I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet. | Hacker News Reader

I’m Thinking. Please. Be Quiet.

nytimes.com

296 pointsclbrook243 comments

It's so true. I can do routine work with noise, but not the kind that requires insight.

The sad thing is that noise is yet another example of the phenomenon of "the tragedy of the commons." Which means things tend to get noisier and noisier. In fact, what has surprised me most about living in Palo Alto is how noisy it is. You'd think living in the suburbs would at least be quiet. It is on weekends. But the problem with this suburb is that people are too rich: they all have their gardens maintained by gardening services, who use among other things gas-powered leaf blowers and hedge trimmers.

The leaf blowers in particular are unbelievably loud. You can hear a gas-powered leaf blower 3 blocks away. Which means during the day you can almost always hear one. (The city of Palo Alto has outlawed gas powered leaf blowers, but the gardening services all pretend not to know.)

I can do routine work with noise, but not the kind that requires insight.

I have the same problem, and it's part of the reason I often like to work during the night more than the day.

Im in Mountain View and I can tell you that at least half of the problem is shoddy construction. East Coast houses are made to keep out weather and West Coast houses are made not to hurt when they fall on you.

And this issue is going to make someone a billionaire in the future. Urbanization is well under way and people are only getting noisier and more crowded.

Also, another area for huge improvements is in the legal system. Basically you're screwed if you have noise issues due to anything "normal" - e.g. music, talking, babies...etc.

West Coast houses are made not to hurt when they fall on you

True, they're junk. In most places it would be smarter ot make them out of brick, and the chances that they'll fall on the occupant are very low indeed. Some of the oldest (pre 1906) houses in SF are made of brick, ditto in Oakland.

As it turns out, brick buildings are much more prone to complete collapse than wood houses during earthquakes, owing to the greater flexibility of wood.

Or are you making the argument that that conventional professional wisdom is incorrect?

Unreinforced brick will indeed fall down in even modest earthquakes. In new construction it is possible to sink rebar into the wall, at which point it is at least the equal of concrete (and certainly more attractive); however a lot of people don't want to bother with perceived time and expense and so we go back to concrete and stick framing.

Much construction in California is penny wise and pound foolish. It is routine to omit insulation from the walls in new construction, never mind that it will pay for itself in savings on heating and cooling bills. Wooden houses can be destroyed in an earthquake if the quake shakes them off their foundations; fixing this is simple and easy during construction but, again, wasn't done for a long time. I believe the only reason it is done now is code requirements—it would not overly surprise me to learn that the builders can't be bothered even in new construction.

It's not really the flexibility. Masonry is strong in compression, but heavy, and relatively weak in tensions. It tends to crumble under its own weight.

But yes - brick is good in a hurricane, but a death trap in a quake..

In Europe pretty much any old house is made out of brick. They've been through many earthquakes, built hundreds of years ago and still standing; and this is without reinforcement.

Most earthquakes in Europe aren't all that strong. But when they are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1977_Vrancea_earthquake

And the Lisbon earthquake: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake

Probably associated with a new subduction zone that appears to be forming at this side of the Atlantic:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23711-will-new-tectoni...

True, but most of the casualties came from large (poorly built) buildings collapsing, not regular houses.

"In Europe pretty much any old house is made out of brick."

Depends on what is the most easily available building material - here in Scotland pretty much all old buildings are made of stone (everything from small houses up).

NB Speaking of making things from stone - the 5000 year old village of Skara Brae even has remaining furniture made of stone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skara_Brae

Probably wouldn't want to live in one during a strong 6+ earthquake, but they are pretty handy during a hurricane. If you can manage to make the roof stay put.

Even pacific northwest houses? Houses around there in my experience do keep out the bad weather and are far better made than most californian houses.

Oh sorry, I just meant California.

The reason the pre-1906 buildings are made of brick isn't that brick is superior for surviving earthquakes, but that much construction of the time was brick, and that which wasn't was wood. And most of the destruction of the 1906 quake came from the fire which followed it.

So the only structures which could survive were brick and masonry.

Most of those brick structures have been very significantly reinforced over the years. And if you've ever been next to a brick wall as it's bulging in and out as S waves pass by, you'll likely reconsider your argument.

Steel cage buildings are far preferable to either, from a survivability standpoint.

