operate transparently. We communicate with each other, frequently.
But sometimes, when I need to go into the Code Zone and focus on getting shit done, I need to operate without the possibility of my train of thought being derailed. When that happens, I put on my headphones and I queue up a playlist I've listened to a dozen times before.
The headphones and the music drown out the background distractions. Since I'm overly familiar with the music, I don't listen to it with my conscious mind. But the yammering little goblin in the back of my brain eats that shit up. And while he's pacified, I can build immense structures of pure logic in the forefront of my consciousness and go about the business of translating those glorious edifices into executable symbolic logic.
And while my subconscious is busy doing karaoke with the Barenaked Ladies or Neil Diamond or whatever else I chose to "listen" to, other people know (or at least can pretend) that if I don't respond to whatever they're yammering on about at any given moment, it's because I just didn't hear them.
I'm just guessing here, but I'd expect the "science" was testing with auditory stimuli designed to engage the conscious mind, whereas those of us who use headphones and music as an important shield specifically choose to use music that we don't actually have to listen to.
I didn't read TFA. Often I do, but for this one I don't think I have to. I know that if I need to focus on getting certain types of work done, you can either give me a private quiet space to do it in and leave me the fuck alone, or you can respect the headphones and leave me the fuck alone. The actual headphones and whatever may or may not be piped through them is irrelevant.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
here is the shit i block out
"oh my god, and he did not even call me back, and i waited two hours. i dont play that. i dont know what im going to do. i mean, like, if it was his mother or something thats one thing, but to call me like that. and heres the other thing, we went to subway and i asked for bread, and you know, i like the flat bread, because im watching my carbs, and he just went ahead and.."
"yeah. well, you know, thats not what they told me last week, i mean, you can check with them, but last week they said we needed the x stroke form unless it was filed before april 28, now, was it? let me check the date on that. ok see here? april 27. so that means its 24 hours before the cutoff, so that means we need to have the other form, the y form. not the x form. which is what you have there. you see? whoever did this fucked it all up and now we have to fix it. "
"you feel me? i was all up in her grill talking about how she need to step off. this is my house, you dont come into my house and start all that mess. with my boy. i dont care if she is his girlfriend or not, there are rules, and then the are rules. she doesnt even have a job, and she came in here talking all this mess about he owes me this, he owes me that. let me tell you what i told her, i told her.. "
trying to diagnose and fix a firewall ruleset under pressure on our core network? not so much...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Does pink noise help you keep from crapping your pants when you hear the brown note?
I need to know... for SCIENCE!
Richard Williams, who was the animator behind Who Framed Roger Rabbit wrote what I thought was an excellent book on animation. As I recall from reading the book, he asked some distinguished animator if he listened to music while working, and the animator said he had to use his whole brain while working. Also, Williams commented on his own experience with people hired to do the dull in-between stuff, and they made stupid mistakes when they were listening to music through their headphones.
I've tried listening to music while working, and I felt it was distracting.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
So how do I increase my productivity but not listen music?
One of the things I appreciate about having a home office which is also isolated from the rest of the house is the tomb-like silence which pervades the office most of the day. Most of my work (reports, calculations) goes best when it's dead quite, but when I'm drawing or drafting I put on light music (usu contemporary a cappella, jazz, or classical). The silence, which is 80% of the time, drives my wife nuts (or rather she thinks I'm nuts for sitting in it). That just makes the silence even better. :-)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
When I used to work processing forms for the government, it sucked if my MP3 player died on me; or I forgot it. We were not allowed to stream anything, so that ruled out Pandora. With some tunes, I would just get into a groove and knock out an 8 hour shift no problem.
Now that I've moved to IT, I'm too busy actually doing non-repetitive tasks; so I don't really miss the lack of music.
If you work somewhere you get frequently interrupted for chit-chat with them off but not if their on... it will be a productivity boost. Likewise if you have co-workers doing other random distracting things all day. Anything to tune out the folks who never learned to sit still.
What utter crap. I can see situations where head phones are a bad idea in a vacuum, but I know for certain I have done many jobs where their absence would have resulted in less productivity overall.
Has anyone ever done data entry? Especially for mind numbing shit like payment processing or taxes? There is no way in hell that half the drones I worked with could have done it without headphones. I know I wouldn't have been able to.
