My cousin @seeby had just posted about Focus At Will – a new app which has music which is designed to be productive enhancing for cognitive function and focus.
Hey everybody, check out Focus @ Will – it’s a free online music streaming product (with iPhone / Android apps too) that has been scientifically proven to help you focus and get into the “zone”. Most people play music in the background at work etc that is distracting, but this music is proven to enhance your concentration, much in the same way that Accelerated Learning uses classical music to help your memory and retention.
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I have been using binaural beats for ages – the app from I also have used BrainWave Mind tuner, and AmbiSci Ultra, they both have modes for high energy, alertness, concentration and creativity. They play 2 waves slightly out of rhythm to each separate ears, and because the brain puts the 2 sounds together in your brain (its like an optical illusion) then your brain waves then move that those frequencies
On my tests, on the drive to work, I did the “wakeup mode” and it was easily better than a V and setup my whole day. < A lot of the coders from Silicon Valley have found daily meditation one of the biggest improvements to their cognitive / coding ability. There is a meditation, and deep relaxation mode which if you use for say 20 mins in the day massively enhance your work output (especially where it requires thought). If you can get a decent session of alpha brain waves during the day (meditiation), then there are heaps of other health effects. Its funny as I was tracking my performance against, coding (concentration mode was the best), sales (energy mode) and then design, troubleshooting and business planning (creativity mode) - and it has a very clear effect. It is possibly just a placebo, but there is solid science behind it, and it also actually works. You can actually recut a lot of your songs (eg MindWorkstation), to add the appropriate binaural rhythm. For sleep this Delta CD was amazing, deep, deep dreamless sleep, and you wake up amazing.
For my home office, the thing I am drooling over was these new sound buffers they are working on from and the work environment with total and complete silence is just amazing. You can just hear your thoughts so cleanly when there is literally no other background noise. Visiting their office was crazy cool.
There are several stages of sleep which people pass through in the course of a night
se of headphones I have tested at Maxnet, EDS and Telecom just using “enjoyable” music for that person (eg the myth regarding the Baroque music having some magical impact on learning – it was based on Oxford or some posh uni, and their test sample were skewed to like that sort of music), the newer studies show that music a person likes increases alertness/ study ability etc.
For the helpdesk tests, we saw about a 50% increase in productivity with the use of personal music (we played music on a stereo and that had those who didnt like it, actually drop)
Later tests of my own productivity have seen that the larger headphone (especially with sound cancellation), had a marked increase on keystroke and emails per minute. Even using the headphones playing silence, or very quiet music can be blocking the background noise.