I think that explains my taste in "focus" music. Most of the "focus" playlists are ambient or classical. The ambient stuff is just there; it doesn't really engage my brain. It's like traffic noise. Classical is... I don't know, too structural? I find it distracting. My brain switches on when I'm listening to stuff that's challenging - dissonant, rhythmically odd, fast paced, changing tempos. But I've thought the same thing, that kind of music engages some part of my brain so the part that's more linear-thinking can get on with business uninterrupted.

So my "focus" playlist is post-bop Jazz with things like Chick Corea (especially Three Quartets), Steps Ahead, Keith Jarrett's Standards Trio stuff, early Wynton Marsalis. Some Coltrane, but not so much his meditative stuff - things like Giant Steps make my brain engage.

I can't multitask like that though - I can't have two auditory sources. When I'm talking to people, I have trouble picking out voices when surrounded by a crowd, or with several people talking at once. It's like I'm trying to make sense of all the background noise and can't pick up what's being said directly to me.

It's very similar for me. My music is EDM like many other coders, but it's more live performances, as they just don't end. Generally i'll grab a playlist of like 3 or 4 live shows from the same producer and i'll play them back to back.

But the multitasking thing is a bit different for me, it's more one-sense-at-a-time for me. My wife has laughed at me before because she'll come home and i'll be watching a youtube talk on one screen, playing music over the speakers, and programming something mundane all at the same time, but if 2 people are talking at the same time I have trouble hearing anything.

this. I find stuff like brain.fm too minimal, and not engaging enough, personally.

Interesting how everyone has a personal threshold of not engaging enough / too engaging.

I wish there was some reliable resource I could go to to find 3-5 hour blocks of edm type music.

ww.mixcloud.com/discover/edm/featured/

What about soma.fm?

Great phrasing of the feeling. I started listening to e-books, fiction, after finding that my programming thoughts don't really intersect my verbal thoughts. The benefit being I don't get distracted reading anything else because my speech center is already occupied. The only time I have to pause the music is during a planning session where I do have internal dialogue.

ATTN paki123: I can't reply to your comment but you should visit and read http://addforums.com/ for support, drug reviews/experiences and tips

Holy shit, I do this too. Is there a resource(besides adderall) that can help me deal with this and understand this better?

I "vouched" for your comment as it was showing up dead for some reason...

I can second sosuke, addforums.com was a great resource. I haven't been there for a long time though.

It probably showed up dead because of automated anti-spam tools that pick up on spammy keywords. Naming a scheduled medication by name is probably more than enough to trigger something like that.

I don't think that's quite it. All of the comments in their user profile are marked dead back a few hundred days.

I read them over, nothing looked overtly spammy or troll-ey, so I vouched for this comment as it seemed genuine.

I do think it's an anti-spam or anti-troll measure, but it looks like it's a mishit in this case.

That being said, is there anyone where we read up on what vouching/dead/etc... means on HN? Maybe one of the mods or someone can help explain some of it (or let me know that they won't explain it for anti-spam purposes...).

You probably saw this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10298512

That doesn't explain exactly how vouching works, and I think the "strength" of a vouch might be changed per-user (it no longer seems to do the same thing it used to, for me, at least).

I have not been diagnosed with ADHD, nor do I think I have all the symptoms of it (the way I see people on ADHD subreddit talk about), but I totally understand the thing you're describing.

I do have a problem with focus while working. One thing which really helps me is if I put on some audiobook I don't really care to focus on too much about, or some podcast or lecture, but it helps me focus. Not all the time, but say I am working on solving a coding challenge, then the part where I figure out which solution would work, I can't listen to anything and I need to focus, but the part where I actually implement the solution(especially if I have implemented something like that many times) then I can only do it if there is something else to distract other parts of my mind.

Exactly, I don't get the people that listen to whale music for coding. It's just... boring and makes me want to sleep...

If I need silence let there be silence, otherwise I enjoy some podcasts or music that pumps me up.

Those things really resonate with me. In some ways it feels like a person riding an slightly unruly elephant, and the music is to appease it.