4 ms·

Do noise-cancelling headphones not work for you?

p4wnc6 11y ago
Not even close. For one, listening to actual sound like music or a podcast is even worse for me than the dull ambient backdrop noise. On rare occasion I can listen to music for a brief period of time, maybe 1 hour. But any sustained sounds longer than an hour and I start to feel the type of tiredness you feel when you pull an all-nighter. That's just how sound affects me. I can't "tune it out" like most people can ... it just grates on me and, whether I choose it or not, induces me to be hyper attentive to it, especially to human voices. Noise-cancelling headphones can take away dull background chatter that's far away. But in open-plan offices, usually without even so much as differentiated desks or cubicles, when the person sitting next to you decides it's cool to bring a remote controlled helicopter to work and his friends are all laughing about it with him 2 feet behind you (true story), it just doesn't help. But even in less extreme places, where it's just normal, good-intentioned colleagues chatting about their weekend plans or something, it's still a huge disruption for me, and noise-cancelling headphones don't solve it. Actually, I can remember one of the most insane attention triggers I had to deal with was when I actually worked in a cubicle setting and the person in the cubicle next to me had some kind of smart phone that must have doubled as a sex toy or something because when it vibrated it was insane. I could feel his phone vibrating in my forearms resting on my desk while I was typing. That one drove me absolutely insane. There's also a huge component of this that is just based on natural human fight vs flight reflexes. If you have a bunch of vague, large mammals kind of walking around right behind you where you can't see them all day, it just causes anxiety. Some people (especially many extroverts) can deal with this without a problem, and it can even be comforting to them. But for others (especially introverts) the constant triggering of the "what's that, who is walking behind me" reflex is extremely exhausting, and it gets stimulated by pretty much everything, noise, casual movement, ping pong, whatever, going on in an open plan office. The office layout in and of itself is just intrinsically unhealthy for these people. And I fall very, very far on that spectrum towards the introverted side. It doesn't mean I'm shy (I actually love public speaking) ... what it means is that little unplanned social interactions or hints of social interactions are a huge, constant energy drain for me. I talked to one former boss about this and his immediate reaction was something like, "Look, you are really good at getting your work done. You don't have to worry if someone's walking by and they see you've got ESPN pulled up on your monitor or something ... we know you're getting your work done." And I'm just like, "umm ... it doesn't work that way. I don't give a shit if you see me playing Minecraft on my computer during work hours. It has nothing to do with that. It's a physiological response to the environment itself. I can't just "switch it off" because you try to assuage my anxiety." When it comes to this introvert/extrovert spectrum, I think it truly represents a component of workplace discrimination that really damages a lot of people, but for extroverts and managers, it just never even crosses their mind that it could even be happening at all.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  One thousands times, that. Noisy office layouts are a non-starter for me. Fortunately I've been working at home, or in a small office of friends for 20 years now. But back in the day I had to have the most remote, unpopular cubicle by the fire escape to get anything done at all. Just to have some peace to think.
- ebiester 11y ago
  As someone with a similar issue, I have settled on a combination of brown noise and indistinct human-like voices. (I use babelbabble on iOS but would like to find a webapp equivalent. I hope you can hold out for the right job.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    This is remarkably similar to the set up that David Byrne describes in his book How Music Works.
- curun1r 11y ago
  I had a colleague who used the kind of ear protection that airport employees wear out on the tarmac. In order to get his attention, you'd literally have to tap him on the shoulder. I tried it myself and it was eerily quiet...you couldn't even sense when someone was standing behind you. Have you tried these? Combined with a desk that faces a wall, I'd bet you'd find yourself in your own little world, oblivious to all that was going on behind you.
  - p4wnc6 11y ago
    How many tarmac earmuff people do you see getting promoted to a senior position? This sort of thing, even if it's unfair, absolutely lowers your status in the company. In one previous job with a noisy open-plan office, I actually tried wearing some factory-grade ear plugs, small little yellow ear plugs that you couldn't see unless you came up close. They weren't perfect, but the ambient noise was so distracting that I gave them a try. Within a week, my boss had a 1-1 meeting with me to tell me that some people thought it was very rude that I was wearing earplugs, and that it made it seem like I was unwilling to participate. I was actually training an intern and helping a team of three others with a software tool I wrote for them, so I was far from not participating, and all of my peers were vocally supportive of me wearing the ear plugs if they helped. I learned later that one of the C-level executives had made a walk through of the research work space and he just simply "didn't like" seeing someone with ear plugs. Headphones == acceptable, possibly even sexy cool start-up geek. Ear plugs == tacky, borderline Aspbergery nerd who isn't being good enough office eye candy
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

