Noise for academics
March 2nd, 2007 by shaneHere are a few posts that other readers recommend you check out:
On the recent Google group The Efficient Academic, there was a short discussion about the best music to study to. Obviously this is a matter of personal choice to what kinds of music creates a calm relaxed focus state of mind. Most people find that non vocal music is the least distracting. Favourites of mine are classical, with artists like Bach and Mozart, Chopin and most baroque period work. I also like to listen to droney ambient, such as Brain Eno and Stars of the Lid - and often leave a Pandora radio station with “artists similar to” them (if you haven’t tried Pandora I highly recommend trying it out). Internet radio station Dronezone on Soma.fm is also excellent for this kind of “music”.
Probably the best sound for study is silence, especially when you need to really concentrate. But silence is often hard to find. For noise elimination, I use Sony Fontopia earbuds, and cheap copies when they stopped working. Without music playing, they do a reasonable job just as ear plugs, and with sound piping in at a reasonable volume they pretty much block out all background noise.
Another option is noise canceling headphones. I haven’t tried them due to their relatively high cost. For a cheaper option, you can get industrial ear protectors from a hardware store (or even eBay, where I got mine), which I sometimes use to block out the fan of my PC and traffic hum to get the ultimate in pristine silence in my office. These combined with the ear-buds are a killer combination, if you don’t mind looking stupid.
If you need some white noise to block out distractions, the sounds of nature can be very soothing, though people in the office next door might wonder if you are keeping animals in your office. Free on the web are these services, which allow streaming audio:
Iserenity.com - http://www.iserenity.com/environments.htm
Sound sleeping - http://www.soundsleeping.com
There are is also the shareware software on the PC Atmosphere deluxe which I have tried, and liked, though it had a worrying memory leak that inexorably attempted to gobble up all my RAM until I confined it to ALT-F4 doom.
Another option is literally to have white or pink noise playing. The makers of Atmosphere deluxe have another program which does specialises in this, Sound Masker. There is also http://chatterblocker.com/ . Both do things like playing natural sounds like rainfall, as well as having background chatter, which does a good job at masking out distracting background noise. For the Mac, there is noise.
There are times however, such as late night before a deadline, when music can serve as a very motivating distraction. Here I find cheesy music works best, naturally this includes a lot of music from the 80’s. I have investigated this through a careful and lengthy investigation based on how much my speed increases whilst running up hills whilst listening to music on my mp3 player. This combined with and the nature of the lyrics, leads me to a top ten, in no particular order.
The top ten motivational songs, ever:
Simply the best - Tina Turner
The final countdown - Europe
Don’t stop me now - Queen
Rocky Theme - Bill Conti
Eye of the tiger - Survivor
Let’s stick together - Bryan Ferry
500 Miles - The Proclaimers
Fame - Irene Cara
Don’t Stop - Fleetwood Mac
Lose yourself - Eminem
Ahh, the great musical legacy of the 80’s…
Technorati Tags: noise - white noise - pink noise - chatter - motiational music - silence - noise cancelling
About the author: Shane is a post doctoral researcher in Psychology. When not doing things which end in athlon, and running around being busy, he wonders whether if he literally means running when he says he is running around, or if it is just a metaphor. If you enjoyed this post, make sure you sign up for our mailing list or subscribe to our RSS feed!
September 20th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Hi,
one very nice program to shield noises from outside while working is http://www.soundborb.com. Especially the ocean and traffic borbs are great for this. Try it, hardly anything gets through!
October 4th, 2007 at 7:36 am
[...] 4, 2007 Posted by bala in Interesting Reads, Productivity. trackback The moment i read this post by Shane, i remembered one of my friends who was a designer and he always had this acoustic setup [...]
November 22nd, 2007 at 7:26 am
[...] talked about how managing music and academic paper collections are similar here; See also ‘noise for academics‘ by [...]
March 25th, 2008 at 5:04 am
buy hgh 1000…
buy hgh 1000…
May 12th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
This HGH “controversy” in sports will be meaningless in a few years. HGH is not a steroid. It’s found naturally in the body. Banning it as a performance enhancer is like banning caffeine, sugar, chewing tobacco, or aspirin as a performance enhancer. Shooting HGH is passe now because it can be obtained legally over the counter in a homeopathic oral spray form which does not involve needles. There are about 30 companies selling it over the internet, the most popular with athletes is 21stcenturyhgh.com. Get over it. HGH is here to stay, like caffeine, sugar, chewing tobacco, and aspirin.
May 21st, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I love the song Eye of the tiger. I use to listen to that a lot as a little kids. Its epics =P
Lose yourself, is also a very good song. Eminem has produced some very good stuff.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:19 am
Well, while it’s true that noise cancelling headphones can be a good alternative, wearing it for a long time while you study can hard on the ears.
For me, I only use noise cancelling headphones when I’m listening to awesome music, be it motivational or classic. It’ really keeps me focused and takes the attention (and strain) away from my ears, while I work.
Trust me, listening to wonderful music without noise from your dog barking can be a world of a difference!
Cheers,
Ellen