2. Work Editorial: As a writer, a content editorial has helped AMAZINGLY. You can apply that elsewhere too.. start with a set of 3 tasks with 3 chunks of time and 2 breaks between them. Work editorial is like planning. Nothing new.. but it's a hack I desperately need. I guess many will do too.
Great musicians and bands: Explosions In The Sky, Apparat, Amon Tobin, Tycho, Hecq.
For weekdays, I've tried the following alternatives with varied amounts of success:
Rain track - this is like a 4 hour rain sound loop and worked really well. I think the noise from rain effectively blocks a wide range of frequencies, but I could be mistaken.
Baroque music - I had a range of results with this. It seemed pieces with harsh sounding instruments, ones with a sharp attack, tended to do more harm than good, where as pieces using mostly just softer sounding instruments.
Dance music - this works best for me, but I must vary the playlist and dub tracks, ones without vocals, work better than ones with vocals. The sub-genres range from trance to dubstep.
During hectic times, I also ask a colleague to take my calls and I'll get back to them later. This works tremendously well.