That’s right you heard me, improve your productivity with sound. I’ve found 3 ways to boost my productivity, and concentration. There are three things that have really helped me get from my lazy distracted mode, into the pumped and ready to go mode. These three things are pink noise, binaural beats, and Tool.

Pink Noise

For me pink noise tends to help a whole lot. Now for those of you who don’t know what pink noise is, I’ll explain. Pink noise, in my words is static, all it really does is block out background noise. When there is no noise in the background, it really helps me focus on whatever I’m doing. If you want to read about all the technicalities of pink noise check out this wiki page.

Ever since I switched to Mac, I found that I was a lot more distracted when trying to do things. There are all these flashy things that divert my attention, and to this day I’ve found only one thing that really helps me out. It’s called Noise. It’s a simple pink noise generator for MacOS X. It allows you to start/stop, and control the volume of pink noise that it plays. It gets me focused in about 10 minutes, and as long as there isn’t anything really really loud in the background to divert your attention, it works like a charm!

Binaural Beats

Now I really don’t have any good way to explain what binaural beats are, all I can say is it’s noise and does funny stuff. Different frequencies do different things. For example there is a range of frequencies, that can help with OBEs, and there are different frequencies that can help you concentrate. There are even some to help you sleep!

The most popular use of binaural beats that I’ve heard of, in the mac world anyway would be Pzizz Pzizz is just a low quality binaural beat generator, with a freaky guy tacked on to it. There are some not so popular, and not so easy to use open source alternatives. The three generators that I’ve tried are SBaGen, Gnaural, and Brainwave Generator. If you want to play with some really quick BrainJav.

Music

I’m assuming you all know what music is. If not, then I doubt you should be reading this blog ;) For me some music is great for working, and keeping a constant rate of productivity. There’s only been a few things that keep me going. Tool being one of them. Then some heavy metal helps. But one of the best things to listen to while working is electronica, especially DnB (Drum and Bass).

For me Tool is a godsend. I don’t know what exactly is good about it, why I like it so much, or why it helps me work. It just makes work a whole lot faster. If I’m not listening to something to not help me concentrate, it may take me 2-5 hours to make code for a decent website (xhtml/css layout). When listening, I’d say it’d take me 2 hours tops. I’m not sure if many people are like this, but it seems that audio helps me, to be productive. Not just a little bit, but a whole lot.

I’d like to know if others benefit from similar audio “rituals” as I do.