I've noticed that music seems to help me focus while programming but makes long-form writing harder.
As usual, has already assembled a nice bibliography: gwern.net/Music-distract
Only one paper on writing (10m essays); finds a modest (-) effect: gwern.net/docs/music-dis
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I also found this experiment on the impact of background speech on writing, which had longer writing tasks and more pronounced results: researchgate.net/profile/Guoli_
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There are many studies on the impact of music on reading comprehension, which average out to a modest negative effect, but with some variation depending on type of music. Review: gwern.net/docs/music-dis
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Can’t find much on music and programming, but this study found modest positive impact (attributed to affect) of music on “computer information systems” work: gwern.net/docs/music-dis
Not an ideal method: asking people to stop listening to music for a week, looking at impact.
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Excited to look into this! My theory in the past has been that there are some activities where a mild distraction can be positive. For instance, if an activity gives you mild anxiety and you're plagued with self-doubt while writing, maybe a little distracting music could help.
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Right! One of the theories is that music’s impact is due to its effect on mood:
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Will this help you release your note taking app as open source *faster*? 😉
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? I’m not working on a note taking app.
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(Designer) Music helped me focus at work with our open-plan office, but once I started WFH alone in a quite house, I couldn’t listen to music at all.
Not certain if it was “lesser of two distractions,” or “can focus so much more that I have no extra bandwidth for music.”
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Interesting! Reflecting: I’ve found music distracting when iterating on on structural or conceptual design elements, but helpful iterating on purely visual elements or pixel-pushing. May be mostly about mood!
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