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 m

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.