The free tier only allows for 90 minutes of playback a day with limited sounds. I am actually running a slightly adjusted Creative Thinking playlist as these words are being written. You can edit the existing playlist or create a new one, choosing and tuning any sound to your individual liking. What makes it special, though, is that Noisli pieces 28 separate sounds in several playlist combinations and enables users to 'cook' the audio atmosphere the way they want. Noisli is one of those browser apps that offer a non-distracting audio background: calming sounds of waves and rustling of the leaves, mild noise of coffeeshop, monotonous rambling of the train, and even a humming of a working washing machine (that was probably reserved for pure aesthetes). Many of us office workers use music and nature recordings to block out either humming noise or dead silence of a workspace, homespace, remotespace – wherever we find ourselves these days.

Let's look at them from a design standpoint as well as from consistent personal use, and see how they build a sustainable user experience. These are also the apps you've likely never heard of. So here it goes: a home-grown analysis of 5 productivity apps that I regularly use and enjoy. It sparked the question, the argument, and then the idea for this article: how come these web apps are able to influence our productivity and provide efficient help? What can we learn about helpful design from the interface of helpful apps? The latter recently came up in a conversation with workaholic designers. And about the same amount of time goes to digital distractions – unless I stick to my NY resolutions and productivity tools. Today I spend these 45 hours a week on planning, reading, writing, and pitching. I also didn't possess a smartphone to keep me up with the tight schedule (none of us did back then).

As a kid I was taking music school lessons 4 times a week, performed in a band, and studied two foreign languages in a secondary school – altogether it was just about 45 working hours.

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