There are so many productivity tips floating around the Internet that I would most likely require a productivity course just to stop myself from drowning in them. Being the sucker that I am for time management techniques, I thought I would share my favourite must-have tool for boosting productivity.

It’s free, it’s simple, and as far as my whimsical attention span is concerned, it’s a bloody miracle that the thing actually works.

The tool in question is SimplyNoise.com. SimplyNoise is a white noise generator that serves no other purpose than to bombard your eardrums with a collection of static frequencies. At first listen, you will find white noise a poor alternative to whatever you had locked and loaded on Spotify.

There are no lyrics. The beat doesn’t change. In fact, there is no beat. White noise is pretty much what Norman Bates would listen to and praise as his mother’s favourite song. There is method in the madness, however, and there is good reason why many people swear by white noise to maintain their focus.

As anybody who has recently seen Limitless will recall, the brain is a delicate organ. It can process a huge amount of information and then call upon it at will. But your brain doesn’t always meet your demand when you want it to. Hence writer’s block, procrastination and those times where any little noise or distraction is capable of disrupting your thought flow.

White noise helps focus the mind by blanketing all the distracting sounds that our brain tries to latch on to.

If you imagine a room buzzing with 100 different voices, the combined frequencies produce a sound that the brain treats similarly to white noise. By tuning in to white noise you can therefore block out distractions like construction work, noisy neighbours and crying babies. The brain still hears them, but it adds those distractions to the rest of the frequency pile and allows you to maintain your focus.

If you work at home like me, you’ll probably appreciate that sounds can be amplified by simply being on your own. I hear everything from my puppies barking to the building work going on outside. While I’d be an utter fool to use this as the sole excuse for failing to meet my goals, it definitely pays to master your undivided attention.

Many people rely on sites like SimplyNoise to help them sleep. In fact, any insomniac should be able to relate to the frustration of things that go bump in the night. By blitzing the bedroom with white noise, you can sooth your brain and tune out of your surroundings. You can also irritate your girlfriend if she isn’t the “Finchy needs to listen to his moonkissed dolphins or he’ll never get to sleep” kinda type.

You might not appreciate or even agree with the benefits of white noise, but a lot of workplaces already use it to generate a healthy working environment. Google search office white noise machine and you’ll find a bunch of companies that specialise in acoustics for the workplace.

My girlfriend refuses to acknowledge that SimplyNoise is anything more than a static irritant she could do without. I guess productivity is flexible like that. While she can happily work to the tune of Kim Kardashian’s inane fucking rabble on Channel E, I find myself getting distracted by my own iTunes playlists.

Let me know how you get on with the white noise generator. I’ve heard some positive feedback from people who’ve become addicted to it. You might not find it as enlightening as Mozart, but see if your concentration thanks you!

Recommended This Week:

• If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine. Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny

• Subscribe to my new FinchSells RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add FinchSells to your Twitter.