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Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

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Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#41

Post by Goladus »

LiveTheDream wrote: post #38
jamesbkel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ideally albums I have heard many times before I find this to be true also. Additionally, I've noticed that during the planning stage music is less helpful/possibly distracting. However, once I've more or less decided what to do and am focused more on implementation music can help me focus.

Music is distracting when you need to be creative, because your creative brain is effectively distracted by the music. I read about a study[1] recently that presented a programming problem to two groups; one group listened to music while they solved it and the other group had silence. While each group performed acceptably with regards to creating a solution that conformed to the spec, the music-listening group neglec…

Pretty sure that study was mentioned in Peopleware, but didn't include a citation reference.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#42

Post by erikb »

hessenwolf wrote: post #31
erikb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headphones are a great idea for some people. I for myself work best in silence. Even if there is music playing it disturbs my concetration. Maybe I am especially weak at focussing, but I think to some degree this is true to everybody who listens to music while working.

I disagree. For certain tasks, certain types of music, ideally albums I have heard many times before, help me to relax and stay focussed. For others, I cannot concentrate with music. I find it quite a disadvantage in my current office that when I need to do something detailed in a rigorous way I do not get to wear headphones.

I understand your point and I think for most people that works. Not all people are the same, though.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#43

Post by TeMPOraL »

gaustin wrote: post #40
TeMPOraL wrote: post #35

I personally can't concentrate in any kind of open-space office. When I need to focus, the very feeling of other people being present is a huge distraction to me. It was true since early childhood - I couldn't do homework or learn anything at home if I wasn't alone in a room with doors closed. I don't really know how to explain it.

Same here. Nobody believes me when I tell them I can feel others' presence in a visceral way. I have lesser but still significant problems in cube environments. Would love to get out of the cube farm...and I believe I'd produce a lot more value if I weren't stuck in an uncomfortable place.

Yeah, I also think that I'd produce a lot more value if allowed to work in different conditions...

Also, I often find myself in a free conference room with a whiteboard, or in a park outside with paper and pencil, and do my thinking there. I'm having a hard time thinking near computers, and it's three orders of magnitude more difficult if there are co-workers nearby.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#44

Post by lelele »

erikb wrote: post #27
discreteevent wrote: post #14

Its all about change and shared state. Humans (unlike, say, chickens or purely functional systems) cache state in their heads about the world. In fact the brain operates so slowly compared to a processor that without caching we could not operate. For example, when we catch a ball the reason we are able to predict its trajectory is not because we measure its current speed and direction and then perform some calculatio…

There is a good chance there were paragraphs when he wrote it and HN ignored it, because HN comments require an extra newline. Bad user or bad usability?

> Bad user or bad usability?

The second, of course. When it comes to usability, HN scores pretty low.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#45

Post by pasbesoin »

gaustin wrote: post #40
TeMPOraL wrote: post #35

I personally can't concentrate in any kind of open-space office. When I need to focus, the very feeling of other people being present is a huge distraction to me. It was true since early childhood - I couldn't do homework or learn anything at home if I wasn't alone in a room with doors closed. I don't really know how to explain it.

Same here. Nobody believes me when I tell them I can feel others' presence in a visceral way. I have lesser but still significant problems in cube environments. Would love to get out of the cube farm...and I believe I'd produce a lot more value if I weren't stuck in an uncomfortable place.

Nobody believes me

This is a very frustrating aspect of the experience.

After being coaxed/coerced for years to "be like everyone else", I finally learned to take this as a sign -- as a mandate -- to GTFO.

Such an environment will wear you down and eventually destroy you. The sooner you leave it, the better.

(And, if we are indeed that good, leaving may be the best way of counter-acting such attitudes, as the institutions we leave struggle to make do with what is left. If this is not the case, you've nonetheless extracted yourself from what, in my experience, is a personally self-destructive position.)

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#46

Post by pasbesoin »

humbledrone wrote: post #4

I wonder if many of the same drawbacks of an open office layout affect cubicle farms as well. I have worked in both situations, and I have not found that cubicle walls significantly dampen office noise. Cubes probably lessen other kinds of distractions, but visual distractions are easy to ignore anyway.

I think many people regard cube farms as "open space". Especially with the ever shrinking wall sizes and square-footage per person.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#47

Post by JoeAltmaier »

I work on problems (code) that can take an hour to grok, another hour to get the code state into my head, and then more minutes to surgically implant the right change. Invite me into a meeting or chatter outside my cubicle, and I'm derailed. So that's why I get most of my work done early, early in the morning or after everybody else has left.

This article presents the most blindingly obvious case. Why is it even worthy of discussion? Because folks who call themselves authorities have made rediculous assertions (Open office plans are productive), written a book and gotten the foolish notions somehow embedded. It takes an authority and a study and a published report to undo the damage.

Or we could just rebel - No, I won't work in your echo chamber.

  -- guy currently suffering under Agile-zealot manager

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#48

Post by TeMPOraL »

Benjo wrote: post #36
erikb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headphones are a great idea for some people. I for myself work best in silence. Even if there is music playing it disturbs my concetration. Maybe I am especially weak at focussing, but I think to some degree this is true to everybody who listens to music while working.

I agree. I've had better results listening to white noise.

White noise hurt my ears, but I found pink noise working great and not disturbing. I could listen to it for an hour; at one point my imagination starts treating it as a sound of sea waves on a beach.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#49

Post by ikarous »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35

I personally can't concentrate in any kind of open-space office. When I need to focus, the very feeling of other people being present is a huge distraction to me. It was true since early childhood - I couldn't do homework or learn anything at home if I wasn't alone in a room with doors closed. I don't really know how to explain it.

I have the same problem. I grew up on a ranch in rural Texas. It was remote enough that I might as well have been on Asimov's Solaria for all the human company I had. Over the years, I became accustomed to reading, thinking, and tinkering in relative isolation.

Whether the cause is simply my background or is perhaps strengthened by some neurological factor, I am completely unable to filter out superfluous external stimuli.If someone is talking on the phone in the same room with me, I can't not listen to their conversation no matter how much I wish otherwise.

The people with whom I work tend to have difficulty understanding this aspect of my nature. I'm afraid I come off as rude and aloof when I put on my headphones and request to be IMed rather than tapped on the shoulder. Generally, these requests are ignored. One of our sales people actually came over and pulled my headphones off my head. My startled reaction did not go over well with her.

I'm not asocial. I like people. I just need silence to think.

Re: Open Office Layout is Bad for Brain

#50

Post by bh42222 »

I half agree. I have found offices, real offices, to be much more productive than both cubicles and open layouts.

For me personally, cubicles and open layouts are both equally distracting, but I prefer open layouts simply because I hate sitting in a box.

I'd much rater have a real office, but for me cubicles are in now way quieter or less distracting then an open setup.

I wonder what kind of cubicles the people have, to whom the open setup is that much worse? Maybe some kind of sound insulated luxury cubicle?

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