[HN Gopher] Multitasking Doesn't Work
___________________________________________________________________
Multitasking Doesn't Work
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 155 points
Date : 2021-10-08 12:38 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (health.clevelandclinic.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (health.clevelandclinic.org)
| aeturnum wrote:
| It's certainly true, in my experience, that trying to do two or
| more things "at once" disrupt my focus and increase my error
| rate, but I think that high level gloss on the situation is
| unhelpful for technology workers.
|
| Of course, if I ever had the opportunity to work on a single
| task, I can be very productive at that. Easiest way to get into
| flow state. However, that isn't common for my work. Often,
| instead, I am working on something that crosses many boundaries
| and has unavoidable downtime. For instance, right now I am
| working on visualizing erlang processes using Phoenix and d3js to
| see if I can detect unusual memory use growth. I'm going back and
| forth between erlang docs and Phoenix views and elixir code and
| javascript (with, of course, lots of reading and searching in
| between). I have no idea if that's multitasking, but when I have
| to move from one layer to another I experience the same kind of
| disruption and need to refocus as I do when I'm interrupted.
|
| Another quality of multi-tasking that I frequently experience is
| the difference between needing to respond to external stimulus
| v.s. being able to orchestrate multiple processes to run in
| parallel. They both involve context switching and loss of focus,
| but there are huge differences in the order of magnitude.
| 1121redblackgo wrote:
| Its kind of cool seeing this reality become known by more and
| more people to the point where I think most people kind of
| understand this now. Just a small piece of evidence for this is
| the resurgence, and regaining popularity, of the one monitor
| workflow.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| My job description says I must multitask.
| tyronehed wrote:
| It has to do with whether or not the person being tested is right
| brain dominant or left brain dominant. The vast majority of
| people are left brain dominant and for them multitasking is
| extremely difficult because of the linear sequential nature of
| the left hemisphere.
|
| Right brained people, those with the right brain dominant over
| the left, have an easier time multitasking because the right
| brain is image oriented. The right brain processes information as
| images are processed, In a visual simultaneous manner.
| Guidii wrote:
| There's debate on the left-brain/right-brain model, which I
| think has been somewhat debunked[1][2]
|
| That being said, brains are weird and if you find you can
| multitask then go for it. I've gathered data on my own attempts
| to multitask and established that I cannot.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130814190513.h...
| [2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/right-brainleft-brain-
| ri...
| falcolas wrote:
| As someone who fights with ADHD, I strive to intentionally
| single-task. It doesn't always work, but not having to keep
| several things in the forefront of my mind make it more possible
| to be productive.
|
| Alarms and lists serve as my task manager, since my brain fails
| at it by default.
| hosh wrote:
| Curious, are you able to have parallel thought streams?
|
| I know two people who can, and they both have ADD. (But when I
| asked around, many others who have ADD can't, though they are
| capable of fast context switching).
| mullen wrote:
| > Curious, are you able to have parallel thought streams?
| That's the problem. Parallel thought streams is where all my
| productivity issues come from.
| falcolas wrote:
| Nope. My brain will context switch very quickly between
| threads sometimes, but that's often outside of my control.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Whenever these studies come up, it makes me wonder "how exactly
| are they defining task and multi-task here".
|
| For example, driving involves keeping the car at a reasonable,
| avoiding obstacles on and off the road, deciding whether you need
| to turn soon, noticing the condition of the vehicle and related
| things. These could all be considered tasks and are indeed
| difficult to keep straight when one begins driving. But they can
| indeed be done together. And while it might be easier to somehow
| do each separately, the combined task of driving isn't possible
| without this "multitasking".
|
| I understand that nearly everyone talking about multitasking here
| is referencing whether or not tasks at work can be efficiently
| combined. But I don't think that addresses the larger issues
| (what's a single task, when two tasks intersect, how can you not
| multitask, is the difficulty of "multitasking" a limitation of
| humans or is it that the task itself becomes inherently more
| difficult).
| commandlinefan wrote:
| This has been known and demonstrated for decades, but we're still
| ordered to do it anyway. If I were more of a conspiracy theory
| type I would think that Machiavellian managers demand
| multitasking precisely because they know that it _does_ cause
| problems that they can blame on their underlings later whenever
| anything goes wrong so they come out looking great. But that
| would be crazy talk, of course.
| danans wrote:
| > One study found that just 2.5% of people are able to multitask
| effectively.
|
| .. and a queue of anxious white collar parents forms to get their
| child tested to determine if they are in the 2.5% /s
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| I feel like I never quite got the answer of why it doesn't work.
| It's also pretty nuanced.
|
| If I have laundry, dishwashing, etc going. I am multitasking but
| I don't need to expend attention.
|
| So there's certainly a threshold where multitasking becomes a
| problem.
|
| In MSP world, I didn't control my own schedule. If the schedulers
| thought I only needed 30 minutes to do a 3 hour task. That's all
| you got. Some coworkers would hard limit. Put the 30 minutes in
| and leave the job unfinished.
|
| The stated rule was double/triple billing; which is a felony but
| you know they'll throw you to the wolves if you actually break
| the law and get caught. However, the rule was that if you needed
| more time. You had to work on multiple things at once. If you did
| not accomplish a task, you had to set the ticket back with
| justification why you didn't get it done. About 25% of the time
| if you didnt get it done and put in a justification. Someone
| would come talk with you.
