 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell here I wrote an article a couple of years ago regarding how to work in noisy environments I put that up on my medium comm blog, which I haven't been Posting on in a while at this point since I decided to put more focus on so my YouTube channel in any event I think it was an important article or Potentially useful article for other folks who have a hard time with working in noisy environments because I've been living in Jerusalem in Israel, which is a pretty noisy city Especially as you go get closer to the center for a number of years now. I'm personally someone who has a hard time Focusing on what I'm working on when I can hear really distracting sounds around me whether that's people talking or you know, perhaps a little concert playing music across the street And I've also been working from home On a kind of half-time basis for the past number of years depending on the week So if you put all those factors together, I hope you can understand Why I've had to put a bit of thinking and effort into this and I want to share those in today's video First thing to say First this is the survival kit that I've developed for working in noisy environments Now the first thing that people think about is well, what about earplugs or Headphones or stuff like that now. There's two types of Headphones that people tend to think about when you're looking to work in noisy environments One of those is called a NC or active noise cancellation you're probably familiar with those Bose headphones that tend to be the over-the-ear ones and people tend to use them on airplanes to Delight the sound of the engines or on a train or whatever Now that's type one and that's what people tend to jump to when you think of oh, how should I work from you know? What gear do I need if I am working in an office? That's unfortunately pretty noisy the second one is something called passive noise cancellation or PNC and Every earphone or whether it's an earbud or over the heads Headphone delivers some degree of passive noise cancellation or PNC now when you think about that passive What why is it passive and why is ANC active active noise cancellation works? There's a little microphone Inside the headphones and they listen out for what the ambient noise is and let's say it's an airplane, right? They'll they'll hear they'll pick up the sound of the engines whatever frequency that's at and then they'll play a cancellation noise in order to Block that out and it works pretty well anyone that's tried on a decent quality pair of ANC Headphones can attest to the fact that they do work nicely now. Here's the thing ANC tends to work very well when it's a steady frequency such as a airplane engine right for the most part unless the pilot changes thrust if you're just cruising you can be on the same that That engine noise might be at the same exact same frequency for hours So it's relatively easy for the technology to listen out for that distracting sound and play a competing sound To equalize the sound and you won't be able to hear it now the problem with the type of ambient Distracting noise. I'm talking about conversation music is that the frequencies are going all over the range if you looked at them on a audio Spectagraph I believe it's called right so for that type of noise if you're seeking to block that out Passive noise cancellation or PNC actually works far better. Now. What is passive noise? Cancellation so humans Hear noise through mostly. This is the best of my understanding anyway Mostly through their ears and a little bit through jawbone Conduction you'll see these crazy jawbone headphones on the market, but it's mostly through your ears So if you can find something that'll block your ear canals physically passively right doesn't need power Then you're going to block out that noise now regarding the best passive noise cancellation Headphones in the market not everything's going to do the ones I use are from a company called etymotic ETY MOT IC and there they have what are called IEMs in ear monitors Now in ear monitors are used for monitoring audio So I've done videos about audio monitoring on my this YouTube channel in fact But this is a completely different use case picture a guitarist or a drummer Who's up on stage and wants to hear what the other band members are doing? So they want to hear the that audio feed and they want to block out the sound of the crowd, right? So they need very good passive very good passive noise cancellation to block out the crowd And to have that signal going straight into their ears. So that's why IEMs are called IEMs But they're also very useful for this use case now to the best of my knowledge No one makes IEMs with better passive out of the box ones. There's also custom IEMs No one makes better out of the box IEMs with a higher decibel rating of passive noise Calculation cancellation than etymotic. They're kind of a niche company But they're great for this. So I've owned the MK5s the MC5s Multiple multiple of each because I'm always wary of losing them They're also great by the way in the gym if you're want to use them for working out Because they'll block out the noise from the gym and the typically annoying background music the gym plays And you can listen to your own better music Connected to your phone. So that's that's my number one thing in my noise blocking kit is A good quality pair of passive noise cancellation headphones. There's not just etymotics There's also some interesting products on Amazon. I've seen that Are basically intended they're used they look like earplugs now You could go down the earplug reader course, but it's not the best to wear earplugs every single day for 12 hours So you can use there's these other products on the market that are kind of like a mashup of headphones and Earplugs and they'll kind of same principle as the etymotics. They're just a different different product. So that's number one Now what can you play through your headphones? Well, you can play white noise. I also like a website called brain.fm It's intended to produce background audio that's supposed to be scientifically I don't know if it's true or not. So I either use brain.fm or Just a simple online white noise generator There's lots of them. So I won't list them off, but they'll just to play a little bit of sound and that'll block out what's going out Around me. Now the second thing that you can do is something called sound masking and that is basically producing a small amount of sound Just to try to mask the sound now there's a whole there's there's two Worlds within sound masking. There's a very sophisticated world and that's when You'll have these systems that are kind of like ANC that companies will hire a specialist and they'll put in Kind of works the same as ANC. They'll listen for frequencies and play opposing frequencies Then there's much simpler technology. That's basically like a white noise Generator that just is putting out white noise and that's what I use. I use a white noise generator called the electro fan And uh, I like them so much. I've bought myself Six Electro fans over the years. I've won it everywhere. I've won on my bedroom. I've won in my office Um, I keep one for travel, etc. And these will put out white noise. Now. Here's my pro tip Having worked from home during renovations for about one year There was a building next to me. The neighbors were renovating. There was renovations going on outside The worst the most distracting possible conditions noise so loud that my desk was shaking from the construction vibrations Here's what worked for me the combination Firstly put on your etymotic in your monitors and put on a bit of white noise That's your first step if you still have some distracting ambient noise Or you just want to be able to take those out for an hour, which is healthy You shouldn't wear them for super long periods run electro fan And now you've got two layers of protection against distracting Noise and that's what I do day to day If there's something like a street festival going on outside or a lot of noise I will run the white noise machine And I'll also perch and also be be using my iems From etymotic to uh to do that. So that's it guys It's a bit of a pain in the butt Obviously the best thing is to try get to the root cause of your sensitivity to Uh background or distracting sounds. I know it can be a feature of adhd hyperacusis different things But uh, this is what personally I have found as a sort of treatment That has helped me to stay productive Even when i'm working from home in noisy and unideal environments Hope that video was useful. If you'd like to get more videos from me, please subscribe to this youtube channel Thank you very much for watching