There are also those times when I'm working on a problem and hit a dead end. Music can stimulate my mind and keep me occupied while I'm brainstorming. There are many things I have an answer for that I'm not aware of immediately. Sometimes music is the lubricant my mind needs to put things together in a way that I'm consciously aware of the possibilities.
Ever since I had kids I've been looking for this device. An unobtrusive device that will let me turn off my hearing at will so I can concentrate on one thing without being interrupted constantly.
Right now when I really need it I put on both ear plugs and my shooting ears but that makes is really obvious I'm telling the world to fuck off, which isn't conducive to marital bliss.
I should fill out a patent application because the first person who invents this will make a fortune off parents.
Lister and DeMarco devote attention to noise pollution in Peopleware, which is really a must-read anyway for technical (especially software) people.
I pretty much agree with their analysis that music is compatible with some types of work, but that some cognitive work can suffer because part of the brain is distracted. In any case, their real point is that if you find yourself "needing" to listen to music just to concentrate, it's a symptom of a workplace that's hostile to technical productivity.
Personally, I find music with lyrics is especially destructive to technical productivity.
Headphones help drown out those unaccustomed to common courtesies (overuse of speakerphones, loud conversations) near another's workspace when 'real' work needs to be done.
Not all music is the same. Pop songs are made to get attention and sell records. Music such as chill, techno, and drum and bass are often composed with little in the speaking frequencies as well as having few lyrics. This is better to work with, and may even improve work.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I've been known to wear headphones at the poker table, without bothering to run a signal through them. I'll also hum vaguely, and "dance" a bit in the chair to music that's not there. It's amazing how much people are willing to say on the assumption that I can't hear them.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I don't listen to music because it helps me concentrate because of being music, I listen to music because it helps me block out all the other noise which stops me from concentrating.
At work I'm stuck in the same office as 9 sales/account managers. When they're all in the office, it's distracting. Their job - when in the office - is basically to be on the phone all day and talk to their clients. Their manager's job is to talk to them when they're not on the phone and to talk to the overseas people...
Plus we have the two developers who share a common native language - when they're discussing something complicated they often switch to it, and their volume increases when they do (it's one of the excitable romance languages).
I find it extremely hard to block out people talking, music is easy to ignore - I've listened to most of my music countless times, it just becomes a single source of background noise I can ignore.
It's lovely when the people who talk are all out of the office, it just becomes quiet and you can concentrate more easily.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
This article was very low on detail. No reports on variance in the group. I found the assumption of that everyone's performance was poorer when listening to music, doubtful. Also, there seemed to be a bias in the article.
So I read some more:
There's an article "The Effects of Background Auditory Interference and Extraversion on Creative and Cognitive Task Performance" from 1999 by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, which sums up also other articles (not just the ones supporting TFA bias).
According to this arcticle, there's a study by Banbury and Berry which deemed random office noise more detrimental than music. This was later studied a bit more, and found out that introverts work better with music (than with noise), extroverts don't.
The actual results in the article vary a lot as well. For example, although noise reduced performance on average, deviation increased as well. Meaning there are individuals that work better in noise than in silence. Same goes for music.
Although people, in general, might be worse off with background music, some people aren't, and for a lot the random noise is even worse.
YES, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT ("I'm not")
Music at work is very distracting, especially when I'm ripping it.
Yes, absolutely. I wear headphones when I work.
When I'm trying to code physics equations I don't want to hear about how fucked up some dumb receptionist got over the weekend while she flirts with my cubicle neighbor.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Or songs not in your native language. Even if I understand English pretty well, my brain (usually) doesn't automatically tune in on English lyrics.
This is just my own subjective observations. I've been a sushi chef for some time now and I can safely say that ten years ago, if you had been caught wearing headphones in the kitchen you would have been fired or reprimanded immediately. Nowadays it's unusual to see dishwashers and prep cooks without at least one ear bud in. What I've noticed is that personal music definitely slows down productivity in the kitchen environment. The dishwashers and prep staff slow their pace down and are often fumbling to keep their buds in their ears and I frequently have to stop what I'm doing and walk over to them to ask them for something rather than just being able to call out what I need when I'm in the middle of a rush. It can be incredibly frustrating at times but the boss says they can listen since they're not front of the house. If I'm trying to crank out 100 rolls before we open for a catering event I can't let anything distract me, especially when I'm having to move fast and there are other people with knives moving behind me. The way music has benefit me though is in my creativity. When the right song is playing and I'm in the "flow" I find myself discovering new and cool presentations for rolls and sashimi that had never occurred to me before. Music has even inspired a few rolls I've created and they've been appropriately named after the songs. Just my two cents. If anyone's in the Seattle area and wants to try a 'paradise city' roll send me a PM and I'll tell you where to go.
