Deep thought

I'm watching a video in which people discuss where they like learning. One likes a coffee shop but another gets too distracted in that environment. One learns whilst riding his bike.

I think it depends what we mean by learning. Surely learning must be a multi-phase activity. Lev Manovich has written about what might be called a 'rip, mix and burn' process of learning:
Ripping in music or IT is the process of copying something; in learning this would be the transmissive phase in which a learner listens to a teacher or reads a book or watches a video.
Mixing in music is when a musician combines various different riffs or ideas etc (you can tell I'm not a musician!). This is a highly creative process. A learner needs to mix the new learning with other inputs and with what the learner already knows. This may require a period of unlearning while the learner's concepts modify themselves to take account of the new ideas.
Burning is when a musician writes down or otherwise records a new composition. Is this the constructivist phase in learning? It is the process of consolidating one's new knowledge.

For me, I need a high degree of peace and quiet when I am ripping so that I can devote my full concentration to the new information. This is because I am easily distracted. I don't like listening to music at this stage because I find it highly distracting. Is this because I am an auditory learner? Actually, I think I am better at visual learning: I prefer reading to lectures and although I pick up written languages quite easily when I am abroad I am rubbish at hearing and speaking them. Furthermore, I can listen to instrumental music unless I want to concentrate really hard so it is something about the words that is key. But this is standard attention channel psychology I think.

When I am mixing what I like to do most is to wander. I walk corridors, sometimes into other offices (most of my colleagues have learned that if I do walk in with an abstracted look on my face it is not because I want to talk to them; quite the opposite in fact. 

When I am burning I need intense peace and quiet. The process of consolidation is, for me, still part of the process of mixing. Writing this little blog snippet has meant writing and amending and deleting continuously. Young people don't understand how much word processing has liberated writers like myself from the tyranny of longhand drafts!