[mindways]

For me, it really depends on the type of task. For things requiring high concentration or pinpoint mental focus, music gets in the way. For things requiring flow or invigoration, music can help me get/stay in the zone; and if something requires raw mental stamina (ie, it's something tedious or that I otherwise have to force myself to do), music can help me persist.

So, eg for programming: if it's a problem that's new to me or of notable complexity, music gets in the way. But if I'm hacking together a quick script that's just variations on easy/known problems, I can do it faster with music, and if it's something I'd rather not be working on music can up my productivity by lowering the number of brain-breaks I need to take.

In a completely different direction, for many forms of creative-artistic work, I find music helps massively.