|
| Not to help, but usually chastise you.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Once it's a habit, it is automatically executed without active
| attention, so the majority of your daily routine is simply not
| an activity you "partake in".
| zozin wrote:
| Hasn't this been debunked for a while? To prove this all you need
| to do is have test subjects listen to a podcast or audiobook and
| then distract them with something for a second or two and the
| results will undoubtedly show that the vast majority of listeners
| stopped paying attention and what was heard was not
| comprehended/absorbed. Humans tend to think they are capable of
| more than they really are.
| hosh wrote:
| Although rare, there are humans capable of parallel thoughts.
| milesvp wrote:
| What's interesting is you can see the seperate patterns on an
| fmri. It's also known that people advanced in certain kinds
| of meditation are very likely to show dual gamma waves. I
| think it's suspected that it's something that can be trained,
| although it's very possible only people with the ability are
| drawn to practice these meditations.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It sounds very interesting, could you please expand on
| it/give me some keywords I can look into it?
| milesvp wrote:
| Well, I've been looking, and mostly what I've been able
| to find is references to papers that show strong
| correlation with Buddhist monks and exceptional gamma
| waves. The paper I'm thinking of may have not been
| reproducible, and fallen off the radar. I would have seen
| it no later than 2011. I might be quoting a book on
| neuroscience as well (I went through a phase where I was
| looking at neuroscience for inspiration for AI research).
| I think the idea was that people who meditate while doing
| certain types of "mindless" tasks seem to be able to hold
| 1 wave around that task, while holding another wave
| around other thoughts. What I can't remember is if this
| was a one gamma wave per hemisphere scenario, or 2 for
| the whole brain.
|
| If you're interested at least in consciousness and brain
| waves, you could do worse than to look into reading some
| of the references in "States of Consciousness:
| Experimental Insights into Meditation, Waking, Sleep and
| Dreams" Dean Cvetkovic & Irena Cosic Editors
| krageon wrote:
| I can write a comment on hackernews and have a verbal
| conversation at the same time (i.e. typing noises happen when
| mouth noises happen, no pausing or swapping) just fine. If
| that's not multitasking, I don't know what is. I will grant you
| most folks I've met or asked about it cannot do it.
| kaba0 wrote:
| That works more like your brain feeding in a few words, and
| typing itself is muscle memory that requires no active
| attention. If a word doesn't look right, it "throws an
| interrupt", and you will look into it with active thought,
| and then quickly returning to your speech -- which yet again
| can talk "automatically", while it has a full buffer.
|
| Pretty much the exact same way as modern hardware works.
| agumonkey wrote:
| multitasking done right can give more pleasure (juggling with
| more complexity tickles your brain) and productivity but it's
| difficult to grasp.
| rmason wrote:
| I worked for a millennial once and multitask was his favorite
| word. Tried it for awhile but I made way more mistakes. Course he
| rode me for those mistakes.
|
| So I only pretended to multitask and my error rate plummeted.
| Does each generation have to figure this out on their own?
| Aerroon wrote:
| I don't doubt that multitasking makes us less efficient and more
| prone to mistakes, but the question is by how much?
|
| Sometimes it might be worth multitasking and being less efficient
| at both tasks. If I'm washing the dishes and listening to a
| podcast I'm completely okay if I'm at 80% efficiency at washing
| the dishes and paying attention to the podcast. Neither activity
| generally requires all my attention. The same goes for many other
| activities that we do.
|
| Playing a video game and listening to a lecture is probably still
| better than just playing the video game. Just don't expect to
| absorb the lecture as well as you would if you were to fully
| concentrate on it.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Yeah, I like listening to books when doing household chores, as
| I can do those almost entirely on autopilot, with very little
| thought required at all.
|
| I also listen to books when doing hobby woodworking, as most of
| the time spent is on rather menial tasks like sanding or
| planing. However, not all of it is like that, and you often
| need to focus, do some calculation or planning. During those
| times, I need to pause the book, as I can neither focus on it
| nor on the task at hand.
|
| Human bodies have lots of ability to multitask, it's just their
| brains have very little.
| voakbasda wrote:
| More generally, multitasking can improve your outlook and
| mental well-being. Mix a fun task with a menial task, and the
| instantaneous toll of the work balances out better.
| katbyte wrote:
| Yep. And actually provide some Motivation to do the task/help
| with procrastination.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| World class chess players in tournaments often walk around
| during the game and do so on their own turn or go to the bar
| and have a drink.
|
| "I think better when I walk." is a commonly heard statement;
| many research scientists when thinking about a problem also
| take a walk outside and find that thinking while walking
| improves it.
|
| But in soft science research without any real definitions
| it's of course quite easy to not incorporate such things
| because terms have no meaning and then say that "research
| proves it" while all it did is prove things about their _ad
| hoc_ definition of "multitasking" which is far removed from
| the real world.
| overview wrote:
| I haven't read the article, but the title irrefutably contradicts
| a very interesting understanding of multitasking shared by Dr.
| Andrew Huberman on the Huberman Lab podcast.
|
| Maybe by being provocative and choosing an absolute position on
| the matter, the author was hoping to attract readers.
|
| For those interested in the explanation given by Huberman, skip
| to the section titled "Multi-Tasking Is Real" found in the
| description of the video [0].
