Mischa van den Burg’s Post

As someone with Autism, the amount of stress and energy involved in being in an open-plan office is a nightmare. Although the people are generally lovely, the constant masking for 8 hours every day is so draining and can cause physical pain and exhaustion. In addition, people like myself usually come with a combination of other quirks; in my case, it's hypersensitivity to sound, smell, and touch (i.e. certain textiles), making the concept of a shirt and tie, or even having to wear shoes all day, can be enough to make you not want to get out of bed in the morning. 🤣

I used to work across a partition wall from a call center, essentially in the same room. I found it easier to concentrate when they were really busy. Was like white noise. Much harder when there was only one or two of them on calls. Might have something to do with only hearing half a conversation.

Sometimes I go to a cafe specifically to do serious work. The change of scenery can provide focus for some people and under certain circumstances. For me, a cafe is a great place for writing. At my desk it's easy to be distracted by the mundane and routine. Everyone is different. Let's not disparage people who prefer different environments.

The noise is a minor thing in my opinion - you can just get used to ignoring it or put on the headphones. But how do you do any serious work with just a single tiny, laptop screen and no extra mouse? I need my two extra monitors!

If you assume everyone works optimally in a silence without distractions, but surprise surprise, not everyone does Many neurodivergent folk like me cannot work in silence, we need atmosphere, we need hubbub. The fractal noise is stimulating enough to support hyperfocus, which means the place could be burning down and we'd be hyperfocussed on the work and not notice I am my own worst enemy in silence. The chorus of bastards ensures that my thinking is distracted, self destructive and negative Silence is dangerous for ADHD folk! One person's distraction is another person's comfort blanket ❤️

Not controversial for me - I agree that I could not develop complex systems effectively while sitting in a coffee shop .... I just wouldn't be able to do it. So why would I be expected to do it while sitting in an office with dozens of other people milling about, talking loudly about some randomness they did the night before or where they are going tonight. And that's before all the inevitable meetings that I don't really need to be in and the 'as you are here', 'oh, do you have 5 minutes' and 'can I interrupt you'. That's why I'm so much more productive working on these things from my home office. No distractions, no hubbub and no interruptions (aside from the odd Amazon delivery). That said ... the coffee shop is fine for, shall we say, non-serious work and (for me) it can be just as good at unlocking the thought process as going for a walk .... but with coffee and pastries of course. The thing is (and so, so many people fail to grasp this concept) ... we are all different. We work in different ways and what is right for one person is anothers personal hell. There is no one size fits all. #WFH #WorkingFromHome #WFA #WorkingFromAnywhere #WFO #WorkingFromOffice

Basically what you're saying here "serious work only happens under ideal circumstances" which we know isn't true, even if we agree on what's ideal. Here's an exception. One of the most productive environments I've worked in was doing pair programming in an open plan office. So you might have 3 other pairs of people at the same table that are constantly engaged in some degree of conversation. Yes, it was somewhat distracting. That part wasn't ideal, but along with other practices it enabled much better results than I've seen in lower distraction environments where people often got silo'd and blocked.

Excuse you? The "coffee shop isn't real work" take misunderstands how attention and focus actually work for many people. "No one is doing serious work from a coffee shop." - 30% of https://scholar.google.com/ was written in a coffee shop, sometimes in the loosest sense of the word (looking at you, Dunkin Donuts at the edge of UConn campus in Storrs, that opened its doors early and knew when it was time to turn off Nancy Grace, stop serving, and tell me to go have a life). Why? Well, they actually drown out a lot of the noise/ systematic distractions for some people. It's the same reason that many like myself work while listening to certain types of high BPM / EDM music. Three reasons, 1) Masking effect. The steady hum creates a consistent sound blanket that masks irregular sounds. It's easier to tune out predictable ambient noise. 2) Stochastic resonance aka even a moderate level of background noise can actually enhance cognitive performance by adding just enough stimulation. 3) You're not responsible for the environment, can't control it, which frees up mental resources you spend on "should I adjust the temp? Is this music helping?" Since some of us have no control over our attention networks...

I once patched visual studio code in a cafe. And spent one whole week in a cubicle in the los Angeles office downloading piss poor quality movies from Napster. Professionalism is something you take with us, not go to a place to acquire

I can only get real work done in public settings. I need a bustle around me to focus. Everyone's brains work differently, and sweeping generalizations are often just straight up wrong.