I generally find myself achieving more when I just play ambient or psychedelic music (think psydub) when coding or designing (actually, I can design with more engaging and lively music like trance / melodic hardstyle). But when I have to pick a book from my O'reilly collection or work my way through a technical blog, I prefer to just have the music either off, or just so low I hardly recognize it. But true, keeping the headphones on (whether with music or not), does help me. Gosh! I even put the phone's on when on commuter vehicles, just to keep other's rumblings out of my personal think-space.
I find that the real trick in listening to music to get things done lies in picking the right music.
1) Pick music you are completely familiar with. If you know a song well, you won't be listening closely to the words or music, they way you do when you first hear a song. The more you have listened to it the better, because you are likely to tune it out consciously.
2) Pick music without lyrics. Even if you hit point #1, every now and then your brain might find a vocal phrase to latch on to. No lyrics, nothing to think about.
I find that movie scores and video game soundtracks work very well. Techno and industrial is also good, because it is very rhythmic. Oh, and ditch those shitty ear buds, and get some good noise cancelling headphones. The music sounds better with a good bass driver, and they keep out distracting outside noise much better. For just $50 you can get some great earphones that will last for years. When I get in the zone with some music to drown out outside noise, I can crank out code for hours.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Ah... well people, if you read about someone going postal and running around with a gun killing people and you wonder why someone didn't spot the sign.
Above, that is one of the signs.
I give him till lunch.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I find the mixes from musicforprogramming very suitable for productivity. Not to melodic to distract you, and not to monotone to bore you.
any of the stuff I usually listen to helps me - vocal or instrumental-only, high-energy or mellow, whatever genre
maybe it's because it's something I'm familiar with - I'd stop to concentrate on the song if it's something I hadn't heard before.
that's one great thing about music, it can easily go in the background while doing other things.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
headphones allow music to be enjoyed friendlessly — ... — making space, creating separation, helping us listen to ourselves.'"
What kind of separation is created with our friends when we buy Denon AKDL1 link cable to connect our equipment and use the Denon's D7000 closed headphones? The ambivalence between disgust and admiration causes the universe to collapse and then bend in to a shape reminisced of a delicious bagel, with sprinkles on top. The perfectly cromulent sound of selfish enjoyment is digitally echoed -- completely jitter-free -- from our empty bank accounts.
there's another concept called projection. you are projecting your preferences onto everyone else, then wagging your finger. go fuck yourself. don't tell the rest of us how we are most productive.
So if I wear earbuds people will leave me alone? Gotta start wearing them all the time then.
You've had 2 children with your mum?!
It's simple. When the guy a row over decides to have a hands-free teleconference, or when my current task is mindless data entry, the headphones are on and the music or podcasts are playing. When I have to concentrate on something, the headphones are on but the music is off. If I don't, all the old women I work with will want to chat about their kids or the weekend. As it is, I'm only caught in pointless conversations when I'm trying to go to the bathroom.
If the music features singing, I always catch myself singing along in my head, ironically having to expend effort to ignore the lyrics. In those cases when I need to isolate *and* concentrate, it has to be classical or Brian Eno.
I've sometimes had just the headphones with no music, so I look less approachable if I don't want to be disturbed but I still hear what's going on around me.
Could it simply be that music makes us happier?
Of course, when asked for a "reason" to have music on, people will assert they're more productive to the PHB who demands productivity uber alles, but it could simply be that at work (which is rarely fun, and quite often miserable)
If it makes us happer, maybe that's WORTH 0.05% loss in productivity. I know, crazy talk.
FWIW I personally think it does help me get through the day (instrumental, non-vocal music), but I tend to turn it off when I'm working on something complicated, or if I'm driving and the weather/conditions get dangerous.