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/H-XfCl-HpRM
| winternett wrote:
| Forgot where I read it, but one of my favorite quotes on multi
| tasking is:
|
| "You're not really multitasking, you're just screwing up multiple
| things at the same time"
|
| I do however feel a great sense of accomplishment whenever I have
| several browser windows open while I work though. :|
| pdpi wrote:
| > I do however feel a great sense of accomplishment whenever I
| have several browser windows open while I work though. :|
|
| This is a subtle point. I can easily have 10 tabs open and swap
| between them while mono-tasking. E.g -- ignoring for a moment
| the fact I'm writing on HN... -- right now I have 4 tabs open
| on Sentry, where I'm comparing stack traces for a couple of
| instances of two related errors. I have another tab on the
| relevant PR, and a few more with docs pages for the relevant
| APIs/libraries. Swapping between these things isn't
| multitasking, it's just managing the complexity of the one
| single task.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If only a hundred million bonehead "managers" understood this
| concept. They still think they can multitask their way to free
| FTEs materializing out of nothing.
| bandie91 wrote:
| according to my experience human multitasking can work until
| tasks do not conflict which of your "peripherial" they want to
| use. ie. people can think and talk while peeling potato. but
| often they can not effectively type on the computer and talk
| about something else.
| naveen99 wrote:
| To me moving your hands and legs independently in dancing is
| multitasking, and I can't do it. But some people can dance and
| juggle.
|
| Best I can do is reading hacker news while compiling or training
| a convolution network.
|
| But anyone can hire multiple people to do multiple tasks.
| tombert wrote:
| I definitely feel like I'm generally less productive when I have
| music on for a majority of things, though I will put on
| headphones with one key exception: if the noise the headphones
| tune out is more distracting than the music I would be listening
| to.
|
| Though typically when I _do_ put on music to work, it 's old
| Amiga soundtracks or something. I wonder how much the difference
| in levels of distraction for lyrics vs. no lyrics.
| scrumbledober wrote:
| I think there's a big difference between lyrics vs no lyrics,
| as well as known vs unknown music. I have a much harder time
| not paying attention to the lyrics (or even melody of an
| instrumental song) that i know well than music I haven't heard
| before.
| robomartin wrote:
| I multitask precisely as a multitasking OS does. It works
| reasonably well. This is to say, I do focus on one thing at a
| time and task-switch. When I task switch I store the state
| information I need to return to the prior task.
|
| I generally keep a text document open all the time. When I have
| to task switch I write down where I am leaving the current task
| and what I have to do when I come back. Sometimes it is a couple
| of lines of text. Other times I have to add more to it.
|
| For me this works very well. It avoids the issue of an
| interruption or having to deal with multiple things in a day
| killing your productivity because it takes an hour to get your
| brain back into the prior task.
|
| Simple. Effective. At the end of the day it looks like you did
| multiple things simultaneously, just like a multitasking OS. In
| other words, my system tick is >= 1 hour, not milliseconds.
| gumby wrote:
| While I agree with the article, this paragraph is, erm, a
| distraction:
|
| > Other studies suggest that people who frequently "media
| multitask" (like listening to music while checking email or
| scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more
| distracted and less able to focus their attention even when
| they're performing only one task
|
| The causality could just as well run the other way: people with
| poor focus adherence presumnly exhibit it regardless of the
| amount of distraction.
| _wldu wrote:
| I once worked with a mathematician in a research group who said,
| "Multitasking destroys me". I did not know what he meant at the
| time, but I do now.
|
| If your job is to be "on the bottom of things" doing careful
| calculations and designs, you should not multitask. But if your
| job is to be "on top of things", then you will have to.
|
| Can't mix the two safely.
|
| You do not want the engineer/architect calculating the load on a
| beam to be checking email, on slack, answering the phone and
| other "on top of things" tasks.
|
| But some managers think you are a slacker if you are not running
| around with your hair on fire at all times. They don't understand
| the difference.
| kaba0 wrote:
| And I'm fairly sure I would perform much better at university
| if the courses were exactly the same, just serial. I really
| like getting to the very depth of an interesting subject, but
| doing a few hours a week of one will simply kill my brain. As
| soon as it finds it interesting, it has to context switch to
| the next one.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Education disruption: Serial University where you can take a
| course at a time, spending all your available time on that
| course, completing the work in much less than a quarter or
| semester if you like. Graduation from SU should result in a
| degree or it's no better than every other self-study option
| available at the moment.
| snarf21 wrote:
| That is an interesting way to describe it and makes a lot of
| sense. One thing that I see discussed a lot is a question of
| value. Engineers message each other across the day lots of
| times and it causes the same multitasking issues and break of
| concentration for "bottom of things". However, sometimes that
| may unblock two other engineers for several days of productive
| work. This is where structure matters. Having a tech lead that
| can handle all these interruptions is ideal but it takes
| someone who can balance the managing and the execution. It is
| also the mark of a good manager; someone who understands that
| their success is actually to make everyone else successful and
| that means shielding them from the nonsense.
| Zababa wrote:
| This looks like a content farm article with no substance.
|
| > Other studies suggest that people who frequently "media
| multitask" (like listening to music while checking email or
| scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more
| distracted and less able to focus their attention even when
| they're performing only one task.
|
| Compared to what? Music for me is usually a way of escaping the
| hell that can be open spaces.
