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Comment by atemerev | Hacker News Reader

In my case the problem is that I literally can’t work (meaning, program) if the temperature is less than 22C. Warm clothing, hot drinks, nothing helps. Tried many times.

Hope that electric heating will still be legal.

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Heat the space immediately around you. Don't bother with central heating. Get a small electric blanket that you can have on your lap.

If you are feeling more adventurous I got through a cold winter where the heating broke when I was a student with a mix of warm clothing, blankets, and doing exercises to keep warm. When you start getting cold, do some press-ups/squats etc.

If you are feeling really adventurous I would recommend going outside wearing less clothes than you want to, just trousers and a shirt/jumper. When you get really cold head back in and it will seem positively warm! Another way of doing this is cold showers.

I'd say heat the person, not the space. Following on from the Electric Blanket mention, I'd recommend a heated vest. I have one made by Arris [1], and it has a 7.4V battery. Following a tip in an Amazon review, I contacted their customer services and got a voucher for a second battery at half price.

Last winter, I used it a lot when WFH to avoid the temptation of using the boost on the central heating. With two batteries, one can be charging while the other is in use. According to my meter plug it was economical to charge.

I found it worked best with a thin base layer underneath the heated vest, and a good fleece over it. There are several heating areas on the front and back, and I found that the battery lasted best by starting at the highest heat setting and then stepping down through the levels as I warmed up. Very useful when sitting still long periods at your computer. And of course the advantage over a blanket or electric fan is that you can walk around with it on.

[1] https://www.arrislife.com/products/arris-heated-vest-size-ad...

> I'd say heat the person, not the space.

I agree, but OP seemed a bit reluctant to try that so I suggested the next best thing.

Thanks for the heated vest suggestion.

>Hope that electric heating will still be legal.

Air source heat pump (split AC unit) is the way to go. Those things have efficiencies of 200-600%.

I am renting my apartment in Switzerland, where split AC installations are prohibitively expensive ($3000 or more for a single unit) and usually forbidden by landlords.

At this point finding a unit and someone to install it might not happen until 2024 in some places.

Yes you can.

No, many can't. Yes, you can live and survive at colder temperatures, but concentration requires no distractions, and the constant slight pain caused by being cold is enough distraction to completely derail any train of thought.

Concentration does not require no distractions. It’s the mechanism to avoid distraction.

I take it you don’t have ADHD? The reason people with ADHD often work while wearing noise-cancelling headphones even with no audio playing is because this mechanism doesn’t properly work, it can’t tune out anything.

As result, we need to minimize external stimuli to be able to concentrate. And being uncomfortable due to the cold is one such stimulus.

Decreased comfort = decreased productivity. On an individual level people can cope but on a societal level it’s a real issue. I want a society full of productive people so I want investment in clean energy supplies and high performance buildings.

That's interesting. I realize you can argue about people in general (e.g. 21 is still fine with me!), but how can you negate someone else's feelings? It's like replying "no, you are not" to someone saying "I'm sad."

Lol yeah, it's like how I say I can't live with these health problems.

Yeah, I can, it turns out. Our bodies can take a loooot more stress than we think.

My office is in a cool (64F) basement. Something I've found works to warm me up is to do a bunch of squats and pushups when I'm cold. If you're able to, perhaps try doing 10 squats then 5 pushups on repeat 3-5 times until you're warm/hot.

I find the warmth lasts about an hour and has the side effect of also warming my office a degree or so.

You can get heated office chair covers, think like a car's heated seats but for office chairs. They pull about 30W and made a big difference when I lived through Illinois winters.

Make sure you office is the smallest room and get a space heater to keep it at your desired temprature

If your office is the smallest room, then you get fast to high CO2 concentration in the office.

My office is in fact the smallest room, just enough for a table, a chair and my homelab (a bunch of rPIs, some network equipment, a few servers).

All the electronics keep the room relatively warm, so most of the heating is actually turned off in that room :)

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