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Comment by brailsafe | Hacker News Reader

There was a time when I thought the same as that branch manager, but that time was long ago and it was based on absolutely no experience.

In the last open office I worked in, I could not find headphones that allowed me to focus, not even construction-grade earmuffs; if someone's chewing food within 10 ft, I'll hear it, and that's all I'll hear.

For literal constant music listening to actually help, it needs to be a choice, otherwise it just makes me tire of music and I don't get nearly as much out of my mental energy.

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>In the last open office I worked in, I could not find headphones that allowed me to focus, not even construction-grade earmuffs; if someone's chewing food within 10 ft, I'll hear it, and that's all I'll hear.

That's interesting. I have the same exact issue and whenever I tell people about it they think I am crazy. I don't have a problem with people chewing food when it's lunch break and we sit in the cafeteria, but man, when I try to focus it kills my brain. Just last week the guy next to me started eating kind of late in the day (where my brain was almost empty). I then tried to cancel it out with headphones, but that just wasn't possible anymore.

And I still don't know how to deal with it. Sometimes I try to take a walk for 5 minutes and it helps, but not always. On some days I get a full mental breakdown because I get angry at myself getting angry on somebody just making noises any normal human being does while eating

That's why I don't understand how some developers are able to code while listening to music.

For me heavily depends on the music. Just been listening to heavy drum and bass for the past 2 hours and been in absolute hyperfocus. Music is the best for me, should be familiar and not have too many lyrics tho.

Sometimes it's drum and bass, mostly some synthwave/chill beats.

Edit: But the problem here is. If I am already exhausted and got distracted by those noises, then getting into focus with just music often does not work. I do have adhd and it could be that misophonia is playing into it too. Still trying to figure out my best work environment, but it's hard

I'd echo exactly everything in this comment.

I feel like Concerta marginally helps with this, but it's tough to remember the last time I've had to test it.

I listen to rap a lot when coding.

You may have misophonia. It’s not uncommon with misophonia to react with rage to eating noises. My husband cannot tolerate certain sounds, for example a dog lapping water.

I have misophonia too, related to chewing sounds. It actually developed in offices. I don’t really go to offices anymore. But the thing that definitely helped was listening to violent noises: wind storm in the forest, sound of jet engine, etc. Naturespace app for phones have some really high quality recordings. Well, that and psychotherapy. My mental health directly allows me to spend mental resources resisting all these emotions.

My son (11yo) has had this as well for the last 2.5 years. Seeing an Audiologist for treatment.

Can you elaborate a little on "listening to violent noises" approach? When do you do this, for how long? Is it graduated in intensity, like exposure therapy?

Thanks!

It is just listening to noises that would distort other unpleasant sounds in a way that they stop being distinguishable/audible. Not a therapy, just masking them temporarily. I know when the risk of disturbing noises is high, and turn on the noise beforehand, or right after it starts. Like, there is a kindergarten near my house, it is noisy, but predictable. So every day I close the window and turn on headphones during the time children are outside.

The therapy, unrelated to this coping approach, was focused on figuring out why I got sensitive to some noises in the first place during childhood. Very individual, but to give an example, appearance of stepfather in my life, whose eating habits were conflicting with the way I was raised before.

Thanks for taking the time to add these details. Will add to the arsenal of tools. Best of luck!

It really is a kind of existential dread I get when having to contend with this. Thankfully it's rare now that I don't have a job in an office or at all, but when I did, I'd end up with the same solution; I had to leave the office, or ironically, take a breather in the kitchen and hope they were done their meal when I got back.

It consumed my consciousness in a way that literally dropped my productivity to near zero, and I couldn't catch up, and got fired. Thankfully my boss didn't do a damn thing except scold me for being slow, otherwise I'd still be making PDF editing software.

I'd just go to a cafe down the street for a few hours, which reflected poorly on me, but I had no choice. Not only was the coffee laughably better than the shit in the office, but my ability to focus there vs the office was like night and day.

To the improvement of my focus and productivity I recently-ish got into listening "arbitrary" music with little to no lyrics and an uplifting tempo.

I used to listen to particular bands which I felt "defined my identity" or something, which I still occasionally do, but I've since realized that when I'm working it's "distracting" to me and I now listen to things like generic "trailer" / epic music or "upbeat" music for workouts.

Any examples or recommendations? I'd like to try this.