| fouric wrote:
| I think that multitasking between multiple _tasks_ has been
| somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people) for
| a while now. However, this part of the article was novel:
|
| > Other studies suggest that people who frequently "media
| multitask" (like listening to music while checking email or
| scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more
| distracted and less able to focus their attention even when
| they're performing only one task.
|
| _This_ was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects
| your ability to focus? I guess it 's time to throw out my
| headphones...
|
| Well, but that article links to "Multicosts of Multitasking"[1],
| which references studies made on "heavy multitaskers", defined as
| having high "MMI" scores. What's MMI?
|
| "A high MMI score means an individual engages in a lot of media
| multitasking (e.g., checking email while also perusing Facebook
| and watching Netflix), and a low score means he or she does not
| (e.g., checking email without any secondary media)."
|
| Whoa there - checking Netflix and Facebook are _completely
| different_ than listening to music, and it should be obvious that
| the former two are mutually exclusive with performing other tasks
| (simultaneously) - but that doesn 't imply the same for music.
|
| I think that the HN submission page might be making some
| unsupported claims...
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075496/
| hinkley wrote:
| I think they also need to control for a lot of different
| elements here that they probably haven't in their subject group
| and methods. Including neurodivergence, but also how engaging
| the task is.
|
| It's not uncommon to hear claims from neurodivergent people
| about achieving optimal stimulation levels to perform a task.
| That can be increasing stimulation with music or motion, or
| decreasing it by blocking out sound with ear plugs. I've seen
| these play out and it seems to work. I think it's also safe to
| assume that someone wearing noise cancelling headphones is
| swapping one set of sounds for a quieter or at least less
| distracting one. If in fact they aren't just tuning people out
| by wearing headphones and not playing anything.
|
| And even neurotypical people can maintain throughput on a
| boring task by accompanying it to music. Laborers and militia
| just being the most obvious in media. I've talked to a couple
| of neurodivergent people who admit to "singing" a song in their
| head while working. Just because you don't hear the music,
| doesn't mean there's no music.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > > Other studies suggest that people who frequently "media
| multitask" (like listening to music while checking email or
| scrolling through social media while watching a movie) are more
| distracted and less able to focus their attention even when
| they're performing only one task. > > This was novel to me.
| Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus? I
| guess it's time to throw out my headphones...
|
| The part about Movies and Social media makes sense. They are
| both "heavy" tasks, so they each have their demand. But Music?
| I would say it depends on the music. Some is distracting, some
| not. There is optimized music for concentration, usually found
| in video games. But there is also "heavy" music that demands
| your attention, IMHO usually those with lyrics, especially
| inspirational lyrics.
|
| I'm curious whether they checked the type of music in those
| studies.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > This was novel to me. Listening to music negatively affects
| your ability to focus? I guess it's time to throw out my
| headphones...
|
| Not so fast.
|
| Actually, listening can help you focus _IF_ it helps you block
| some other distraction _AND_ you choose something that you can
| stop focusing on.
|
| When I worked at the office I used headphones whenever I wanted
| to block off chatter around me.
|
| I also have tinnitus -- light music helps me mask it so it
| stops being distracting.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| No study will convince me about music and my personal ability
| to focus. It needs to be the right music (Emancipator, Nicola
| Cruz, etc) but I can write 2000 to 5000 lines of high quality,
| tested code with the right song on repeat for the day and I
| know its the same for many others.
| dboreham wrote:
| Trance Techno all the way for coding.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I find techno too engaging most of the time. Progressive
| and trance are my usual white noise for work
| fouric wrote:
| Two counter-points:
|
| First, the point of a study is to be _generalizeable_ - that
| is, to apply to as many people as possible, usually _other_
| than oneself. If a particular technique applies to you, that
| 's great! However, most people aren't you. _Starting_ with a
| known general principle /technique (most people can't
| multitask) will, on average, put you in a better position
| than randomly picking someone's anecdotal evidence.
|
| Second, there are many documented cases where self-assessment
| of one's own traits or capabilities is inaccurate.
| Performance while cognitively impaired (alcohol & sleep
| deprivation), assessment of skill as a novice (Dunning-
| Kruger), and the ability to multitask are all well-known
| cases of it, with many more lesser known (e.g. whether one is
| a "visual" or "verbal" learner[1]) - so, you should be wary
| about having too much self-confidence in your own
| capabilities, _especially_ for something as poorly-understood
| as software engineering.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| > First, the point of a study is to be generalizeable
|
| That's why I specified myself. I completely understand the
| difference between generalizable results and individual
| results.
|
| > many documented cases where self-assessment of one's own
| traits or capabilities is inaccurate
|
| I completely understand that self-assessment is flawed, but
| there is also something to understanding oneself and
| trusting a self-assessment that is born out over decades of
| experience. I have never even come close to being as
| productive as I can be with the right musical piece and
| sharing this insight with others may prompt further
| research that sheds new nuance on the topic.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I just started getting into 20th century Italian film
| soundtracks for coding. I don't know why, but it's doing
| wonders for me.
| prancer_or_vix wrote:
| Suggestions?
|
| Where do you find them?
| sg47 wrote:
| I listen to Bach or Beethoven when I need to really focus.
| Works wonders. I use it sparingly so that I don't get bored.
| dave78 wrote:
| I used to find that listening to music without lyrics
| (classical, movie themes, etc.) did it. Lately though I
| just listen to a local radio station that plays music I
| like.
