Poor Man’s Bose – Open Office and on the Go Noise Control

Re:Poor Man’s Bose – Open Office and on the Go Noise Control by bunderbunder on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @05:05PM (#18179812)

I'm guessing, based purely on my own experience, that there's something neurological going on - that programming involves heavy use of parts of the brain that are also kicked into gear by certain kinds of auditory stimulus. Language almost certainly, but maybe some other bits I don't know about.

Me, I can deal with sound in general, and I even like to listen to music while I work. What really messes me up is words - people talking, music with lyrics, stuff like that makes it very difficult for me to get my work done. Strong rhythms are also a bit of a challenge. So the sounds of people walking are tricky, my mechanical watch needs to go into a drawer if the room is particularly quiet, and the music generally needs to be something classical.

But there's also a threshold where there's so much cacophony going on that my brain just gives up and tunes it all out, and I'm back to my productive zone. When my coworking space is starting to get a bit too noisy for me to concentrate even with my headphones on, I typically deal with it by packing up and going to a nearby coffee shop that I can trust to always be busy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poor Man’s Bose – Open Office and on the Go Noise Control by mikestew on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @05:49PM (#18180101)

As I've narcissistically considered my own comment since I wrote it, I think it might have to do with noise our lizard brains feel it has to process. Because as I thought back to my time in the shop, with the air tools, compressor in the back room, cars in and out...you know, I could probably plop down with a laptop and be fine hammering out some code. It's just noise (and for some reason, the thought of an air tool sound makes me think in a Pavlovian way that work is getting done!).

But "Hey, how about that game last night!" behind me and...

LizardBrain: "pattern identified: human speech. Attempting to parse...colloquialisms not found...setting parsing process to 'high' priority...audio sensitivity set to 100%."

ConciousBrain: "nooooo, I don't give flying shite about the SeaPigeons! Trying to work here!"

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poor Man’s Bose – Open Office and on the Go Noise Control by bunderbunder on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @06:00PM (#18180179)

Yeah, and, at least for me, people's attempts to try and be respectful of each other in an open office type situation make it worse instead of better. Talking in hushed tones makes the speech harder to understand, which makes the lizard brain work even harder.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poor Man’s Bose – Open Office and on the Go Noise Control by MandieD on Wednesday October 10, 2018 @02:36AM (#18182496)

Working in an open office where the main language is your native language: you spend some cognitive energy tuning it out.

Working in an open office where the main language is a language that you understand well, but not natively (my every day life in Germany): you spend a ton of cognitive energy tuning it out, because your lizard brain insists on having that surrounding speech parsed first, just in case it has something to do with your work, because every so often, it absolutely does.

Working in an open office where you have absolutely no comprehension of the language (two weeks in Seoul): amazingly productive, because the lizard brain doesn't even bother.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Poor Man’s Bose – Open Office and on the Go Noise Control by zadjii on Tuesday October 09, 2018 @07:09PM (#18180601)

I'd agree with a lot of this experience. There's a huge amount of music that I can just zone out while I'm programming. Though I'd add that new music will typically pull me out of it, much as a conversation would. Maybe it's something about new stimuli that triggers the brain to get out of the zone, and conversations always count as new stimuli, while listening to Led Zepplin IV for the thousandth time isn't doing anything new for my brain.

Additionally, I have a really hard time focusing without _any_ music. Typically I need some beat to be able to get in the zone at all. It doesn't matter what the beat is - EDM, ska, soundtracks, lo-fi beats to study to, but there needs to be something.

[ Parent | on HN ]