-Styopa
The way this article has been put forth makes it seem as if listening to music at work decreases productivity. Not so. the study is about comparing personality types and see if introvert Vs. extrovert has an impact on productivity. The last line on the website says *"These findings suggest that people will learn more when revising for an exam or perform better at work if tasks are performed in silence regardless of personality type, and frequency of listening to music when working does not affect performance. So to conclude: no, listening to music unfortunately won’t increase your concentration."*. There are other studies that show no correlation between the two http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/50/6/493/ (login required). Also, there are other factors like employee morale and happiness that improve by music (http://www.musicworksforyou.com/workplace-productivity/radio-in-the-workplace-increasing-morale-a-productivity.html) that are unaccounted. In short biased, stupid and sensationalistic. Sorry!
I wear headphones in the office all the time to enable me to concentrate. However, if I listen to music it hijacks my attention. Instead I listen to the sound of rain or any other general sound that silences the sound of the office.
There is a big difference between production and relaxation/pausing/reflection.
Music makes you more relaxed. So you have a mindset to think. I assume that in the study production does exclude creativity.
So if you want to be creative: listen to music. If you have to do real dumb/dull production work: do not listen to music !
There are other factors that have a much greater effect on my productivity. Using headphones is really the only option for listening to music in my work area, to be courteous to my co-workers. And listening to music at work makes me happy. Being happy at work improves my productivity greatly.
It really depends on the person using them. As a programmer, i am able to tune in code much easier while listening at the same time. Ignoring office distractions.
I was lucky. My very first real job came with an office - a personal office. Everyone there had an office. We didn't listen to music or the radio or ... anything. It was a relatively quiet environment since discussions would happen inside an office or in a conference room. This did not disturb others - sure, we got rowdy in the halls for 15 minutes a week, but usually we were working, quietly.
We didn't hear others typing, shuffling papers, talking on their phone, opening and closing drawers. We didn't feel like someone was staring at us.
We were extremely productive.
Then I switched contracts and my old group moved out of the office space. Oddly, my new group moved in and they put 2 people into the same offices. I shared it with a very smart, quiet guy. Initially, it was tough to get work done at all, but finally we started to trust each other. I was never as efficient as with my own office. We didn't have portable music, so we'd hear each other working and making noises - talking on the phone was the worst.
My next job was in a government lab "fishbowl" environment. Not even cubes. About 30 people were inside here with windows as walls on 3 sides. It was nearly impossible to work the first 3 weeks. Having people walk by constantly and others fiddling around was a constant issue for me. I was there 2 years - it was terrible.
My next job was in a cube farm - this was my first. It was a step up from the fishbowl, but not much. I had the best cube - I was the development lead for the companies primary system. It was in a corner and only 1 other person could easily see me, but the shuffling, phone calls, typing, and other noises were bad. At this point, we all started wearing headphones to block others out. I feel we were much more productive than without them, but still people would throw paper balls over the cubes to interrupt each other.
A year into that job, I was moved into a private office and became a full-time manager. It sucked - managing people. My office was not sound deadened, so I could hear the people in the left and right offices clearly. My view over a huge interstate exchange was pretty cool, however. I wasn't very productive, but being a people manager is the opposite of being productive. You are completely dependent on others for success. I found another job about 9 months later.
That next job was in a huge telecom cube farm surrounded by project managers who were constantly on the damn phone. They also had GSM cell phones that interfered with every audio device within 12 feet. My cube was on a very busy hallway and configured so I couldn't see the entry. Having my back to the entryway was bad. I used headphones to block out the noise from 50 other people in the same bullpin. It was really noisy. The GSM interference was extreme, so the dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit happened constantly through the headphones. I can't believe the FCC allows GSM anywhere in the USA. It is terrible. You've all heard it - even regular phones are impacted.
On that same job, I was relocated to a different floor with fewer people, away from people talking on the phone all day, with my seating situated looking towards the relatively quiet hallway. I could see sunlight. My productivity soared - now I was the problem for people around me. I was constantly on the phone with people around the world and my voice ... "carries." Sadly, that was my role, so there wasn't much to be done. I didn't need to block out other noises, so I didn't. The people around me were usually elsewhere or quietly working.
In short, the best situation for everyone is a private office with reasonable sound suffocation. A properly setup cube farm with quiet workers around can be good too, but anyone who is on the phone talking more than an hour a day needs their own office - for their sanity AND all the people around them.
Cubes without quiet AND a sense of privacy are a major fail. Those "group area short cubes" suck. Only someone in an office would build those out. You pay through the loss of productivity - MAJORLY.
