Creativity Boosters?

What gets your creative engine in gear? I know a lot of people who have to have music in the background before they can do anything, be it write or study. I've never understood that. If I'm listening to music, how can I focus on the task at hand? If I have music in the background, I'll just end up procrastinating, not getting any useful work done. I might could see instrumental music turned down low -- it's the words that I think would distract me. Now, except for songs I've known well for a long time, I can't actually understand the words to most songs, so maybe straining to make them out is the actual distraction, I don't know. But it seems to me that two tasks involving language -- listening to to the words of music and writing words on paper -- almost have ot be mutually exclusive. And yet I know a lot of people who do this and are, in fact, productive. How does this work?

I might could see instrumental music, though. The idea of a "soundtrack" for a particular scene is appealing. By envisioning the scene playing on a movie screen, I can definitely see where you could be more descriptive in your writing. In general, though, I like to have sunny days and maybe an ocean sounds CD playing in the stereo, just because I'm most happiest at the beach. Other than that, most anything else is just a distraction. It's interesting how the brain works -- and is so different for everyone -- isn't it?