I was just talking with my roommate about when different people are productive. I never understood those people in college who were like "Well, it's 2am. This paper is due for my 10am class tomorrow. I'll just wake up at 7am to finish it!" No way in hell. I would stay up to 4am to finish it. Same amount of sleep, just at different times. Or every single time I read an interview with a writer about their "process" and they're like "I wake up at 6am and immediately go to my desk overlooking the lake and I won't let myself stop writing for an hour. Then I get ready for the day and come back to it in the afternoon." WHY? I don't think I've ever produced anything before, say 4pm. More realistically, before 9pm. I always do my best work between 10pm and 3am. I hate morning people. As for work habits, it goes something like: I stare at the screen for about twenty minutes, and then wander around the internet for an hour or so all while writing in the back of my head. Then I'll write a sentence or two, hate it, and go back to internet roaming and watching TV for an hour or two, all while inwardly berating myself for not getting anything done. Then I'll get a snack because I probably can't concentrate because I'm hungry, right? Then I'll watch a few more episodes of whatever TV show I'm into at the time. Then I'll go find my roommate and hang out with him for a while. Then either: a) I'll be mid-step right in the middle of whatever I'm doing as a distraction when all of a sudden the lightbulb goes off and I stop everything and it all rushes out without a single pause. or b) I'll give up and try to go to sleep, but an hour will go by where I"m tossing and turning and realizing that I'm writing everything perfectly in my head, so I grab my laptop and try to remember everything as I write it completely half-asleep, and wake up the next morning barely even remembering that I finished what I worked on.
I constantly have music on just about wherever I go. At work radios are always on, not always to the channel of my liking. At home my computer is always running with my stereo and music is on even when I sleep. Complete silence drives me absolutely nuts so paying a little extra for the power bill each month is nothing compared to me not going nuts.
When I was a camp counselor every friday night we had to write letters home to the parents. And we had a panel of people reading these letters, and harshly grading and judging them. Too often they would kick them back. With 9 to 14 campers in a cabin, counselors swiftly learned that they needed to write each letter quickly and to knock it out of the fucking park on the first try. Else they would still be writing til after midnight. For me listening to speed metal / death metal somehow helped me get through it relatively unscathed. And that habit has stuck with me ever since. Now a days I don't need metal to help me focus and perform, most any good music will do. But it definitely helps me focus, do well and speed up my performance in most anything from physical labor to number crunching on a spreadsheet.
Gotta have it. Without - ambient noise, get distracted, catch other conversations, mind starts to wander. With - none of the above. Can't do lyrics though. I started listening to hip hop instrumentals, which lead to some dope beats with some spanish guitar in them, which lead to full on flamenco. I basically listen to the same 100 tracks or so, all in spanish. Some instrumental, some with lyrics. It's not like I have any clue what they're saying. The lyrics and music do add a bit of distraction, but that distraction is far less than the mind-wander than happens otherwise. I'm able to resist going to news sites, email, etc for longer with music. Side effect: love me some spanish guitar. Example of badass studying music: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8zT_OxsDFs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8zT_OxsDFs</a>
I drive around in heavy equipment about half the time at work and I couldn't go without music. It makes operating a little less boring.
I have an incredibly hard time reading with music playing in the background, but always have a song in my head. I even have a hard time reading a book in the same room as someone else watching a TV. For some reason I end up rereading sentences and I can't comprehend a thing until the noise stops. Though while I'm reading say a forum, I have a song playing in my head and I can read everything without any issues. I'm also one of those that prefer having music at work. I fell I can get so much more accomplished when I take my mind off of the stupid menial task I may be doing at the time.
Similar for me, reading and music with lyrics or a movie/show is impossible. I end up reading the same paragraph over and over again. It's not as bad when I'm working on some mindless excel file or number crunching, but reading comprehension goes to the negatives.
I basically have to listen to music at work. Our computers are from the mid-80s and make the most monotone whirring sound. I have to play music to drown out the sound. When studying, I listen to music because most of the assignments I do are creative, and music gives me inspiration.
I love music way too much to listen to it in the background for pretty much anything, let alone work.
Awesome poll question & for me its complicated. If I'm using my ear buds then no matter what music I listen to I can't do much more than browsing forums like this one, fb, personal email, & flickr. If I use speakers then its got to be an internet radio station where I don't know the lyrics to the songs or I will sing along in my head and I'm unable to focus while troubleshooting a technology problem. Whats interesting is that in boarding school & college I had to have music playing or I couldn't concentrate. That was 20 years ago I was always listening to stuff I knew the lyrics to whether on fm radio or vinyl.
I'm most probably another undiagnosed ADD idiot, but whenever I'm trying to study, my mind wanders - suddenly everything I have ever thought about pops right back into my space. It's incredibly frustrating. I have to do everything in 30 minute blocks - more than that and my mind literally feels like it's about to explode. As a result, no music or anything else turned on while I'm studying. I CANNOT even look at the computer without my mind wandering, so if I have to do research on the internet, I am completely fucked and will get nothing done. I'm still an exceptionally poor student; I'm one of those people who learns by being shown examples and making my own notes. It's why my degree took 5 years and not 3. I also tend to focus too much on minor details and not the bigger picture.
It depends a lot of the content of what I'm doing. If there are words involved (reading, writing), I can't do music. My brain can't handle processing words both visually and audibly at the same time, so I end up focusing on the music too much or accidentally mingling the two ("What is a Kanye lyric doing in my paper?"). However, for work, I do a lot of Excel work, and I prefer to have music then, because it drowns out incidental noise. I don't hear nearby conversations, people walking by, etc. and there's no risk of unconsciously confusing the two. Also, I find absolute silence unnerving and distracting. It's just too quiet, it becomes unnatural and weird.
I'll second the acoustic guitar. Don Ross, Andy McKee, Antoine Dufour, Craig D'Andrea - basically anything Canadian or from the CandyRat record label. Although now that I'm in my Big Boy Job, I've found that I can wrangle Excel and SAS just fine while headbanging.