I lived in a California Craftsman house for a few years, and plaster-on-lath construction on the inner walls was great. The higher density & mass of the material masked sound better than drywall, but also provided additional thermal mass so very little AC was required for most of the season. Just circulate outside air at night to cool the house, and close up the windows in the morning to stay cool for the day.

Modern tech exists for good acoustics, it's simply a matter of cost - houses near areas that need noise-abatement routinely get fitted with it, but developers are cheap and will skip it if at all possible.

Wait, are you saying that the legal system would be improved if people could sue each other over loud music, talking, or babies?

I could be misunderstanding. If not, that sounds insufferable.

If your landlord shows you your apartment at 2pm while everyone is at work (or only shows a model unit) and you move in and can hear every footstep your neighbor takes and your neighbors coughing in bed at night, there should be easier ways than currently exist to solve that problem.

In the future I think every apartment will come with a noise disclosure of some sort, detailing expected noise levels throughout the day. And I think people will probably be made to sign noise agreements to join buildings..etc.

I would work for the rest of my life to pay for a device that turns my ears off temporarily. YC2020?

I would work for the rest of my life to pay for a device that turns my ears off temporarily. YC2020?

I logged in just to upvote this idea.

Break your tympans, get a cochlear implant.

I know a small kid that has a cochlear implant (born with some bits missing). The sound quality is quite horrible. Better not be a fan of music.

I will save you the rest of your life's labour.

http://www.amazon.com/Howard-Leight-MAX-1-plugs-Uncorded/dp/...

You're welcome.

I tried a similar product, but the silence became unnerving in 10-15 minutes.

I've become quite used to them, though if I can work in a non-distracting environment, I prefer that.

This reminded me of a great article about ear plugs:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

The author Nicholson Baker has written about writing with earplugs:

"I’ve always been helped by sensory deprivation. I used to wear earplugs a lot. Sometimes I would write with my eyes closed. But writing in the early morning is different because you haven’t been able to see anything for hours. I would get up and feel my way around. The only help was the moonlight, if it was a moonlit night. You think differently if you can’t see."

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6097/the-art-of-fic...

I bought 200 of those and no.. they won't even make me forget the annoying coworker :)

Is money able to solve this problem, through better sound insulation in one's house?

Better sound insulation can help reduce the noise level from external sources inside a home, but 1) does nothing for outdoor areas of your home (a patio or porch for example), and 2) becomes completely ineffectual if you open a window.

Indeed. For example, dual-paned windows are fantastic, but since air conditioning is relatively rare in dwellings in the Bay Area, you effectively can't use them for sound insulation for several months of the year.

You might hope that we would become habituated to reoccurring noises in our environment, but the opposite has been shown empirically. [1]

The study showed that while regular office workers become habituated to office chatter after 20 minutes of exposure, their habituation resets to baseline after only 5 minutes of quiet (measured via memory tasks). The irregularity of the noise is what kills us.

The only effective solution I've found against ambient ear-shocks is to overpower them via headphones and regular white noise.

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xap/3/3/181/

When I truly want to concentrate and need silence, I wear noise-canceling ear plugs. The same type you use to protect from a chainsaw-sounding snoring roommate.

This sort of works but the feeling is very artificial. You know it's not actually quiet.

Sometimes that feeling of having something stuffed into your ears, or if they are headphones that feeling of something heavy on your head is more distracting than the noise itself.

A mild level of ambient noise is proven to increase creative cognition aka make you a better CREATIVE thinker.

Just saying

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048 from coffitvity.com

Interesting JSTOR sidenote - before we made Coffitivity, this research was behind a Paywall, and we convinced them to remove it. It was weird timing when it happened, it was kind of emotional to speak to JSTOR at the time, but it's cool we can just link to it now.

I usually do my best work with music, street noise and chatter from the TV at the same time. The more variety, the better.

I also like a mix of different types of noise. I actually built a little site to mix ambient noises together [1].

[1] http://asoftmurmur.com

That's what coffitivity suggests. The iPhone app even has a mixer to mix the ambient noise with your music.

At this point, I'd gladly take the leaf blower. Car stereo sub-woofers and straight pipe Harleys: Two things that, in my opinion, should be outright outlawed. Live on a street where they are frequent, and your life will be difficult. Live next to someone who tinkers on them incessantly, and your life will be hell.