Not even close. For one, listening to actual sound like music or a podcast is even worse for me than the dull ambient backdrop noise. On rare occasion I can listen to music for a brief period of time, maybe 1 hour. But any sustained sounds longer than an hour and I start to feel the type of tiredness you feel when you pull an all-nighter. That's just how sound affects me. I can't "tune it out" like most people can ... it just grates on me and, whether I choose it or not, induces me to be hyper attentive to it, especially to human voices. Noise-cancelling headphones can take away dull background chatter that's far away. But in open-plan offices, usually without even so much as differentiated desks or cubicles, when the person sitting next to you decides it's cool to bring a remote controlled helicopter to work and his friends are all laughing about it with him 2 feet behind you (true story), it just doesn't help. But even in less extreme places, where it's just normal, good-intentioned colleagues chatting about their weekend plans or something, it's still a huge disruption for me, and noise-cancelling headphones don't solve it. Actually, I can remember one of the most insane attention triggers I had to deal with was when I actually worked in a cubicle setting and the person in the cubicle next to me had some kind of smart phone that must have doubled as a sex toy or something because when it vibrated it was insane. I could feel his phone vibrating in my forearms resting on my desk while I was typing. That one drove me absolutely insane. There's also a huge component of this that is just based on natural human fight vs flight reflexes. If you have a bunch of vague, large mammals kind of walking around right behind you where you can't see them all day, it just causes anxiety. Some people (especially many extroverts) can deal with this without a problem, and it can even be comforting to them. But for others (especially introverts) the constant triggering of the "what's that, who is walking behind me" reflex is extremely exhausting, and it gets stimulated by pretty much everything, noise, casual movement, ping pong, whatever, going on in an open plan office. The office layout in and of itself is just intrinsically unhealthy for these people. And I fall very, very far on that spectrum towards the introverted side. It doesn't mean I'm shy (I actually love public speaking) ... what it means is that little unplanned social interactions or hints of social interactions are a huge, constant energy drain for me. I talked to one former boss about this and his immediate reaction was something like, "Look, you are really good at getting your work done. You don't have to worry if someone's walking by and they see you've got ESPN pulled up on your monitor or something ... we know you're getting your work done." And I'm just like, "umm ... it doesn't work that way. I don't give a shit if you see me playing Minecraft on my computer during work hours. It has nothing to do with that. It's a physiological response to the environment itself. I can't just "switch it off" because you try to assuage my anxiety." When it comes to this introvert/extrovert spectrum, I think it truly represents a component of workplace discrimination that really damages a lot of people, but for extroverts and managers, it just never even crosses their mind that it could even be happening at all.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
One thousands times, that. Noisy office layouts are a non-starter for me. Fortunately I've been working at home, or in a small office of friends for 20 years now. But back in the day I had to have the most remote, unpopular cubicle by the fire escape to get anything done at all. Just to have some peace to think.
ebiester 11y ago
As someone with a similar issue, I have settled on a combination of brown noise and indistinct human-like voices. (I use babelbabble on iOS but would like to find a webapp equivalent. I hope you can hold out for the right job.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  This is remarkably similar to the set up that David Byrne describes in his book How Music Works.
curun1r 11y ago
I had a colleague who used the kind of ear protection that airport employees wear out on the tarmac. In order to get his attention, you'd literally have to tap him on the shoulder. I tried it myself and it was eerily quiet...you couldn't even sense when someone was standing behind you. Have you tried these? Combined with a desk that faces a wall, I'd bet you'd find yourself in your own little world, oblivious to all that was going on behind you.
- p4wnc6 11y ago
  How many tarmac earmuff people do you see getting promoted to a senior position? This sort of thing, even if it's unfair, absolutely lowers your status in the company. In one previous job with a noisy open-plan office, I actually tried wearing some factory-grade ear plugs, small little yellow ear plugs that you couldn't see unless you came up close. They weren't perfect, but the ambient noise was so distracting that I gave them a try. Within a week, my boss had a 1-1 meeting with me to tell me that some people thought it was very rude that I was wearing earplugs, and that it made it seem like I was unwilling to participate. I was actually training an intern and helping a team of three others with a software tool I wrote for them, so I was far from not participating, and all of my peers were vocally supportive of me wearing the ear plugs if they helped. I learned later that one of the C-level executives had made a walk through of the research work space and he just simply "didn't like" seeing someone with ear plugs. Headphones == acceptable, possibly even sexy cool start-up geek. Ear plugs == tacky, borderline Aspbergery nerd who isn't being good enough office eye candy

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]