Improve concentration with a noisy café

Ever wanted to sit in a café to write your journal paper, but think that it'll be too distracting, and you don’t want to look like a pretentious wannabe best-selling writer? Well, it turns out that (a) listening to ambient noise helps the creative process and can boost concentration, and (b) you’re now realising that maybe those wannabe writers aren’t trying to show off their mad writing skillz (yo) in public, but they’ve already cottoned on to the powers of ambient noise. So the joke’s on you!

Alright, maybe you weren’t prejudiced like I was, but at the same time maybe you can’t spend all day in a cute café tapping away on your laptop. What to do?

I came across some solutions via a tweet on the #phdchat forums linking to this article on free ambient noise apps. You can look up these websites and listen to a virtual café for free! Or listen to music, or even white noise! Here’s a mini summary of the most popular sites:

• Coffitivity: Simply café noise, which they suggest playing in tandem with your own music.

• Pandora: (US, Aust, NZ only) Free online radio where you choose an artist/album, and it recommends more free music you may like. Although listening to music lyrics may end up more distracting than muffledcafé  talk.

• Rainycafe: The best of café noise and rain, each track playable duelly or on their own. Be warned though, the minimum volume on this website is set quite high, so turn down those speakers!

• Simply Noise: I can’t say I totally understand the appeal of listening to white noise, but hey! each to their own I guess.

• Soundrown: My favourite thus far, this has the widest selection of ambient noise, from rain, café noise, and trains, to waves, fountains, crickets, and kids playing. The rain is a little more crackle-y sounding than Rainycafe, but at least the volume can be reduced!

And then there’s OmmWriter Dana (version 1 - free, and version 2 - $4.11), which is actually a minimalistic desktop word processor and an ambient noise generator. This program opens at full screen with the aim of minimal distraction from other programs. Dana 1, the free version, comes with 3 music tracks (one of which is the noise of a train carriage), three keyboard stroke sounds (like ye old typewriter), and four background wallpaper designs. And although I haven’t used it to write any scientific papers (because it doesn’t support cite-while-you-write plugins) it was very relaxing for writing this blog post!

The minimalistic layout of OmmWriter Dana 1.

A word to the wise: while I’d really love an app that played typewriter sounds as I tap away in MS Word or while writing emails, you have to be wary about what you download. Some keyboard sound programs/apps can secretly use keystroke logging to constantly record what key you’re pressing, whether you’re writing a private email or typing your banking password.