|
| I think I'm convinced that the difference is how well I
| know the music - listening to the radio is all songs that
| I've heard hundreds of times, so I don't think I'm
| subconsciously spending effort listening to the lyrics
| since I know them already?
| 988747 wrote:
| For me my poor English becomes an advantage here - I can
| listen to rock music and completely ignore lyrics, if
| they are in English and I don't deliberately focus on
| them. But if the radio starts playing something in my own
| language then it becomes distracting, even if I heard the
| song hundreds times before.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > with the right song on repeat for the day
|
| that's the key. You are possibly using 'the right song' to
| isolate yourself, so that helps you concentrate. The fact
| that it's on repeat also makes you don't pay much attention
| to it anymore. But try to listen to 'the wrong song', or
| worse 'the wrong new song', and it's probably going to have
| some effect.
|
| I mostly listen to 'concentration music' and lo-fi without
| vocals. Put something more complex and with lyrics...
| yumaikas wrote:
| I'd be very heavily interested in how much things like ADHD
| affects that media-multitasking bit.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Sorry, there is no way something like Trance music is less
| distracting than the background noise of real life. Just seems
| absurd to me.
| sureglymop wrote:
| As someone with ADHD, the background noise of real life is
| really distracting to me. I need noise cancellation
| headphones which play no sound to really deeply focus.
| II2II wrote:
| Given how many people are saying that they need music to
| concentrate, I was thinking something along the same lines
| and realized that listening to music doesn't necessarily
| contradict the study. It may simply be a case of people using
| music to pull their attention back to the task at hand in
| cases where the environment would pull their attention away.
| hosh wrote:
| People have different ways their brain is wired. What's
| absurd for you doesn't make it a good test for universal
| experience.
|
| Trance is distracting for me, but melodic progression works
| well for me, and sometimes vocal chillout trance. I still
| have to process random stuff with background noise from an
| urban setting, even on one of those noise generators.
|
| Back when I was living in a more rural setting, the song
| birds, the wind between the trees, the rain makes for
| something that is easier for me to focus.
|
| That is what works for me. My wife has difficulty
| concentrating without Netflix in the background.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| I just feel like the practicality of it is silly. Music
| doesn't help you focus, compared to what? Pure silence?
|
| Music helps me focus more than say, a noisy coffee shop.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| %s/less/more?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> like listening to music while checking email or scrolling
| through social media while watching a movie
|
| These are definitely not all same, unless you're literally just
| spinning the mouse wheel like a fidget spinner or watching a
| Fast & Furious movie. Even more complex music isn't the same as
| ambient or generic background music.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Not novel to me personally at all but I know that other people
| claim (perhaps rightfully so) that music helps them
| concentrate.
|
| I can't. Especially not with repetitive, melodic music like
| other siblings say helps them. That's an absolute killer as I
| starts repeating the melody in my head. Potentially even after
| I shut the music itself off.
|
| My suspicion is that many people have too many other
| distractions and music helps them because it's less distracting
| than the other things. Some people say white noise, such as
| from an AC helps them sleep. It drives me crazy and I can't
| fall asleep at all. It does beat a busy street with cars
| zooming by, revving, honking etc.
|
| Where music can help if there's a mundane repetitive task I
| need to just get done, because automating it does not make
| sense at that point. Certain music helps. Allegedly farmers use
| the same technique to make strawberry pickers faster.
|
| Have you never heard of or witnessed people that turn off their
| car stereo when they need to drive backwards?
| tiluha wrote:
| Music keeps my mind destracted enough that i don't get bored
| quickly and can enter the "flow state". If i get stuck i stop
| the music because it does negatively affect my ability to
| solve complex problems. Once i planned how to proceed, my
| music impaired brain is capable enough to finish the job.
| katbyte wrote:
| Different people are different? I can focus and be productive
| while watching tv shows or listening to music - but I
| frequently miss things in the show (which I'm ok with), and I
| know people who just can't even have it on nearby without it
| distracting them from the task.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| That's half my point, yes. Plus the fact that many many
| people probably just claim it helps them concentrate
| because it helps them drown out worse distractions. If
| these other distractions didn't exist, the music however
| would make it worse. Unfortunately though you can also get
| used to a certain noise floor though and if that noise
| floor is gone, that's uncomfortable in its own right. If
| you've never been, try to find one of those complete
| silence rooms where even your footsteps 'disappear'. It's
| deafening.
|
| Your TV example I think shows some of this very nicely. You
| are able to drown out the TV in your head but you aren't
| able to actually multitask. If you were, you'd know what
| went on in the show and also get your task done
| productively. Unless the TV itself drowns out other more
| distracting things, just not having the TV on would
| probably be better for concentration.
|
| YMMV in case you are so used to all the noise that you need
| "something there" because otherwise you get say tinnitus.
|
| I do the TV thing too sometimes but inadvertently. I watch
| TV, am a little bored perhaps and start say reading HN and
| at some point notice that the show is over. I totally
| drowned out the show.
| zuppy wrote:
| for me it works... sort of. the music helps me concentrate,
| but that's only because it eliminates the background noise. i
| would rather have silence, but this can't happen when almost
| everywhere you get open offices. so i guess it's both, it's
| worse than silence but it's better than what open office
| provides.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| I find that various white-ish noise sources help me a lot. I've
| tried everything down to "10 hours of baby crying" [1].
