The cone of silence.

I have synesthesia and I won't burden you with a unnecessary information except to say that working in a cube farm has deleterious consequences.  Perhaps you too are bothered by the snorting next door, or the telephone conversation two rows over that is absolutely TMI.  What to do?

If you're part of the iPod generation, plug in, turn on and off you go.  For myself, listening to music is an active experience.  I'm engaged in parsing what's being played.  So I turn to a couple of other blanketing sonic distractions. 

First, I prefer headphones to earbuds because headphones visually informs someone approaching you that  you can hear the glide of their Hushpuppies across the industrial carpet.  It's a signal.  It's letting people know that you are involved.  Regarding headphones, I was priviledged to work for a public relations agency representing the patent holders of noise reduction technology and if you haven't experienced what happens when you power on a pair of noise reduction headphones all I can tell you is that it's magic.   Being a man of simple means, but well connected, I read on Brad Fitzpatrick's journal (that would be the Brad Fitzpatrick that founded LiveJournal) that the Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7 QuietPoint Active Noise-Cancelling Headphones were twice as good and half the price of the more famous Bose Quiet Acoustic line of headphones.  I always take the advice from people smarter than I am and have been very happy with my pair. 

Now, regarding what you'll listen to, I want to steer you to something that lays down a background of sound.  Perhaps you've seen on the badge on my blog that points to soma.fm.  I highly recommend soma.fm for background ambient music.  Or, perhaps you're more into the natural sounds of the world and in that case, birdsongradio might be a perfect match for you.  But if you prefer something simpler, there's simplynoise which comes in the flavors spanning white, pink and brown/red. 

Oh, one more thing that recommends listening to ambient music or white noise is being spared the embarrassment when a neighbor comes over to your cube to let you know that your humming along with your favorite jam on your headphones is driving her crazy.  --It happens.