What I have learned from the above discussion is that Slashdot is a bigger distraction than wearing headphones.
The same principle applies to sunglasses too.
I was recently working on a prototype system, building the scripts AND teaching how at the same time, when we ran into a crunch where all of the leads were in the same room trying to fix something. Moving to a quiet room would have taken too much time, plus I needed immediate feedback from the other leads, so I pulled out my noise cancelling headphones, plugged them into my iPhone and fired up "Dark Side of the Moon". That let me tune the rest of them out and calm me so I could concentrate enough to get my part finished.
Music (whatever makes you feel good and calms you) is excellent for focusing on a problem OR taking your mind off of it until you can rationally think about it again.
I am Homer of Borg, resistance is - Ooo Donuts!
My boss had a mental disorder that made him think he was Jon Stewart or something and would talk loud and all the time AND expect people to laugh at the jokes. Earbuds made me seem really busy.
Can I light a sig ?
For me depends on the music and the volume.
Hearing Mozart at a low volume gets the most out of my coding power.
No one cares about your children.
With Chinese dude loudly smacking three times a morning, putting industrial headphones on is the only option to maintain productivity. That and not logging into Slashdot.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Until recently I've had no need for headphones but as work rises and deadlines are advanced I seriously need to concentrate more on work. I've been given what seems semi impossible deadlines imposed to me by my manager and his manager or managers from other groups. Lately people around me have gotten very relaxed in their job and tend to socialize more, thus causing more noise. My over the ear 'head-cans' do help block out alot of this noise. In a recent meeting my manager asked me why I am wearing headphones. He asked me if I was shutting people out and not being a teamplayer. I said quite the opposite, I am very much a team player and help my team if they need my help. I simply stated that its very hard to concentrate with all the background noise around me. I also stated that on some occasion that its loud even when I am on a business related phone call. Some of my co-workers talk louder than others and they don't realize it and thats ok. I figure that consideration should be part of the game. I respect your space,airspace,etc and you respect mine in return. That is something US as Americans have lost out. We have to be incredibly loud everywhere we go. So that is why alot of us use headphones. Go to a Starbucks where alot of the time it can be incredibly loud. I get it when people who have headphones on are studying.. The ones without headphones that are studying mystify me.
Aside from keeping out the everyday broo-haha it really does help me work to meet those incredible deadlines. Good music also helps inspire me and makes me feel good. So does booze but we're not allowed to drink on the job. So I have to go with the next best thing. Oddly enough not the only person in my group who uses headphones. A majority of them also use headphones and I am curious if they feel the same way.
Bottom Line: Helps Productivity.
If you pick your music CORRECTLY then it can improve your productivity (and do other neat things).
Of course it can also be used to Signal various important things
Eye Of the Tiger/Ride of the Valkeries = bad mood somebody is in a fighting mood
Anything with BagPipes and Drums= Somebody is either Scottish or in a WAR mood
Jazz/Classical/Dance= good mood hopefully the normal sound
Mission Impossible Theme= A DeadLine Approacheth
ect
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
*COUGH*Horsefeathers!*COUGH* I use headphones because they drown out conversations of noisy co-workers, which are even more disruptive. If companies insist on forcing us into low-walled cubicles or noisy offices, then music becomes a necessity. :-P
Quite simple: some people work better with music, some don't.
Honestly I don't care what the survey says about cold productivity numbers - if listening to music makes someone happier without having a dramatic impact in performance, cool. (Personally, I'm happiest without headphones.)
I'm a coder and I've found I'm much more productive when I'm listening to music through headphones (usually the Foo Fighters or 311). Without music I'm much more prone to distraction, and not just from office noises. I'm more inclined to get a random thought and end up surfing the web when I'm not listening to music. Meds will help me stay in the zone but music definitely increases my productivity, on or off meds.
It goes without saying that if you listen to music with words its going to engage you on a cognitive level that interferes with work. If you listen to ambient music, or some forms of classical, then that little part of your brain that is shrieking about being cooped up with socially challenged children for 40+ hours a week gets fed and you are more productive.