|
| My favorite lately is the La Palma volcano live-streams.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7pj3IHcQw8
| kenjackson wrote:
| It seems like this would also be task dependent. I've read
| other studies that listening to music while running helps
| people run longer, as an example. I know when I (used to) lift
| weights -- having the right music was a huge motivational
| factor for heavy lifts.
|
| For activities that require more intellectual attention, the
| articles assertion would be accurate to me personally.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I'm one of the worst when it comes to media multitasking, I
| actually watch uncut full-length stream archives at my own
| leisure alongside podcasts and whatever new music is out. A lot
| of it is knowing _when_ to listen, not _what_. It 's a lot
| easier to focus when you designate the music for work time, the
| podcasts for transit, and the streams for laundry-folding. I
| found it very liberating when I realized that I could really
| consume whatever media I wanted, as long as I made sure to fill
| the appropriate times with things I like.
| anaphor wrote:
| I find that I can focus better if I listen to a single track on
| repeat (I've done it literally for hours). The repetition helps
| for some reason because you're not surprised.
| anaphor wrote:
| And if you enjoy piano, there's some music specially created
| for this purpose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations
| yboris wrote:
| I suspect "music" means different things for people.
|
| Any time I have vocals / lyrics in music, it drags my attention
| away - so I only listen to non-vocal (in my case electronic)
| music.
| hinkley wrote:
| When this has come up before there are always a couple people
| who say they can't listen to music in a language they know,
| but listening to another language doesn't bother them.
|
| For me, and one of the reasons I HATE open office plans, I
| cannot focus if I can _almost_ hear a conversation. Speaking
| at a normal tone would be far less distracting. Similarly,
| someone is speaking in a language with too many borrow words
| in English. Overhearing Germanic languages in particular, my
| brain keeps trying to treat it like an English speaker with
| mush-mouth or having a stroke. If I just squeeze my brain
| harder with my furrowed brow, it will all make sense.
| mlok wrote:
| An alternative may be to listen to songs in a language you
| don't understand.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I find that music with lyrics is almost as distracting as
| people trying to talk to me. But music without lyrics is great
| to keep me awake. So I guess estimating the true effect of
| music on productivity will have a lot of variables that need to
| be accounted for.
| foobiekr wrote:
| In my experience, music and noise generators help, but silence
| (and a clean desk, both literally and in terms of visual
| distraction) helps more.
|
| Music, to me, seems to be the perfumed room deodorizer of noisy
| environments - it drowns out something that's a problem rather
| than lending concentration. I understand why people use it in
| open workspaces.
|
| When running or exercising music is great because it distracts
| the conscious mind and lets you avoid getting lost in thought.
| I think this is the same task it serves when, for example,
| coding. But hard tasks require that otherwise distracted mind
| and that's where it falls apart.
|
| But obviously YMMV.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| In my personal experience, listening to music is fine (and
| helps keep me on task while waiting for builds and tests and
| such) when I'm working on well-understood bits. But if there's
| something novel or complicated, I have to turn it off or else I
| just can't get into the right frame of mind.
| superfrank wrote:
| Maybe it's just my personal experience, but I find the
| reverse of that is also true. If the music itself is novel, I
| find it much harder to focus on the task at hand.
|
| I've got about 50 albums that I rotate through while I'm
| coding and I can focus on the task at hand fairly well with
| those on, but if I put on a new album by an artist I like, my
| ability to concentrate on code goes way down.
| dabernathy89 wrote:
| I've got the same experience, especially with music that
| has lyrics. I've got a few favorites that I can listen to
| just fine while working.
| mettamage wrote:
| I experience exactly this as well. I liberally use my volume
| up and down keys.
|
| Perhaps the following is too personal of a take, but we're
| talking about music YMMV ;-)
|
| Here it comes:
|
| Music doesn't make me feel lonely when I'm behind a computer.
| And feeling lonely is what made me into a mediocre
| programmer. For years I've not touched a computer because it
| just feels so isolating when you do it for 8 to 10 hours
| straight.
|
| But with music, with music I feel a shared experience between
| me, the artist, the feelings and the concepts. It helps that
| this form of "musical reasoning" doesn't cost me a lot of
| brainpower since I've been doing this on autopilot since I
| was a kid.
| UglyToad wrote:
| Exactly this, I think music helps with energy/motivation to
| smash through a well understood but fairly uninteresting
| task, which outside of the HN Elite is most of our day to
| days.
|
| For understanding a new concept or problem the finding here
| probably applies.
| richardatlarge wrote:
| Psychology research has long shown that outside factors
| impact poor performance but are not a factor in skilled work,
| which may apply here
| pdmccormick wrote:
| This reflects my experience as well. When I more or less know
| what I'm doing (where my typing is essentially the rate
| limiting step), playing familiar music helps me to focus, but
| when I really need to stop and think about what I'm trying to
| accomplish, I prefer as much silence as possible (I'll even
| switch from headphones to large hearing protection earmuffs,
| the kind you should wear if you're working with heavy
| equipment).
