I don't like to work in silence. Especially when I'm doing something that needs concentration, I keep my best focus with the right background music.
There’s different types of sound for different tasks - for example, I like to do creative work with calm, relaxed acoustic stuff. On the other hand, some late-night coding sessions are best fueled by something with a little more drive - I like the Prodigy’s “The Fat of the Land”.
A number of options exist to provide music while working, the easiest being your own private MP3 collection. Everyone has one of those, but if you’re like me and spend a lot of time in front of the computer, your best playlists will sound dull after the 43rd rerun.
I recently switched to Spotify, which provides me with an endless stream of new songs and artists. A major drawback are the advertisements in between though, plus it’s hard too find some of the more obscure tracks. I do like some of the predefined “mood” playlists for working though, there’s quite a few of them called “Focus” or similar.
Another option is to let go of music and melody completely and switch to atmospheric sounds. There’s a couple of good ressources for that, my newest discovery is a free OSX-App called Noiz.io. It runs on your mac and lets you create your own ambient background sound mix. Choose from coffee house, light thunderstorms, a crackling fireplace - or maybe rolling waves at a beach? It’s really quite nice.
Another good ambient noise generator is defonic.com, a website with even more sources for you to choose from. You can mix your own custom background symphony.
