In my experience, it isn't noise itself so much per se, but the type of noise - talking in particular is distracting to me. But I do find that some types of music, and noise, seem to engage my brain in a way that lets me focus better than with no noise at all... and as a bonus, it also drowns out some of the more distracting noises. Ambient music, some electronic music, and computer generated sound really help me.
If I were to start up a company again, I would issue each employee a nice pair of over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones as part of their office equipment. I think it would work wonders for their productivity.
Related - for some pink noise, here is a commandline (for those with sox installed) that I find soothing. Play with the last two variables some, to tune it to your tastes - it has somewhat the effect of noise from an empty beach:
I posted the above not too long ago in another story, and someone else (shmerl) replied with another one, that resembled the noise of [edit: not space] Star Trek:
play -c2 -n synth whitenoise band -n 100 24 band -n 300 100 gain +20
If I were to start up a company again, I would issue each employee a nice pair of over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones as part of their office equipment. I think it would work wonders for their productivity.
Related - for some pink noise, here is a commandline (for those with sox installed) that I find soothing. Play with the last two variables some, to tune it to your tastes - it has somewhat the effect of noise from an empty beach:
I posted the above not too long ago in another story, and someone else (shmerl) replied with another one, that resembled the noise of [edit: not space] Star Trek: