March 10, 2011 Music soothes the savage beast, it also motivates it.

On the tail of my last post, I thought I would talk a little more about working at home. How to stay productive. How to maintain focus, talk about the upsides and downsides of such an arrangement and some of the pitfalls you can find yourself falling into. Working in a home office situation, especially for a large 10,000+ employee corporation takes a certain sets of personal work habit skills, self discipline, and a personality where you don't mind being alone.

When it comes time to focus, what better way to get the mind gears moving than with music. Music is my disconnect from distractions and the vehicle on the highway of focus. At home, I am alone for the day. My wife is at work and the boy is at school. All that is there is my dog and no volume limits. Even when I am in the office, if i can an an hour to myself at my desk, I have my headphones on to drown out the rest of the clutter sounds of the office.

Again, your work style may be different. You may work best in dead silence, nothing but your thoughts and the tapping sounds on the keyboard. Myself, I require music to get things done in a quick and efficient manner. It might be that subconsciously I think and type based on the beats and rhythms. Maybe it forces me to focus to the one task at hand. I am a master of multi tasking, cranking up the music, pushes all the other thoughts to the back and makes my focus on the one thing. I don't really know why, but it works for me.

With the Internet at your fingertips you can have any type of music at any amount at an instant. My favorite general Internet Radio site is Pandora. It is not perfect, I believe over the last year they have sold out more to the record companies and their variety seems to have become more Top 40 selective, especially in the Pop genre, but money drives the world I guess. When I want a more focused attack with known motivation hits, I turn to personal music collection.

Anyway, depending on the type of work I do drives what type of music I turn on and at what volume.

Designing/Presentations/Compilations
When I am designing architectural layouts, putting systems together, building the flows, building a presentation, compiling data, or really any other task where I am pulling together pre-existing components I turn to Techno.  If you listen to techno you know of the many, many styles. Acid, Trance, Jungle, Break beats, House, and so on. I prefer Trance. Trance covers a wider range of sub-trance genres as well. What I like about Trance is that is has hard pumping beats and it's melodic and the increase of vocals over the last 3 or 4 years into the music is nice to see. Most people usually give me crap for my love of techno... but they don't realize that Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Gwen Stafani and any other of the Top female pop singers have Techno DJs producing their tracks.

When it's time to get down to business Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto, BT, Armin van Buuren, Sasho, John Digweed, Daft Punk, KMFDM and a supporting group of others can't let me down. With no on else home but me, the walls shake.

Studying
When it comes time to study, read, or reviewing reports. I can't have the thumping bass, so I switch to a more mellow style. Classical, New Age, Ambient, anything soothing and calm.

Pick what works best for you, change it up, let the rhythmic moves be your guiding light.

End of Line.

Posted in: Internet,Music,Technology