Do you use music to zone out and be productive?

For years I’ve always used music to get myself into the zone and be as productive as possible. It only works when I’m doing solitary stuff like development, writing a paper/article/book, or just knocking tasks out. At first I had to use headphones to not disturb others (our whole production room was silent with everyone blasting their headphones) then when I started working from home I was able to use my home office speakers. For me, it’s night and day on how much more productive I am with headphones on / off.

On occasion the last few months I’ve posted to Facebook or Twitter what I was listening to… seems more and more I’ve seen comments from people recommending work music to each other. Some of the best music I’ve collected for work stuff has come from recommendations so I figured I’d post it and see what others jam to. I’m sure when someone sees this list they’ll ask about podcasts. I’m a big fan of the SharePoint Pod Show, DNR and RunAs Radio but I can’t listen to talk radio when I’m working… it’s too distracting or I miss the whole thing.

For me, my work music collection breaks down into a few groups. There’s the heads down trance-like music that’s fantastic for coding or thinking (minimal lyrics), to chill music to head slamming rock that can only be listened to loud as hell. So… here you go (in no particular order)!

Techno / House / Trance

ATB
DJ Bolivia
Paul Oakenfold
Timo Mass

Chill

Dave Matthews Band
Jack Johnson

Crank it Up!

Alice in Chains
Stone Temple Pilots
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Linkin Park
Evanescence
Flogging Molly
Pearl Jam
U2
311

posted on Friday, April 17, 2009 1:36 PM

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# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 2:36 PM Richard Harbridge

Cool to know. Listening to music while working has evolved for me and as a result I listen to alot of genres I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

For me personally I find if the music has no words or the words are in the background it is less distracting and helps me maintain concentration (as it tunes out other noises (especially around the office)).

For that reason I find chillout/orchastra/opera to be great for high level thinking and diagramming. I find hardcore beats/epic metal etc (or recently the tag "8 bit") to really get me working faster when developing or doing more mindless tasks.

If you haven't already try using grooveshark or last.fm and put in a tag like chillout or 8 bit. Sometimes its much nicer than your own playlists because it's stuff you might not have heard before.

Thought id mention that in case you didn't know about those online mix em up stations. (Grooveshark allows you to build playlists of music, which is much nicer, but last.fm takes less bandwidth etc)

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 2:40 PM Todd Klindt

I definitely use music to help me concentrate. I find I do the best with instrumentals so stuff like Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Paul Gilbert, Steve Stevens, and instrumentals from my favorite bands.

tk

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 2:40 PM Asif Rehmani

I'm in the same boat. I like different categories of music for different types of tasks/moods.

My radio of choice: pandora.com (also available on iPhone) It's awesome!

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 2:41 PM Randy Drisgill

For the 1st category check out Massive Attack (I promise you have heard them in TV or movies before).

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 5:11 PM Marc

Same here! I use Pandora all the time though (with headphones). I have stations for various moods, so I'm also finding new music in the process.

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 6:50 PM Andy Burns

For heads down coding...
- Hybrid
- The Prodigy
- More Hybrid
- Mint Royale
- Even More Hybrid

For the retro moments - Chemical Brothers.

All of which I guess would fall into the first category. Timo Maas is good, but ATB is a little too fast for me.

Oh, and Massive Attack - theme tune to 'House' is a song called 'Teardrop' by them. Fantastic tune.

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/17/2009 8:14 PM Brian Farnhill

Absolutely agree that music makes more more productive. I tend to stick to thinks like Fall out boy, good charlotte, my chemical romance, yellowcard, and that sort of stuff!

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/18/2009 11:34 AM SeanE

I have a constant loop of about 8 GB of music streaming over my Media Monkey Auto DJ. It's quite a variety but mostly "chill" adult alternative of the Jack Johnson variety. Occasionally some odd stuff will pop up that makes me laugh, such as MP3 clips from The Family Guy or Monty Python. Odd stuff that made it into the mix that I keep in mostly for shock value.

