Music to Let you Concentrate
Be careful. Music engages your creative hemisphere. This doesn't matter much if what you're doing is a simple, repetitive task. But if you're trying to design or program, it might kill your ability to "think outside the box" and invent creative solutions.In my case, listening to music while programming has a very pronounced effect: I will spend 30 minutes crafting a function that will do something. The function will eventually work. And then I will stop listening to music and several minutes later notice that the function was entirely unnecessary, because I can make an architectural or data structure change instead and avoid writing the function altogether. This is something I am unable to do while listening to music.Once I noticed this, I started being careful: I'd listen to music while configuring routers, but not when planning and designing the changes. You get the idea.So, before you start listening to music while working, I'd advise you to check if your brain works the same way (the effect might not be exactly the same for everyone).These days I mostly use natural sounds (the Naturespace app for iOS is great) and good headphones to mute background noise.