Friday fun: what's on my iPod for productivity

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It’s Friday. Let’s have a little bit of fun. One of the things that makes me productive during the workday? The right audio. Sometimes the audio is training, most of the time it’s good tunes. Here’s some of what’s on my iPod while the day is flying by. You’ll notice that for the most part, I avoid anything with words in it – instrumental rules the day for cognitive psychology reasons. Few people can effectively process more than one language stream at a time, so listening to words in a song can conflict with trying to write words on the page. Hence, most of the music is instrumental.

Full disclosure: Of course everything is affiliate-linked for commissions. Did you expect otherwise?

Music to work by

The Epic Score folks have some of the best music in iTunes for coding, drafting, and writing. If you need to boost your own sense of urgency, Action & Adventure is the recipe for you. If you need dramatic copy, Epic Drama fits the bill.

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Epic Score - Epic Action & Adventure Vol. 4 - ES011

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Epic Score - Epic Drama Vol. 1 Intros & Underscores - ES013

If you’re a Blizzard fan (i.e. Warcraft player) one of the best albums to get, hands down, is the Echoes of War symphonic set. Echoes of War are all the familiar Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo themes you know and love, arranged and performed by a full symphony orchestra.

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Volume 1: Eminence Symphony Orchestra - Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment, Vol. 1

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Volume 2: Eminence Symphony Orchestra - Echoes of War: The Music of Blizzard Entertainment, Vol. 2

The soundtrack to Wrath of the Lich King is pretty good by itself, btw.

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Derek Duke, Glenn Stafford & Russell Brower - World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (Original Game Soundtrack)

Looking for something a little slower paced and different? The Tibetan Master Chants album with Lama Tashi puts karmically useful sounds in your head, as various sutras and mantras are chanted. If you like that chanting kind of background ambience, this will deliver.

Lama Tashi - Tibetian Master Chants

Finally, if you need a hefty dose of heroism, John Ottman’s Superman Returns delivers.

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John Ottman - Superman Returns

Brain Food

If you’re in any kind of organization that sells something, I consider Tom Hopkins training to be Sales 101. Yeah, some of it comes across as cheesy, but for a novice salesperson who needs any kind of framework to start being minimally effective, Hopkins’ system is as good as any. Way back in the day when I was a technical recruiter, my firm sent me to his Boot Camp at the price of 3,750. Nowadays, you can get pretty much the same content for18. Listen and learn.

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Selling In Tough Times: Secrets to Selling When No One Is Buying (Unabridged)

If you’re trying to wrap your head around new media and social media still, there are very, very few books as good as Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation. He narrates his own audiobook (which I view favorably – I’d rather hear the author unless they have a terribad voice) and it’s worth it if you don’t have the time to read the book.

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Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone Is Connected. Connect Your Business to Everyone (Unabridged)

Gear

There isn’t a day when I don’t use my Bose headphones. They’re awesome for travel, sure, especially on noisy airplanes, but they’re also awesome in the office for filtering out all the background crap that is subtly taking a toll on your brain via your ears. Air conditioning, fax machines, noisy coworkers and hallway conversations, laptop fans, all that ambient noise – it takes its toll. Using these headphones rocks, plain and simple. They’ll cost you an arm and a leg but if you do any kind of work that pays you more for more productivity (via bonuses, commissions, etc.) then these headphones will pay for themselves easily and quickly.

headphones

Hopefully this set of resources will help you squeeze more juice from your day too!


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Comments

4 responses to “Friday fun: what's on my iPod for productivity”

  1. Thanks for suggesting more ways for me to spend money!! 🙂

  2. Thanks for suggesting more ways for me to spend money!! 🙂

  3. Thanks for suggesting more ways for me to spend money!! 🙂

  4. […] Christopher S. Penn wrote a great blog post a couple of weeks ago about the music he listens to to keep productive while he works. He inspired me to share one of my favorites with you. […]

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