I'm an embedded systems software engineer and I have been doing this across 5 different Automotive companies. I'm not coding a 100% of the time and much like in Office Space I have days where I do only 15 minutes of real... actual.... work. If I didn't have my headphones and my db of music I would go crazy with boredom or I would end up smashing the idiot guys cell phone a cube over with the Jazz style ring. If I'm working on designs or there is an issue with code or a real tough problem I will take them off and hit the datasheets etc.. For some of the mundane tasks including email, code clean up, or creating documents or similar, headphones all the way. If you gotten to a certain place with your skill in a programming language, the times you need to focus beyond the point of the headphone distractions happens less and less.
I won't disagree with you about your points re OCD and that people can focus without being debilitated. Sometimes a clinical diagnosis of a disorder will depend on whether the sum of characteristics is debilitating or causes life problems. Me: I see nothing wrong with laughing at myself and fellow types while pointing out that one person's disability is another's advantage.
As far as being "Morlocks", we are all susceptible to caricature and stereotype. Could be worse: we could be "Fubar" oil-field trash headbangers and still be IT nerds. C'est la vie.
Cheers
er ... one more thing: People who are classified as OC or who are ADD are not "insane". Good grief.
Also, many of the people I work with actually are somewhat symptomatic of various ASDs (autistic spectrum disorder). It doesn't make them clinically OCD but the characteristics are there and carry both advantages and disadvantages in work and life.
"Science" is using the wrong baseline. The baseline for productivity is not how well you remember objects on a table or answer math problems in a lab; it's how well you endure the tedium of showing up every day, after day, after day, after day, and what you would be doing if you *weren't* plugging in and listening to music. Such as arguing about productivity on Slashdot.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
+1 for rain sound loop
The article does go on to list the benefits of music beyond scores on reading comprehension; it's far from damning. If you're normally that relaxed and only rarely feel the need to listen to music, more power to you.
As an aside, that last line sounds terrible. (Unless you actually meant to imply that you're married to your mum, in which case I retract my statement.)
You and I know that it is just a few symptoms similar to full autism while the person is still functional enough to operate within society however others see the labels and think we are writing about a situation advanced enough to be institutionalised. What you are describing as "various ASDs" is really within the range of normal human behaviour and not mental illness.
Exactly. The difference between a symptom of something else going on or just a characteristic of neural-typical behaviour is not always clear. In the end, many professionals just look at whether a person's life is being hindered or damaged as versus worrying about whether someone is clinically autistic. At this point in my life, I am not sure what exactly "normal" is.
The diagnosis aspect is so difficult that ADD/ADHD is not to be diagnosed by a single health professional but has to come from an agreement amongst a range of experienced specialists (eg psychiatrist + pediatrician + occupational therapist). Many Aspies (Asperger's Syndrome) do quite well in life and are never formally diagnosed. Watch a sports channel. I'm sure there will be an Aspie on there somewhere.
I really don't care if someone is ignorant enough to read "requires institutionalization" into mild joking about OC characteristics. That's their problem and not mine. I would rather be more open and accepting of differences than to police what I say in case some idiot misinterprets my words.
Many characteristics are common across "normal" and atypical personalities and some of the techniques that work with autism also work quite well with neural-typicals. Focus/obsession pahtayto/pahtahto. Go figure. "Social stories" is a good technique to learn and works well with Ferengi (marketing droids), interfering executives, and difficult techies. eh, I have to be a little more subtle using it than with an autistic person but it still works.
It's a good method that helps to build consensus by aligning the opinions of difficult people to project goals and team decisions. You could look at the following link although it may not be clear how the method is helpful. Basically, it is a way of moving someone forward along a positive path without being threatening.
http://www.thegraycenter.org/social-stories
Point is that in many cases we are all the same, just to different degrees.
I'd always wondered how they came up with the different "colors" for sound. Makes perfect sense. I suppose this is on Wikipedia somewhere, but I never bothered to check.
He he he, yeah, I was afraid that last line could be interpreted the wrong way (English is my 2nd language). I've never been really into music. I "discovered" music when I was 16 or so. And when I am working (programming) or reading I phase out the music, so it's like musical wall paper, or musical carpet. Hence I don't see much of a point in it. And when I am actually listening to the music, it's harder to concentrate (at least that's my experience). Will read TFA, thanks for the reminder.
Perl Programmer for hire
I am the owner of an earbud (headphone) company and we have actually done numerous test to see if headphones can help with productivity. One of the more interesting tests was that even when our headphones were worn and not plugged in, productivity increased more than 25% in a loud work environment. This proves that the 'isolation' effect is enough on its own. The company is AirBuds