You put the headphones on
to shut the office out,
and the playlist starts
with a song you love.
It feels like focus.
The room is gone.
The mood is good.
Your foot is going.
Then you look up
and you have read the same function
three times
and could not tell anyone
what it returns.
Here is what is happening.
The part of you
that follows the words in a song
is the same part
that follows the words on the screen.
Code is language.
So is the design document,
the email you are drafting,
the name you are trying to find
for a variable.
A voice singing in your ear
is language too,
and your attention
does not get to ignore it.
Words pull on you
whether you meant to listen or not.
So you are reading two things at once,
and one of them
has a chorus.
It is worse with songs you know.
You are not only hearing them.
You are finishing each line
a moment before it arrives.
It is worse again
with a podcast,
which is a person
talking straight at the part of you
you were trying to use.
None of this means silence.
Plenty of people work badly in silence,
and plenty of offices
do not offer any.
It means choosing the sound
for the job.
For reading,
writing,
debugging,
anything where the work is words,
pick sound without them.
Instrumental music.
Music in a language you do not speak.
Rain, a busy café, a fan.
Something steady
that fills the room
and asks for nothing.
For the jobs that are mostly hands,
renaming files,
working through a checklist,
tidying the board,
put the songs back on.
They help there.
Try it as an experiment,
not a rule.
One week with words
during your hardest hour,
one week without,
and at the end of each hardest hour
write down what you actually finished.
Most people
are surprised by the difference,
and a little annoyed,
because they liked the music.
You can keep the music.
Just give it the hours
when your mind
is not busy with other sentences.
– Serguey Asael Shinder