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I will build on it. Even type of music may make a difference
| in your mental state. Soothing background piano music may
| actually help your focus, while lyric heavy cadence of note
| distractions will do anything but since it is virtually
| designed for a distraction.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Also a significant difference between music with singing,
| and purely instrumental music.
|
| The human voice is highly distracting for most people.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| This is exactly it for me. For any task that has to do with
| words - writing, reading, code - lyrics are devastating.
| Even "lyric like" music, where an instrument is imitating
| speech for a track, grabs too much of my attention for me
| to focus.
|
| For most tasks, lyric free chill hop is a perfect balance.
| It replaces the chaos of my environment with a predictable
| backdrop that can fade out of focus.
|
| But for tasks that require extreme focus, like putting
| together a novel (to me) algorithm or exploring a new code
| base, even chillhop is too much. I have to find a place
| with absolute silence - anything that grabs my attention is
| devastating to the task at hand.
| miketery wrote:
| Agreed. I use brain.fm (no affiliation) and have found it
| great for focusing. While I ride around the city on a bike
| or euc, I find faster pace music great for getting in the
| zone / flow state.
|
| For the latter example, I wonder how much of it is though
| neaural networks wired together fire together. In essence
| Ive always listened to music while riding so it feels right
| and known, what if I had ridden all this time without
| music, would I be better? I don't know.
| kentrf wrote:
| Good on you for actually getting any useful out of
| brain.fm
|
| I've tried it a couple of years ago, and for me it was
| mostly repeating tunes and nothing particularly good for
| programming/focus work.
| spfzero wrote:
| Anything with Lyrics wrecks my concentration. Somehow my
| mind just can't stop tracking speech. Instrumental is OK,
| but silence is too.
|
| I know lots of people though who must have music on, or
| they simply cannot concentrate. For them, it might be that
| the music gives the mind something to hold on to, kind of a
| rail to help stay on track, and in the absence of that,
| their mind would wander farther afield.
| definitelyhuman wrote:
| The podcast Flow State changed my life - lyric-less music
| to drive focus, built around 30m pomodoro intervals.
| Highly recommended
| fsckboy wrote:
| pomodoro, being italian for tomato, what is a 30m
| interval of it? minutes i'm guessing rather than meters,
| but who knows...
| nsp wrote:
| For the sibling comment - minutes, the original timer was
| apparently shaped like a tomato
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
| maicro wrote:
| One thing I've heard recommended, and enjoyed a bit
| myself, is to listen to music with lyrics in a language
| that you don't speak (at all, I'd say) - the (heavy
| conjecture) theory being that the foreign language isn't
| recognized and parsed as "speech", so avoids the language
| areas of the brain.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Or music which you know very well, works for me. Hard
| rock from the late seventies go in one ear and out the
| other when I am writing.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| For me it's Rob Zombie's Hellbilly Deluxe. Not proud of
| it, but something about it gets me into a flow state for
| coding sessions.
| progre wrote:
| Nothing to be ashamed of, that album is great!
| shaan7 wrote:
| > might be that the music gives the mind something to
| hold on to
|
| The way it feels to me is it gives me a consistent
| background to work. For example, once I have decided on a
| particular way to solve a problem and its time to code -
| I put a long DnB track.
|
| Another way to describe it is that it gives my brain's
| CPU a consistent clock, so to speak xD
| toss1 wrote:
| YES. I can listen to things w/lyrics while doing CAD
| work; with any task requiring language, text, etc. it is
| too distracting, although some calm instrumentals are
| tolerable.
|
| When I really get focused on a bit of work, whatever
| music is playing literally disappears - if you came to me
| 3min later and offered me $millions to tell you what song
| just played, I'd get nothing.
|
| Cats are even more amazing - I can't find it right now,
| but I remember in reading studies in some of my college
| neuroscience classes where electrodes were put on cats to
| track their audio system with a clock/metronome sound in
| the background. You can trace the signal processing up
| through various nodes of the system at successively
| higher levels. When a mouse was let into the area, the
| metronome click trace disappeared from the data of almost
| every level of processing - it was entirely filtered out
| almost at the raw audio stage when the mouse showed up.
| That's focus.
| progre wrote:
| I'm finding myself deep in black and doom metal while
| coding. Both genres are kind of droning with very
| saturated sound spectrums, the main diffrence is the
| tempo of the songs really. Most importantly though, the
| vocals are generally growled and very low in the mix.
| Absolute best is vocals in languages I can't understand.
| Clean vocals breaks my concentration.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Check out Batushka. Black Metal with lyrics in Old Church
| Slavonic. Guarantee you won't understand anything. Also
| very black and beautiful music.
| [deleted]
| Xelbair wrote:
| i would argue that it isn't the type of music that affects
| you.
|
| it's your familiarity with it.
| jeffreygoesto wrote:
| That is my personal experience as well. The more familiar
| music is, and the better it matches my mood, the better
| it works as background for programming. When I was under
| a stress maximum, this (the whole CD) [0] blew away all
| distractions and got me super focused.
|
| [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NzkxZfhgHso
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| We are primed by nature to take anything social more
| important than everything else, except nature dangers. It
| makes totally sense to block out social cues
| "conversations" like lyrics to focus.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > Soothing background piano music may actually help your
| focus
|
| As I understand it, the relevant studies do not support
| this.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| Media multitasking is great.
