by Catherine L. Tully

As a freelance writer, one of the perks of the job is that you can take your laptop and hit a coffee shop for a few hours to write and relax. I like going to Panera. Love the atmosphere and the tea–but I hate the music. The style of jazz they play is just too noisy for me when I’m trying to write.

My quick fix? Pandora Radio. I simply pop on my headphones, plug them into my iPhone and hit some sort of ambient, new age music for the duration. I have to keep it on low, and I can’t use it if what I’m doing requires a lot of actual thinking, but for rote tasks or revisions it works perfectly. (And you can get it on your laptop as well.)

Pandora is free and it has some pretty cool features.  I highly recommend trying it out.