It's probably a personal taste thing, but on Spotify some of the radios I listen to are based on the following artists of their songs:

- Two Steps from Hell

- Sultan + Shephard

- Tom Player

- Matias Puumala

Some other random playlists:

- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E8PiJpaZ8rWVi?si=...

- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E35ecXdUS92X1?si=...

- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E36Le7GAznRHV?si=...

- https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1E366Mpiqxs399?si=...

I don't really curate my stuff, I occasionally "like" songs or start radios off songs I'm enjoying in the moment.

Can't do it myself, but I've heard that people listen to typical traditional "video game music" for this purpose. Fast, upbeat, and never something you need to focus on, but rather, it just helps you keep up the concentration.

...if you're the type of person who can listen to music while working, that is.

VGM is all over the place.

I used to like working to the Hotline Miami soundtrack myself, which worked great for coding menial stuff but sucked for troubleshooting.

The Unreal Tournament '99 OST is way better in that it's fast, low-key, and repetitive. I put on a 3-hour megamix and I'm crushing it until lunch.

The Unreal OST and first Assasin's creed also work well for me.

To add to the other comment. Game music/soundtracks can be good for that, lots of options there, usually that music is to fill the background and keep someone engaged with the game. I also find LoFi music good for that purpose.

I actually had the Golden Axe theme[0] on repeat for 4 hours and didn't notice =) I also have a feeling it wasn't the full song, but I had clipped it to a shorter length to fit into the space required for a ringtone at the time.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWkT180hNLE

somafm.com has excellent programming in a variety of flavors

Fast "hard bop" Jazz from the '50s-60s e.g. Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers.

It's intense, upbeat music.

I've greatly enjoyed https://musicforprogramming.net/ since it's so easy to access, has free downloads, and a web player.

This is pretty much what I end up doing by choice, but it only acts as an aid if I can also take them off and get a break. The problem is made worse when you can also see the person chewing with their mouth open and possibly being able to smell it.

> not even construction-grade earmuffs Have you tried:

3M Peltor Premium Plus Earmuffs X3A https://www.3m.co.uk/3M/en_GB/p/d/v101190004/

in my opinion they're really good, though, to be honest, I haven't tried them in an open space env. I'm also a sufferer of misophonia, it's beeping noises and random notifications for me.

I also noticed they make getting into the flow a lot more easy; and, surprisingly, they also reduce the activation energy of getting into work. I suspect that's because our envs are EXTREMELY noisy (compared with the mythical natural state) and the brain always keeps track (subconsciously) of all the noises which leads to mental energy depletion

I used these when studying in the library for the CPA exam, and they were remarkably effective. The joke with my friends was if the library had caught on fire and the fire alarms had gone off, I wouldn’t have been aware and would have remained in my seat while everyone else evacuated.

I'm not sure if I tried that specific model or not, but I did try the beefiest 3Ms that were available and that others were recommending for the same issue back in 2020, and no they don't really work for this problem. They would probably work if I was already completely unaware of the noises, but then I probably wouldn't need them anyway and they wouldn't be an appropriate solution. Also they were comically large and introduced the anxiety that people were constantly looking at them.

To shut out sounds, the thing that seems to work for me is to play thunderstorm sounds. Because it's got a high degree of randomness across the frequency spectrum, and its spectrum varies over short timescales, external noise is masked even if it's still audible - because the brain can easily fit it into the thunderstorm pattern. Whereas if I'm annoyed by something, my brain will pick it out from behind music in listening to, even if it's quieter.

When I'm hearing someone else's thump thump music and my ear buds aren't sufficient to block it, that's the only thing I've found to work.

No thunder, but I've enjoyed the "white noise rain" https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/whiteRainNoiseGenerator.ph...

It's real rain noise - if you pay attention to it, you can hear the drops - but it's overall a nice white noise that isn't the "boring" white noise.

> ... Our recording has been performed in the silence of the night, in a huge space - namely the Harau Valley in Sumatra - and in the absence of any wind, as to produce the most even noise one can get.

Related / previous HN posts

https://rain.today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9908909

https://mynoise.net https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32366075

Neat, bookmarked for later

I built a white noise site which has a load of sounds which can help in a similar way (including thunder): https://ambiph.one

I find the 'bass rumble' and brown noise particularly useful for masking external noise, which I guess is pretty similar to a thunderstorm frequency-wise

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