When a build is more than a few seconds, I often drift off – to either productive or unproductive activity, but anyway into something I must snap out of. So for me personally, the following just discovered tweak can be a noticeable productivity enhancer:

You can select sounds for VS to play on the following events –

• Build succeeded,
• Build Failed,
• Build Canceled,
• Breakpoint hit.

In a remarkable display of weird UI design, these are set nowhere near Visual Studio, but rather under Control Panel / Sound and Audio Devices. In the ‘program events’ list, scroll down to ‘Microsoft Visual Studio’, and choose your sounds.