Work is another problem. I wore out my health trying to cope with the "standard environment". (Which, of course, was spun as "collaboration". [Cough - "cost savings" - cough.]) No more. For my own sake, as well as to no longer support people who promote such environments.

I live near both those things and can put up with the intermittent noise. Leafblowers are an invention of Satan and must be destroyed, preferably along with their owners and operators. They are the epitome of laziness.

I wonder if the majority of the noise can be snuffed by using a battery powered electric motor, or if it's the fans that generate most of the sound...

A Silent leafblower sounds like a potential invention.

You'd make a lot more money by inventing the silent vacuumcleaner.

I don't think it would be that hard to invent. What's hard is making it silent and compact.

Show me.

Well, a double walled enclosure with vacuum inbetween would seal out a lot. Plus you could market it as "the double vacuum". Profit!

The problem is the outflowing air. That's where the noise comes from.

Well, that's where "lots of corners in the airpipe design" comes in. That, plus what I said before are big points in making something big.

I have a corded electric one and it's quieter than a petrol model but probably not much. You still have to wear ear protection.

To be fair, Satan also invented Slayer, which kind of evens out the leafblower damage.

I had neighbors who insisted upon playing their car (or truck) stereos whenever outside, which was fairly perpetually. There is nothing that blocks or masks the sound of those sub-woofers.

It was an unincorporated location, and the county sheriff couldn't be bothered.

It also turned out that the little local street was a shortcut. "Intermittent" turned out to be a... weak description of the traffic situation.

I nonetheless grew at least somewhat accustomed to the passing noise. The non-stop, however...

Oh, and those same neighbors didn't have Harleys, but they did seem to be of the opinion that every vehicle had to have glass packs or something similar. And that they had to be "tuned up", with sometimes an hour or more of engine revving, seemingly weekly.

By comparison, I can hear a leaf blower. But as a fairly constant drone, and one that does not, at low frequency, pass right through the house, I find it comparatively easy to take.

How's that going for you? I came to the same conclusion a few months ago, especially the "wore out my health" part. I quit my job in SV, moved back to rural NY and have been focusing on getting healthy again, both mentally and physically. I haven't found a full time telecommuting job yet and, in all honestly, I'm dreading it. I have difficulty believing that, even while telecommuting, any company is going to be truly different from the "standard environment."

I was actually fairly well able to deal with the personalities and political stuff. I've always been fairly easy to get along with and able to establish good working relationships with a wide variety of people. (Even the jerks, although I've become increasingly less tolerant of such behaviour.)

It was the physical environment that did me in. I was responsible for fairly essential financial analysis of about a billion dollars in revenue, at one point, including managing the transition of/to some fairly radical and poorly planned systems conversions. Yet they couldn't find anything better for me than a cube where my kitty-/katy-corner neighbor spent a couple of hours a day on speakerphone, and the senior manager next to me spent a different hour of the afternoon chatting on the phone with his son -- a fabric wall is not effective when two people are sitting circa five feet apart.

I didn't even care what they were doing -- or, in the case of the family chats, also not doing. I just didn't want to fight the noise for my concentration.

In another position, they finally agreed to move me to an office. Which, despite better rooms being available (and turned down by my manager), they made a windowless box (fine -- well, ok, I can cope) located next to a conference room, with no sound insulation in between (not fine).

The irony in that was that about half of the team I was on at that point was located either at other offices or virtual. That aspect worked our really just fine. One of the fellows I grew to have a lot of respect for, over the course of a couple of years, I never met in person. Yet we could pick up the phone and call -- or just email or IM or whatever -- and immediately address and plan a course of action, or take action when immediately needed, with no problem. He was a seasoned developer who knew how to get stuff done.

So... Personalities and experiences differ. But, I wouldn't worry too much about the virtual part. From my perspective, it would be likely to make me more effective in doing the actual work. And I would welcome the separation from all the environmental crap. Perhaps also the ability of people to just stop by my cube or office and draw me into their political BS or social BS. There's good social. And there's wasting an hour debating the best Jim Carrey movie. I can do without the latter.

Actually, I'm dealing with a little environmental noise now, at the moment. So, I hope I remained coherent in this response.

