Eliminate noise to reduce stress

Considering the typical circumstances provided by modern life, it is easy to see how stress has become a friend which gives us a ring nearly on a daily basis. Even if there are no ways of entirely eliminating it from our lives (neither would that be a good thing, for that matter!), there are many known methods of stress reduction today.

And this article takes a closer look at one of those methods, namely: minimizing the noise.

Minimizing the noise in a person's habitat will increase his or her productivity, and may reduce the overall stress levels the person may be suffering.

What are these noisy distractions?

There is a rich range of factors which may serve as noisy distractions which in turn break the person's concentration as he or she is trying to work. These distractions may be either audio or video signals. These may be: the noise of traffic or overhearing the conversations of people passing by. But these may also be factors which may be found within the person's home or at the office, as well, such as the doors shutting, the TV playing, conversations from the neighboring cube, phones ringing or even fingers tapping on the keyboard.

A curious study showed that people may not even be aware of the fact that the surrounding noise is causing stress. This has been backed up by figures of research which showed that people who did not even report feeling stressed out by the noise actually were.

An overly dramatic example of this would be the case of a high school which had entire airplanes as frequent bypassers. When the noise of airplanes flying by was reduced, the school's students tended to score 12% better than before. And thusly, noise reduction increases productivity.

So how should i eliminate this noise?

Well, there is obviously no way of controlling the noise of the outside word at will, but there ARE ways of minimizing and even eliminating it withing the person's environment.

So accordingly, the following is a list of three tips which may be used to help the daily noise reduction.

Checking the environment. If a person feels easily distracted by noise, it may also be thanks to the environment itself. Ways of dealing with this would also involve enhancing the decor to a more suitable one. The decor mustn't be as loud that it inspires distraction, but it also mustn't be too plain that it causes dullness in the work place. It may even involve simple modifications such as turning the desk the other way around in case it is facing a busy street. Old files, junk mail and other forms of uninteresting distractions should also be taken care of immediately.

Tuning the noise out. If the case may be that a person is working in an open office, and just can't seem help overhearing the distracting conversations of others – earplugs may have to be considered an option. Or better still, headphones. The kind of which completely isolate the surrounding noise, so that the person listening to the music while working doesn't need to raise the volume to override the surrounding noise.

Getting the downward dog on. A routine yoga exercise is known to reduce "the noise in a person's head", so that when he or she sits down to concentrate on the work at hand blocking the noise out is much less of a burden. Yoga is also known to reduce overall stress levels, atop it all.