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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.'"
... 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.
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
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?
...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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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.
No kidding, the author is full of loaded language. Why not just "headphones" instead of "two plastic pieces connected by a wire"? I think he's pretty clearly got something personal against headphones in the first place.
The place where my father worked had a good solution: everyone was in a rotation for music of the week. You brought your CDs and they played on a multi-disk capable boom box (or ghetto blaster) in the corner of the office for that week. No one brought anything too annoying or weird because everyone else could get revenge on their own week.
Finding a quite workplace is not as easy as it should be.
Yes! It's quiet difficult these days.
That is all.
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.
silence > music > office noise
I would agree with this, except I would put classical music and/or binaural music above silence, as both have been shown to improve concentration and reduce learning and recall times.
Bits of code, random ramblings: jakimfett.com
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.
Would you have preferred as a first post, that I introduced you to the marvelous properties exhibited by Clean My PC?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm not sure the binaural thing has been conclusively shown to have a benefit, but I have found that listening to music with binaural beats does make me feel like my mind is clearer and more capable of extended periods of concentration.
Silence would be best, I think, but the problem with the average office is that it is anything but silent, even when it's quiet. There are keyboards clacking, machines humming, cpu fans whirring and air conditioners blowing.
The main thing I'd like to say about this article is that I'm more concerned about what is making workers happy than what makes them a few percentage points more productive.
Everybody is already plenty productive. Too productive, maybe. Our lives are out of balance when it comes to productivity/happiness. Almost everyone I know could stand to be a little less productive and a little more content.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because denying your child the use of headphones is so respectful.
Everyone needs a little privacy from time to time, especially kids. Denying them their privacy, even if said privacy is escaping into a pair of headphones for a little while, seems to me almost abusive. I listened on the headphones because I was considerate of the fact that other people don't want to listen to my music. Take that away from me, and now your comfort level means as much to me as mine obviously does to you, i.e., jack fucking squat.
I grew up an Army brat with a typical 'spare the rod and spoil the child' stepfather that treated me like one of his troops and pulled shit just like the GP (I remember once he denied me the right to a lamp in my room for 3 days after "talking back" because he knew I enjoyed reading, true fucking story). All his bullshit resulted in was years of resentment that it took me into well into my adulthood to rationalize to the point where we're able to actually have a relationship at all, and it damaged not only our relationship but my relationship with my mother as well.
I don't have kids, but believe me, he taught me a lot of ways not to treat my children when I do eventually have them. I suspect GP is doing well on that front, as well.
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
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
That only works if peoples' tastes in music are similar enough.
QFT. I worked in a warehouse doing order picking one year where the boss and her fan club were all big into country music, and not even good country music like Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings, but the godawful shit that they pass off as country music today.
I spent that year listening to such timeless classics as She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy, (Her Favorite Color is) Chrome, One More Day, and Beer For My Horses.
Unfortunately, because there was lift equipment in use on the warehouse floor, we weren't allowed to use headphones for safety reasons. After a few months of this shit (and it was always the same shit, they had a handful of mix discs they would play and they never, ever updated the selection) those of us that couldn't stand it started singing along as loudly as we could, in as exaggerated a country accent we could, throwing our own little interjections like "Hoo, doggy!" and "Yee-HAWWWWW" (complete with knee slaps) into the mix for good measure...and the boss responded by turning the music up even louder. In retaliation, one guy actually got on the P.A. to sing along with the now higher volume and got a write up for his troubles. No sense of humor at all in that bunch of shit-kicking hicks...
I wasn't very sad to leave that place.
I really don't think you can make a generalization about whether any type of music, even classical, helps or hinders concentration. I'm a musical person -- I've been singing in choirs and barbershop groups almost my entire life -- so I pay *very* close attention to music. I can't help it; even if it's music I can't stand I am compelled to listen closely to the melody (if there is any) and lyrics (if there are any). So for me, any type of background music overrides my ability to concentrate on anything else.
Instead, I listen to music to help ease the boredom of mindless physical work, like my daily walks for exercise or the rare occasion I get out of my chair and do yardwork, etc. Then it doesn't matter that I put my body on autopilot while my brain focuses on the music; in fact it helps because the time goes by so much faster.
There's that old joke about why is it we turn down the radio when we're looking for an unfamiliar street -- it's precisely *because* the music is a distraction. In the same way, whenever I have tried to enjoy my music while I'm working I lose focus and frequently forget where I left off. My attention span is fragile enough without the additional burden of a shiny audible toy.
Which brings me to a refutation of TFS: When I do use headphones, it's not because I am protecting myself from the rest of the world. Rather, it's because I am protecting the rest of the world from me. It's an unwritten social contract: You don't make me listen to that obnoxious rap, and I won't make you listen to the Side Street Ramblers belting out "Bye Bye Blackbird" with a tenor who can shatter the windows in your car.
That dude across the hallway talking loudly to some indian programmer over a bad connection? Quite distracting...
The three people discussing the latest fad? Also quite distracting...
The loud whine of the AC, yet again.. distracting.
The music is there to cover worse distractions.
I'd have to qualify that with "ambient music I know well". Yesterday when the links to the wonderful kickstarted version of the Goldberg Variations was released, I found myself closing my eyes and just absorbing the music. I opened them about 15 minutes later, completely relaxed, and having accomplished exactly *nothing* in that time!
High energy repetitive ambient house or electronica, with no more than a few meaningless lyrics, stuff I've heard before, those I can work to. Beautifully performed classical music, not so much. Metal would have me reaching for earplugs. Jazz seems specifically designed to break my concentration. Rap makes me flee. And country music actually makes me angry.
I believe that everyone who reads this will have their own very specific, very personal opinions about what is good music to "improve concentration". A poll or study only reveal common traits that indicate what percentages of each genre you should stock in a jukebox, but do not a useful, personalized recommendation make.
John
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.
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