Recently my favorite music to listen to while working is the Underground Hip Hop station on Pandora.com. The only issue is the language, I keep it playing on low on my desktop speakers but anytime I step away I make sure to mute it. Occasionally there is some profanity. The cool part about it is that I don't fully hear the true lyrics so I'm primarily jamming to the underground hip hop beat. Check it sometime... but make sure not to offend if they throw out profanity.

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/18/2009 12:27 PM Nick Kellett

Pink Floyd seems to really help me program, and I second Randy's advice of Massive Attack. Right now on my iTunes programming playlist I have some Orbital and Underworld. I do find headphones seem to lower my productivity - low to begin with :) Maybe because they feel constraining?

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/19/2009 9:33 PM Ivan Sanders

Hard Rock
Disturbed
Bullet for my Valentine
Avenged SevenFold
Seether
Marilyn Manson
Punk
OffSpring
House
Armin Van Buuren
BT
David Guetta
Deep Dish
Benny Benassi
Clasic Rock
Led Zeppelin
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Foreigner
Styx
Pink Floyd

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/20/2009 5:40 AM Dan

Check this podcast out! Guaranteed to turn you into a code machine! http://funkylondon.podomatic.com/

Also Martin Craft, Foo Fighters, Underworld, Live and Oasis for the morning session when the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet :)

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/20/2009 2:50 PM Aaron Wood

Life in the cube has forced me to listen to music to drown out the other noise. Thank you Pandora and all those that share their iTunes Library. I'm with you AC - no talk show - I either listen to the words and don't work, or just flat ignore the podcast. I can however always handle an afternoon Cardinals baseball game.

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/20/2009 3:09 PM Tom C

Mainly contempory jazz here...

Rippingtons
Paul Taylor
Dave Matthews Band

I wish I could use my Rhapsody account at work, but no streaming is allowed.

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/23/2009 3:57 AM Gunnar

I'm listening Big R web radio or some of my favorite bands (very noisy ones for most people.... - Tiamat, Children of Bodom, Arch Enemy)

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/23/2009 10:11 AM Dan H

i use my rhapsody account - no one has said not to and it seems to use less resources on my dog of a laptop than if i use media player and music from a flash drive (my company just won't go for the setup AC has). for the techno I like Moby, Enigma, Achillea, Black Hands Upon Earch, Buddha Lounge.

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/24/2009 12:53 PM Mike Janeczko

My music taste includes Rock(all flavors), R&B/Soul (Motown especially!), Rap (all flavors), Pop, and very few country songs. For hard code coding, it has to be either Rock and/or Rap, the more I get into it, the more to the extreme they get. For the more abstract tasks (design, architecture work, etc.) it has to be R&B/Soul. When I am answering email, reading blogs, it is Pop. Yes I am listening to Pop as I write this.

And when I am reading book, I need to buy some noise cancelling headphoens. I need it to be dead quiet!

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/25/2009 6:06 AM PerS

When I program and need the beat, I listen to:
Faithless
Gotan Project
Ida Maria
Kaiser Chiefs
Massive Attack
Portishead (if you like Massive Attack, you'll like Portishead)
Röyksopp
The Killers
The Lords of the New Church
The Prodigy
Tiesto
Tilly and the Wall
Underworld

When reading documentation I need a slower beat:
Ane Brun
Melody Gardot
Nils Petter Molvaer (contemporary jazz, you'll find him on itunes)
Tom Waits

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 4/29/2009 7:37 AM Mark Willems

I recognize that when I need to do a lot of work I love some house music on my ears.

It's great to be Dutch, because we bring forth the best DJ's in the world (Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Sander van Doorn, Ferry Corsten, Fedde le Grand, etc, etc.)

For my music I always 'shop' over here:
http://www.musicincontrol.nl/index.php/category/livesets/trance/

The radio shows of Tiesto(Club Life) and Armin (A State of Trance) are great!

# re: Do you use music to zone out and be productive? 5/7/2009 5:57 PM Keith Richie

hehe, cool...posted my list myself a few months ago. See
http://blog.krichie.com/2008/07/25/my-current-playlist-of-codin-music/

Pretty much the same now

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