Agreed, also neurotypical (probably), and I wrote about it in another comment, but sometimes distracting myself from physical and mental fatigue help me focus on the task at hand, especially considering the subject matter of my work can sometimes be a bit dry.
I am a stenographer. I cover board meetings with lots of people speaking about moderately technical subjects. I do my best work when I can watch a hockey game while I listen to what people say. When the night wears on and fatigue starts to set in, having a distraction like that is a huge help.
I just recently got a WFH job, and outside of meetings, 80% of my day is spent bobbing my head to music while working. I do have to pause sometimes when something isn’t clicking and I need to shift my focus and sometimes literally read out loud what I’m reading. Then the music comes back once I remember that I paused it.
I very much feel that. Listen too music most of the time, or have a video running, then pause it when I need focus more. That’s honestly how I’m most effective.
I realized zoom’s noise canceling or whatever is such that it doesn’t usually pick up on music playing in meetings. It’s usually doom (eg: spaceslug) or synth pop (eg: cold beat).
It’s only been one month, and it’s the best job I’ve ever had. The freedom is nice being WFH, but even when I go into the office, people are armed with nerf guns, and the kitchenette fridge is stocked with beers for Friday mini happy hour.
Noise cancelling tech works by creating a waveform this is opposite ambient noise so they add up to a flat line. I’m convinced that this works in a similar way, but more like filling in the thought gaps with a complementary data input that has a net result of evening it all out.
I always thought of thrashing out to focus being like having deep thought time while crocheting. You’re distracting most of your senses and focusing in on the important bits.
There’s also just a pace setting component where the high tempo just helps me feel like I’m flying - I’m moving so fast that I can’t look away so my ADHD has less of a grip on me and I can focus better.
As a neurodivergent living with another neurodivergent it’s very much a case of that “sometimes” and there’s very much a factor of it being “controlled chaos”. There are moments I need silence and others I’m grooving in the tempo.
Like rocks bouncing crazily down a mountainside, but somehow precisely aimed at the same time.
And at the other end of that spectrum, Bach and other early music. Which is maximally-bamboozling minimalism; you stare at it like a hyponitized chicken wondering how he can wrangle infinitely deep pattern out of like three notes.
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