Posts Tagged ‘headphones’

Now and again I am forced to work on a customer site.   Far away from my own home office, I can find myself perched on ‘whatever desk is available’ whilst working on a customer project.

This can be far from ideal, and I often find myself sandwiched between Alison from accounts and Malcolm in Marketing (*names changed to protect the innocent).

Now whilst it can be good to rub shoulders with other people (saves going stir crazy at home), one of the problems that a busy freelancer can face is the distraction of office talk.    Who is going out with whom, what happened at last night’s party, and what happened in the program that was on TV last night.

All of this can be very distracting when you are desperate to complete a project and get the invoices raised.

One solution of course is to plug in some headphones and code/write/design to the sounds of your favourite tunes.   But sometimes concentration is required, so having the Spice Girls tell you what they really (really) want can be equally off-putting.

Sounds of Nature
So let me suggest to you, the sounds of nature.   Rather than having 9-inch nails, Nirvana or Girls Aloud screaming at you, why not drift away with natures ‘white noise’.

As I type this, my ears are filled with the pleasant sound of surf on a tropical beach.  There are birds in the distance, the sound of the breeze stirring trees– it’s all nice.  It is calming, soothing, blocks the sounds around me, and best of all, it does not distract from what I am doing.

It’s a perfect solution.  And you don’t have to stick with the sound of waves.  Rain (with thunder) is great, as are the wild animals of Africa or crickets in the grass – there is lots of choice.

Give it a try – for FREE
Want to give it a try?   Well I am providing you with two 20 minute tracks for free (from a copyright free source) – one track of the surf and one track of the rain – both are very good.   Download the free natural audio tracks here. (zip file containing media files – about 57mb)

Going One Step Further
If like me, you find that your concentration levels go up when listening to the sounds of nature, than I would also direct you to a site which offers very high quality and very good nature sound collections (reasonably priced).   Listening Earth is an Australian small business formed by a Husband and Wife team, who travel the earth recording (and photographing) nature.  Their downloadable CD collections are what I now listen to whilst working – they are very good.

And I am all for supporting interesting small companies such as these, regardless of what they do as a business, or where they are based.   Recommended.