Yes, very interesting question!
I've always found it
much easier to concentrate on work - of whatever type, be it studying, writing, reading, etc - if I have some sort of music in the background. As long as it's music I like, it doesn't matter what it is; as Yvonne can testify, I can and will play the same old CD over and over again - poor Yvonne, on one visit, had to ask me to change the CD because having it repeated was driving her loony!
Once I'm actually working, I'm near-oblivious to what's playing; I just know that there is nice soothing music in the background.
And it really does help. At work, I have my own office (ie not shared) and so I can play CDs on my computer. I'd got out of the habit, though, for a while - until last semester when I was marking a large batch of essays (80 of them, as I remember) and, as it frequently does, the marking was making me tired and stressful. Then I put on some music and before I knew it I was getting through the essays faster and with less of a feeling of tension while doing it.
Maybe I'm just used to it and so the music helps me to relax! But it does drive my husband mad sometimes. He quite often works at home, but he needs silence to work, so no music then. And at other times, he really doesn't like hearing the same CD repeated over and over... so we tend to compromise on a radio station we listen to over the Internet.
Wendy
