awfulhorrid (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
awfulhorrid) wrote2009-01-21 09:21 pm
awfulhorrid) wrote2009-01-21 09:21 pm
Meditative Music
I recently ran across a reference to programming as a sedate and quiet activity. Sedate, I'll grant them ... unless it's full body contact programming!
The text was actually in a GURPS rulebook. It was in a section on a skill (Autohypnosis) that allows a character to put themselves in a bit of a trance that grants them a bonus to a mental activity at the cost of a penalty to other skills (or to even notice distractions.) Fine and dandy, heck I'd even consider it a fairly realistic skill! Then there's this bit of text ..." This must be a relatively sedate one, done in a quiet place (library, lab, monastery, or placid wilderness)."
Wait ... quiet place? Here, I disagree with the text. I tend to do a lot of my programming with music playing and often somewhat loudly. I think this may break the wording, if not the spirit of this text! This allows me to ignore the general office background of voices and the hum of equipment, but really that 'noise' is much quieter than the music! Beyond the volume, I tend to go with high-energy, frantic music, often including dance, tribal, martial Celtic, or even punk selections. Depsite all this, I would very much say that I do slip into a "programming trance." The funny part is that when I go into this trance, I'm not really aware of the actual music ... I'm aware it's there, I'll even find myself singing along with it, but all that's being handled by a different part of my brain. The rest of it is happily throwing around code and database table relations and all the other little programming elements with which I need to deal.
On the other side, and really one of the reasons I use music to block out the rest of the office, talking really distracts me. I can't do anything complex when there's conversation in the next cubical or even across the office if I can hear it well enough. For this reason I avoid podcasts, news shows, or stories while I'm working. Obviously I made an exception for the Presidential Inauguration yesterday, but I engaged myself with some tedious, minimal thought tasks that I had been putting off with my current project. (Mostly copy & pasting data.)
Does this make Frankie Goes to Hollywood or The Sex Pistols mediation music for me? I know I've purposefully meditated to various Pink Floyd cuts in the past, but mostly the deeper, slower, more introspective tracks. It actually never would have occured to me to use something like "Come on Feel the Noise" or "Pump Up The Jam" to induce this sort of alpha state, but in retrospect it seems to work, so I'm not going to argue with it!
The text was actually in a GURPS rulebook. It was in a section on a skill (Autohypnosis) that allows a character to put themselves in a bit of a trance that grants them a bonus to a mental activity at the cost of a penalty to other skills (or to even notice distractions.) Fine and dandy, heck I'd even consider it a fairly realistic skill! Then there's this bit of text ..." This must be a relatively sedate one, done in a quiet place (library, lab, monastery, or placid wilderness)."
Wait ... quiet place? Here, I disagree with the text. I tend to do a lot of my programming with music playing and often somewhat loudly. I think this may break the wording, if not the spirit of this text! This allows me to ignore the general office background of voices and the hum of equipment, but really that 'noise' is much quieter than the music! Beyond the volume, I tend to go with high-energy, frantic music, often including dance, tribal, martial Celtic, or even punk selections. Depsite all this, I would very much say that I do slip into a "programming trance." The funny part is that when I go into this trance, I'm not really aware of the actual music ... I'm aware it's there, I'll even find myself singing along with it, but all that's being handled by a different part of my brain. The rest of it is happily throwing around code and database table relations and all the other little programming elements with which I need to deal.
On the other side, and really one of the reasons I use music to block out the rest of the office, talking really distracts me. I can't do anything complex when there's conversation in the next cubical or even across the office if I can hear it well enough. For this reason I avoid podcasts, news shows, or stories while I'm working. Obviously I made an exception for the Presidential Inauguration yesterday, but I engaged myself with some tedious, minimal thought tasks that I had been putting off with my current project. (Mostly copy & pasting data.)
Does this make Frankie Goes to Hollywood or The Sex Pistols mediation music for me? I know I've purposefully meditated to various Pink Floyd cuts in the past, but mostly the deeper, slower, more introspective tracks. It actually never would have occured to me to use something like "Come on Feel the Noise" or "Pump Up The Jam" to induce this sort of alpha state, but in retrospect it seems to work, so I'm not going to argue with it!
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I like to dance to rythmic music which is sorta transelike for me, but I couldn't program anyway LOL.
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Programming trance is a pretty well-known phenomenon though; I've heard it called 'the Zone' by a number of people, and heard a number of programmers complain about how hard it is to get back into it when interrupted by a phonecall or someone coming in to ask a question or whatever. :)
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Typical exchange ...
End user: "Hey, how long is it going to take you to finish those modifications to our database application?"
Unexpressed: "Probably a Hell of a lot longer if you keep interupting me like this ..."