I don't really know how to explain it.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
What's telling too is that people who want to get work done in such an environment stay home to do it.
Including the zealots.