Focus Labs: Audio Soundscape

Discover how your audio environment impacts your ability to focus.

Do you do your best work in complete silence, or do you benefit from a steady background hum, an ambient soundscape, or music while doing focused work? This interactive workshop gives you the opportunity to experiment and discover what works best for you.

What to Expect

During the session, you’ll work on the same task across three audio environments: silence, an ambient soundscape, and music selected to support focused work. Between each block, there will be a short pause to reflect on what you noticed before moving into the next environment.

The session closes with a group debrief where you can share what you noticed and what you plan to do differently moving forward.

Choose Your Task in Advance

Before joining the session, choose an OmniFocus project or action to focus on. You will return to the same task across all three blocks, which is what makes the comparison meaningful.

A task that works well is one that:

• Requires genuine focus and thinking, but is not so unfamiliar or complex that it would be difficult to settle into
• Can be interrupted and resumed without losing the thread

Examples include writing or editing a draft, planning or outlining a project, or working through something that requires careful thinking. Tasks that are highly repetitive, overly mechanical, or long avoided may make it harder to evaluate the effect of the audio environment itself.

How to Prepare

To get the most out of this session, a little preparation goes a long way.

• Join from a quiet space if possible. A moderately noisy environment can work, but a quiet space gives you the most to compare across the three blocks.
• Have headphones handy if you need them. They are especially useful in noisier environments and can help create a clearer separation between different listening environments. Noise-cancelling headphones can be particularly helpful for the silence block.
• Arrive a couple of minutes early. The meeting will be locked shortly after the start time, as this session is designed to be experienced from start to finish.

This is a LIVE, interactive session and will not be recorded.