AKA “Surviving the Open Office.” I typically don’t have earbuds in when I’m working, but when it is too quiet or too noisy or I am distracted by other thoughts, they help. In fact sometimes they help on their own – I put them in, get sidetracked before playing anything, and find I’m already working better!
However, the placebo effect does not always work, and I’ve been gathering options for what to play through those earbuds.
1. The One-Song Playlist
I’m a very lyrics-oriented person, which means music with lyrics is in general a poor choice to listen to if I’m trying to get work done. The exception is a short “focus” playlist, an idea I got (via some other forgotten blog post) from Joseph Mosby’s post The Psychology of a Small Playlist on Repeat. The idea is that as you listen to a song on repeat, it fades away from your conscious attention, while still occupying parts of your brain that might otherwise interfere with your focus. I’ve had success with a playlist of 3 favorites – by the third time through they are completely gone from my awareness.
What songs to use? Songs you already like listening to a large number of times. I would probably avoid pairing songs that are extremely different in character – a low, slow song followed by a loud, intense song might still jar you – but otherwise it’s an entirely personal choice.
2. Lyric-less Playlists
I have a few bookmarked Spotify playlists that are good for working. No lyrics, not too much dynamic range within any given song, a good steady beat – those are my criteria.
I started with Brain Food, a Spotify-curated list of “hypnotic electronic.” Some of the tracks I skip but overall it’s still a good choice. I fool around with a variety of trance playlists sometimes, such as ~ Trance Chillout ~, but every one has tracks I have to skip because they’re too jarring, or they have lyrics despite the “absolutely no lyrics” promise of the playlist description, or because there’s a sound that moves quickly from ear to ear and causes me actual pain.
Later I learned about Retrowave, music inspired by 80s movie soundtracks and video game music, and two same-name playlists became my go-tos: RetroWave / Outrun by Spotify, and the longer Retrowave / Outrun by fatmagic. They’re still my standards, with Brain Food coming in for the occasional change.
3. Non-Music Options
Sometimes even instrumental music is too distracting for me, and sometimes I just want a change. Spotify has white noise playlists, but I find the jumps from track to track very noticeable, so for those situations I have a collection of bookmarked noise-generation sites.
The first I discovered was Coffitivity, recordings of a coffee shop at different times of day. There are three long tracks available for free, and three more if you pay a small annual fee.
For nature noises I have been enjoying Noisli, which lets you layer tracks at individual volumes; it includes various nature-based tracks plus a cafe, train, and some more white-noise-ish options. I enjoy dry leaves blowing around paired with a quiet stream, or paired with a rainstorm for a physically impossible combination of sounds. Rain + train is another good combination as long as you keep the train volume down. I tried to pair cafe and fire, but I could never find the sweet spot for the fire volume between “way too prominent” and “so quiet it just sounds like static.”
The most recent additions to my rotation are the many generators from myNoise. I have barely scratched the surface of the long list, but the tonal drone and soundscape generators are what I’m drawn to: musical without having a melody, a slowly evolving soundscape. The feature that differentiates myNoise from other sound sites is that every track is split out by pitch, even its nature tracks, and each pitch’s volume is adjustable separately. That allows you to adjust the track based on your preferences, your hearing, or the background noise you are trying to drown out. I tend to like the “brown” preset, which makes the lowest pitch loudest and brings down the volume gradually as the pitch increases. The site has bandwidth limitations and other restrictions at the free tier, but even a $5 donation removes those permanently. It is hard to pick a generator to recommend specifically, but the one I found first was Osmosis, one of the soundscape generators; from there I went to Northern Lights, a tonal drone. Those will give you the idea!
Adorable doodle by ElisaRiva on Pixabay.