Airfront

Working in open creative offices usually means lots of chatter, discussion and an office jukebox. In this article I share some tips to help regain your focus.

Speak up

The first and easiest thing you can do to alleviate these distractions is to be vocal. If you do it in the right way then you might find simply asking to turn the music off or for conversations to be taken elsewhere (such as a meeting room) will get you what you need.

If you’re trying to get work done and not simply because you dislike the choice of music then I’ve found people I’ve dealt with very understanding. At the least I’ve been helped to move to a desk away from the office jukebox or away from those employees that use the phone often as part of their work, etc.

Get good Headphones

For the first 6 months of freelancing I was using default iPod white ear-buds, these are just not up to the job for two reasons. The first being they leak sound very badly so you yourself become a source of distraction for other people. The second reason is they just do not block out the sound from the outside world sufficiently.

You need good “closed back” headphones, which simply means they sit over and around your ears. They are sometimes referred to as “closed cup” earphones. Obviously the more you spend the better they’ll be. You can get noise canceling headphones, which means they have built-in technology that prevents noise getting in. These would be ideal but I realise not everybody has that kind of money. I too don’t currently have noise canceling headphones (Although I plan to invest in a pair within the next 12 months).

I’m currently using Sennheiser HD 215 MkII they cost around £50 and are more than adequate if not totally noise canceling. Unless your music or audio is turned up to 95% or above then these headphones don’t leak sound to people around you. I highly recommend them to start you off.

A nice thing about these headphones is the cord is longer than usual and detaches from the head unit so if you or a colleague accidentally stands on them they will pull out and hopefully prevent an injury and damage. Its also helpful for packing them away quickly.

Listen to “Sound Masking” audio

I personally just cannot concentrate or work well to music. You might be asking yourself why I have headphones? Good question, the reason is because I listen to audio that helps me to shut out the noise pollution around me. Its known as “sound masking”. If you want to try it I have uploaded the following “noise” loops.

White Noise

Brown Noise

The idea is that you put them on repeat/loop in your music app of choice and begin working. After 2 to 5 minutes you should stop hearing the white noise and put it to the back of your mind because It essentially “fills in” the sound spectrum around you with barely perceptible “unstructured” noise (“structured” noise would be sounds such as speech or music that have recognizable patterns and convey information). Your brain will tune out unstructured noise as it searches for the structured variety.

You’ve experienced this kind of thing before. When you turn on your computer, you hear the cooling fan begin to spin. However, your mind quickly filters out this unstructured sound and it becomes effectively “invisible”. Which is why I’ve found white noise extremely helpful when I’ve really needed to focus in louder than average offices.

Alternatives to White Noise

White or Brown noise isn’t for everybody, some people can’t filter out white noise loops, for you I’d recommend other forms of unstructured noise.

Alternative unstructured noise

Another form of unstructured noise might be helpful to you or a nice change from white noise. You can listen to the sound of the rain falling, waves hitting the beach or the sound of a bustling Forrest. Here I’ve uploaded the sound of a thunderstorm:

There is also a trend for slowing down film scores which I’m really getting int. For example here is the John Williams Jurrasic Park Theme but 1000x slower:

I wish I could just listen to music playing over the office stereo and be able to concentrate but I can’t. Sometimes its the lyrics that distract me and other times I just plain don’t like it. Dan Benjamin, Jeffrey Zeldman and Jason Santa Maria had an interesting discussion on this subject in episode 30 of The Big Web Show podcast.

You can find plenty more online at SoundCloud or sites like SimplyNoise. Hopefully they help you as much as they’ve helped me.

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