headphones

This morning I decided to stay home to concentrate on the new and surprisingly involved task of designing and coding up the pattern for subject-task assignment for an upcoming experiment such that the paltry number of subjects I'm likely to be able to recruit will provide me with that magical value of the P family sought after by so many other desperate graduate students like wolves after a wounded moose. (Wow, check out the length of that intro sentence!). Anyway, as I settled down to think through my design, I was plagued by one auditory distraction after another - car alarms, truck engines, my neighbor's bass, even jackhammers (I kid you not). Growingly increasingly frustrated with the noise and my inability to concentrate, I realized that the solution was not less noise, but more noise! I strapped on my headphones and went back to work. In 5 minutes I was not only working more effectively, I was calmer and frankly happier.

I've heard many people, usually a few years my superior, complain about people listening to music while they 'should be working'. I wonder if this reaction has anything to do with the fact that they grew up in a time when it was actually possible to find a quiet place to work on a regular basis? Now, in increasingly compressed living and working quarters, it seems that music is one of the few ways left to provide oneself with a bit of cognitive privacy.

Do you listen while you work? What is your favorite artist/genre for getting something done?