Listen up, silence is golden

It seems that the more you need to concentrate on something, the more sensitive you become to surrounding distractions, particularly sounds. So to help people really focus, King Jim has come up with the Digital Mimisen MM1000 — high-tech earbud-like ear plugs that the company says can cancel out noises under 300Hz by 90 percent.

Digital Mimisen have an in-built microphone that picks up environmental sounds so that it can figure out and emit opposite wavelength sounds to cancel out the original noise. But this doesn't mean you'll be cut off in complete silence: Though the earplugs have been designed to cut unwanted noise, they still allow the wearer to hear specific sounds, including phone ringtones, people shouting out to you and train station announcements.