Hacker News Reader

I've found having Netflix play in the background helps a ton. It has to be a show I've seen a few times and know the plot to, so I know what's going on without paying attention when I zone in and out of focus. Something easy to watch like The Office, Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother etc.

Doesn't always work though.

View on HN

Star Trek is this for me. Having watched the canon series several times over, much of the dialogue is second nature.

This. Also audiobooks of well-trodden stories can work. I used to use the Harry Potter books or the HHGTTG radio show recordings (both on audible) but this only works for programming or other non-math non-language synthesis tasks for me. If I need the language processing part of my brain to actually work for me, rather than being distracted by the voice input so it won’t interrupt me, then I need to use something like music without vocals. The fact that programming falls into the “shut up darn you language centers” category has always perplexed me, but it does. Maybe it just doesn’t always need that side of the brain and kinda takes over when it does? Not sure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com