Bird songs for distraction free programming

Question

Like most everybody, I hate distractions when I'm trying to concentrate. I don't always have the luxury to work in solitude.

The popular solution is to listen to music on your earphones to drown out the distractions. However, this does not work for me. The music is either too emotional, reminding me of something and thus distracting, or just distracting in itself.

Recently I watched this presentation of the excellent TED series: The Four Ways Sound Affects Us

He suggests listening to birds might be the way to go.

Two questions: 1. Anybody tried it out yet? 2. Where can I download a playlist of bird/jungle songs? Anybody have anything like this?

EDIT: I have already tried the following:

• White noise - doesn't work too well, is too unnatural; the idea of bird song (watch the presentation) is not only to block distraction, but also to soothe you, to provide cues that it's safe and all is well
• Ear plugs - work to an extent, but are a bit unhygienic and offputting, especially if someone comes to your desk to talk

Answer 1

I doubt that will work.

You can't mask distractions by adding even more distractions. You will be hearing birds voices and think of other birds or your pets you have or used to have.

Some people try white noise generator to mask distractions. You may investigate this option.

The only way to silence distractions is either remove distractions from your working place or remove yourself from this area.

Answer 2

You probably haven't found the right kind of music to listen to.

What works best for me is stuff that i enjoy and have enjoyed but that i've listened to so often that it becomes white noise after a few minutes. Yes, i do get lost in nostalgia sometimes while listening to an old favorite but it's rare and i take it as a clue that my brain is trying to take a break.

Listening to new music NEVER works. The novelty of the lyrics and musical ideas draws attention to itself. Listening to the radio doesn't work for similar reasons.

Lately i've been queuing up Umphrey's McGee pod casts... 70+ minutes of jammy rock which i've played out during my commute.

Bird sounds could only help with VB code... ;-)

Answer 3

Well drowning the unnatural background noise in natural ones might not be such bad idea :). I some times listen to 'quiet songs' by aisha duo just for that. Its not bird songs but still works for me. 'Deep Forest' is another.

Answer 4

Try white noise. Works quite well for me.

Answer 5

in my experience the music usually disappears when i concentrate on my coding task, at least in my memories there isn't any sound ...

if the lyrics do affect you and keep you from "getting in the zone" try some slow music without text, i thing the genre is called "Lounge" hth

Answer 6

The white noise approach works for me, it especially helps me as in addition to a noisy office I have tinitus to contend with. Big comfortable noise cancelling head phones will help any solution, not least because they send a clear signal to co-workers that you don't want to be interrupted unless its urgent.

Answer 7

Mozart tried it, and it might have worked for him.

Answer 8

If you are on Windows or Mac, you should try out my software resonance. I wrote it as a tool to help me concentrate while programming. It is a free ambient sound mixer/binaural tone generator. It has bird sounds! Plus about 50 other ambient sounds/music.

Answer 9

1. Connect some good padded headphones (I have a pair of Sennheiser HD280) to an iPod or portable CD player
2. Leave the iPod switched off

Now you can block out most of the noise without (a) adding more distracting sounds or (b) the political problems you may get with ear muffs or plugs (tells your colleagues you don't want to hear their voices, which may be true but you don't want to tell them that directly.)

Answer 10

What has worked for me quite well is just setting my ipod to loop through soundtracks, not really soundtracks that have spoken words, but classic music, etc;

Sure it reminds me of the movies/shows that I watched/know it from but its a nice way to not go crazy sometimes when all you are doing is coding like a monkey.

Answer 11

iTunes has some Bird Sounds available, http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=164884039&s=143441

and looks like the same is available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Sounds-Various-Artists/dp/B00005Q46S

Answer 12

Look for meditation music, and for Baroque classical music. Only use the Baroque music when you are trying to learn something new, doing research, reading manuals, etc. The rest of the time play meditation music tracks, which will often include natural sounds like birds, rain, wind in the forest etc. Both of these kinds of music are instrumental which is important because lyrics of any kind are distracting.

But the important thing is to play it with a low volume, and wear good noise-cancelling headphones. That way the music is less likely to distract you because the volume is low, but you will subconciously react to it and relax. The best noise-cancelling headphones are the ones worn by aircraft pilots, but you may not need to go for those unless you are particularly sensitive to external noises.

If you are into sound mixing, you can record your own voice (or a girlfriend's voice) saying positive and encouraging messages, and mix that into the music tracks so that it is barely audible.

Answer 13

I had this problem too. I solved it with the right type of music. Mostly ambient, drone and dark ambient. My favourite album for concentration is Lustmord's "Heresy" - I can fully concentrate while listening to it and it isolates me from external sounds. There are tons of other artists making that genre though. You can try starting from that one.