Today I finally resolved the solution to the noise in my office which sometimes proves to be difficult to concentrate due to the open air sharing that my colleagues frequently feel it is necessary to do. As those of you who study know, this can be distracting when you are reading or researching which in turn sometimes makes one unproductive, depending on how jolly everyone else is on the day. It has been driving me a bit insane lately and I have to admit that is probably because I have been doing a lot of research and reading of late.
To minimise my irritation, a close friend allowed me to air my grievances quietly and then introduced me to 'white noise'. Being the mad keen academic that I am, or in my children's words 'nerd' that I am, I read up on 'white noise', which convinced me that I needed something to create the distraction for my over active brain, so that I could focus on my work. Like all busy over worked people who love their jobs and really despise entering a shopping centre, forum or any other form of venturing into crowded places to spend money, I went online and purchased a new iPod nano. Yes, I finally relented and I truly thought I would be wasting my money, but low and behold I have since found out it is not a waste of money at all. I cannot believe how wonderful it was to produce a productive day of work because I could focus. Today I plugged my ears into my headset attached to my fabulous little square piece of technology that clips to my clothing so that it is out of the way. (Apple think of everything, great marketing strategy I have to say). And listened to my favourite tunes while I worked. I loved it and what a happy day I had. I felt like one of the seven dwarfs, you know whistle while you work. As they say music soothes the soul and calms the savage beast. Truly it does.
Now, you're going to ask how did I hear the phone ring if my ears were being pummelled by my favourite songs and my brain receptors taking a holiday? Interestingly white noise stimulates all of the senses evenly which then drowns out background noise. Your brain can pick out individual voices if two or three people are talking in the space that you are sharing. And guess what there are 4 of us in my office. Your brain can detect a voice in a conversation and follow that conversation while you are doing something else. Apparently your brain cannot pick out any voices if there are more than 3 or 4 people. My brain is amazing, because I not only can pick out voices while I am typing on my computer, reading or researching, my eyes also notice the body language of the fridge door slammer, the office door slammer, the grunter who rarely speaks 'good morning' but grumbles it and then tries to slide past my desk without having to speak on some days, and the happy jollies who poke their heads in the door to see who is going to respond to their presence. I mean man my eyes are trained to see in 90 degree angles so I notice everything. All this is being processed through my brain receptors whilst I am otherwise engaged. My concentration is either really good (there is an upside to having 4 children, you learn to multi task very quickly) or I am just bloody clever. At this point I am going to thank my children for teaching me how to ignore them on numerous occasions when I was otherwise occupied with more important things.....lol
Back to my question, how do I hear the phone ring you ask? It appears that I trained myself to listen for the phone whilst the music was evening out my receptors so that I couldn't hear background noise. I focused on my work because the background noise was no longer audible, yet my brain went into action the instant my phone rang. How interesting is that and I have no idea why (bet you thought I did... feel free to fill me in if you know). I will say it wasn't entirely perfect. It was a bit of a crack up at times, because I managed to answer the phone with a 'good morning' and it was 3 in the afternoon, which got a chuckle from my colleagues who sit behind me. Apparently my receptors over loaded and I couldn't tell the time. Will have to work on that one.
However, today was a good day.
Thank god for 'white noise'. I can honestly say my sanity has been saved by science and technology.
Life is good.
