The Best Music to Listen to When You Need to Get Shit Done

(Photo: djsosumi)

I’ve always been very jealous of people who can listen to music and concentrate on their work at the same time.

My brain refuses to operate like that. I’ve tried, but it won’t budge on this one.

I find it too difficult to compute the three-way between the words on the screen, the words coming from the music and the words in my head. It’s chaos. It hurts.

What I can do is work very efficiently to music without clear lyrics (or lyrics in Icelandic – cheers, Sigur Rós). With these albums, I can find the zone.

Everything else is silence.

I get shit done.

Jeff Wayne, The War of the Worlds

BEST FOR: Racing the clock to the deadline.

Kraftwerk, Minimum-Maximum

BEST FOR: Late night thimbles of Onkel Walter’s legendary plum schnapps.

Orbital, In Sides

BEST FOR: Creative wormholes.

Brian Eno, Music for Airports

BEST FOR: When you need to chill the fuck out. Airports.

Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma

BEST FOR: Innovative use of ping-pong balls.

And here’s a growing playlist of go-to songs that work well for me…