Silicone earplugs

OK, here is a quick one that might help people who are struggling to focus when trying to work from home or indeed do anything else. This isn't a double-blind control study, and I haven't run an ANOVA, Pearson, Spearman Rho, etc. as it's just me on my own, testing a technique with a basic test-retest methodology. And I haven't checked to see if Google Scholar etc have already got better studies.

So I repeatedly did SUDOKUs online and measured performance. Two scenarios: silicone earplugs in, silicone earplugs out. Tried to control for all other factors. Repeated tests intra-day, and also a week later. Performance with silicone earplugs in improved around 19% (Mean completion time with silicone earplugs in = 9 min, mean completion time without, 11 min). Levels of focus and concentration seemed better, too. 

Seems to improve further with both silicone earplugs and also ear defenders, but haven't run any tests on that. Benefits only seem to be maintained over short time periods, and dissipate as soon as I take them off.

Happy Holidays, one and all.