|
| Tragic though, for advertisers.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| " _I think that multitasking between multiple_ tasks _has been
| somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people)
| for a while now_ "
|
| But what is a task? You emphasize the term and I have a general
| concept of what a task is in work and other contexts. But that
| seems too fluid to make broad statements about human behavior -
| even with studies combining two activities. How do we know one
| person's doing a task isn't another person's multitasking? It's
| intuitively plausible that two activities logically will be
| somewhat harder than doing each in sequence. But are all such
| combinations identical? A lot of challenging activities do
| involve the combination of subtasks - firefighters might break
| into a building looking for survivors while monitoring the
| situation of the building for safety. Just about any video
| involves satisfying multiple constraint simulateously, if they
| didn't, they'd be boring, etc.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _I think that multitasking between multiple tasks has been
| somewhat-generally known to not be possible (for most people)
| for a while now. However, this part of the article was novel:_
|
| There is no actual definition of what would constitute a "task"
| here and that alone makes all of it quite dubious in the way
| you outline and any other things in how it's often
| extrapolated.
| dboreham wrote:
| For me music is quite different than speech. Background music
| helps focus. Background speech kills it. Basically my brain
| tracks one or other source. Either I follow the podcast that's
| playing, and totally ignore the work task, or vice-versa.
| passivate wrote:
| I tend to be skeptical of most studies that come out of
| psychology. Over half of them seem to be junk -
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.18248
|
| That's not to say other areas are better by default. There is
| just a lot of junk science out there. "Study says X" is
| meaningless to me personally. "Study X was reproduced by A, B,
| C" is something I'd take notice of.
| [deleted]
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Listening to music negatively affects your ability to focus?
|
| All that phrase means is that an habit of listening to music
| while you do something is correlated with lessen focus while
| not listening to music.
|
| There's no causality there, and there's nothing about how deep
| is the focus while listening to music.
| p410n3 wrote:
| What is "listening" to music though. I remember multiple
| instances where I put on a Spotify playlist or an album, and
| went into full-focus for 2hrs, only to realize that I disabled
| looping and I have actually not heard any music for half the
| time at least.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| I wonder if it comes down to the intentional, sustained focus
| of ones attention?
|
| Or how does an open office compare to listening to music?
|
| For me I sometimes use music to mollify ruminative thoughts or
| feelings that intrude and distract me. Which results in a net
| increase in focus. Similar for the din of the open office.
|
| When I need deep thinking time both background noise and music
| are too interruptive or distracting and I need full silence.
| But I don't require that level of focus all the time.
| arichard123 wrote:
| I still don't understand what multitasking is. When does a series
| of actions become a single task instead of multiple tasks? Is it
| purpose?
| agumonkey wrote:
| Probably a matter of mental categorization with overlapping
| intermediate states.
| passivate wrote:
| I think its sort of a madeup term. I don't think emergent
| phenomenon can be divided into "tasks" the way we think of them
| in the real world. If as you're thinking on a task you're also
| recalling prior memories - is that multi tasking?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| (1) If you are a software dev you probably have a process that
| involves waiting for compiles, builds, downloads, etc. At the
| very least you have to have one thing you do when you are
| waiting.
|
| (2) Frequently people multitask to manage their emotions. It is
| like having a choice between a room that is too cold and too hot
| and you can be comfortable moving from one to the other.
| Spivak wrote:
| To expand on (1). Preemptive multitasking is the one that
| doesn't work very well because it interrupts your flow and the
| cost of context switching is high. Cooperative multitasking is
| fantastic since you only task switch when you're blocked.
| allenu wrote:
| Similar to (1), I somewhat have a process for async
| discussions.
|
| Sometimes, when I know starting a Slack thread will lead to
| lots of discussion, I wait until I have mental space to be
| ready to switch to them. Once those conversations start, it's
| very hard to concentrate on the current task.
|
| Other times, I know people will take a long time to respond, so
| I'll kick off those discussions early and be comfortable in
| being able to context switch away from it when needed.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| For #1, I try to pick a task that's closely related to the main
| task at hand. I think related tasks can help retain focus
| rather than losing it by shifting gears.
|
| For example, while my code is compiling, I might think through
| the specific steps I'm going to take to try it out when I run
| it here in a minute. Or try to plan out the next change I'm
| going to make to the code if this current code works. Or start
| a list of some unit tests I need to add.
| kosasbest wrote:
| I've organized my life in such a way that I deliberately avoid
| multi-tasking since I read years ago that it doesn't work, and
| have proven to myself over the years that it doesn't work. YMMV.
| One thing I have done is introduce friction into my workflow. So
| I have a dedicated hard-drive that I boot into that is _strictly_
| for coding. Another is _strictly_ for news & social media. This
| way if I'm coding, I am less likely to slide into
| Hackernews/Reddit/Twitter/Whatever. Friction is good and more
| people need to leverage it.
| ghgr wrote:
| > So I have a dedicated hard-drive that I boot into that is
| strictly for coding. Another is strictly for news & social
| media. This way if I'm coding, I am less likely to slide into
| Hackernews/Reddit/Twitter/Whatever. Friction is good and more
| people need to leverage it.
|
| But then you're also less likely to get back to work once you
| are in social media, aren't you?
| sharkjacobs wrote:
| I don't think that would be a problem unless you often find
| yourself absent mindedly almost accidentally starting to work
| when you mean to be taking a break.
| jscud wrote:
| I imagine the point is to not slide over to social media
| until the coding is done, at least for a predetermined
| segment of time. Is that the idea?
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| I'm fairly certain you do multitask in someone's definition
| thereof; you have simply defined what you are doing as "one
| task" and someone else might disagree and this alone makes me
| suspect of all literature on this matter.
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