TL;DR: Do the work, and unplug from the crap. Keep the network active, for if/when the crap nonetheless starts to exceed the work. Use virtual as a crap buffer/filter.

P.S. The guy I mentioned coming to respect? Well, I got to know more than a bit about his golf fetish. There is -- or can be -- quality socializing in a virtual environment. What's nice, though, is not to be forced to tune out your neighbors' two hour discussion of their weekends.

>straight pipe Harleys

I live in Milwaukee. Harley's 110th is here this week(end). I made a point to stock up on sleep over the weekend :)

Seriously, that "Loud pipes save lives" thing is such bullshit. Hearing a bike coming from a mile away is not the same thing as seeing where they are. And then at 2am the bars close and everyone goes outside to see whose bike is the loudest...

I like bikes, probably going to buy one someday, but modding your bike specifically to see how loud you can make it is unbelievably obnoxious. </rant>

Some years back I walked into such an environment. Oh, and no receptionist.

The interior was essentially warehouse space furnished with ranks of Costco plastic tables as desks, aligned flush, ten abreast.

Waited to be acknowledged and sat through the interview but very nearly walked straight out.

Oh, and the security profile of the place was abysmal (they feature in one of those horror stories you hear online).

My feedback to the recruiter: thanks, that's now my benchmark for worst prospect ever.

Leaf blowers are seriously fucked up.

http://www.nonoise.org/quietnet/cqs/leafblow.htm

"Leaf blower motors are inordinately large emitters of CO, NOx, HC, and PM according to a study conducted for the ARB (5). Two-stroke engine fuel is a gasoline-oil mixture, thus especially toxic. Particles from combustion are virtually all smaller than PM2.5. According to the Lung Association, a leaf blower causes as much smog as 17 cars."

Yeah, it's things like that that make me wish we could just outright ban all two-stroke engines. See also those gas scooters that occasionally go by - it's incredible how much stink they produce (and conversely, how incredibly clean-burning cars are now). At least there aren't too many of them.

Modern two stroke engines are a lot cleaner than the old ones.

And still massively dirtier than a four-stroke or electric (when including pollution cost of creating the electricity, storage/transfer losses, etc).

They've already been banned on many waterways due to excessive pollution. Why not elsewhere?

The New Yorker ran a good article about the leaf blower issue in Orinda a couple years back. I can't stand leaf blowers either, but the article does a decent job of (among other things) pointing out that blowers are a necessary competitive technology for the gardening services. http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=2010-10-25#folio=050

Leaf blowers used by homeowners or the people paid to take care of their gardens are one of the most "typically American" and absurd and annoying things. You almost never hear/see these things around Europe, except some similar contraptions use to take care of very large city parks, for which they probably make sense, and even then they are used at reasonable hours.

I mean, using a powered leaf blower to help clean up some fallen leaves off your front yard, sparing you 15 min of your life? Wtf...

When you're paid to clean leaves off multiple front yards? 15 * yards * days used per year = a whole lot of time. It's really not surprising that they pick what works quickest.

So the root of the problem is that people are paying other peoples to clean their yards... guess it's the same "hidden cost / side-effect of externalizing things".

That's why I try to stick to the "keep as many things in-house as possible", both for my household and family and for my business :)

EDIT+: I think the so called "american way of doing things" is so successful business-wise exactly because of the "externalize as much as you can" philosophy, but it kind of fails big when the hidden costs of externalization are non-financial and manifest themselves as "lower quality of life" or "worse health" and at the same time get offloaded to other people than the ones doing the externalizing (like to the neighbors of the people that pay companies that use powered leafblowers to clean up their yards).

There's also the American obsession with having a big lawn even when you don't have time to care for it or even enjoy it.

No, it's not always the lawn services. I remember a dozen or more years ago driving down Wayne Avenue in Silver Spring, a neighborhood of small bungalows with lawns to suit, and seeing a man, evidently the owner, running his leaf blower.

I don't particularly mind raking leaves. Our yard is probably a 90 minute job two or three times in late fall. But I also mow the lawn, with a power mower, so I'm making some noise too.

Not at all. I've watched them for years all over California and in a few other States. I used to film them and show friends, back when making movies with a pocket-size device was novel.

They tend to loiter and run the machinery excessively whether it's needed or not. I'm not sure why. A display of 'work theater' to impress their clients? Or maybe it's to keep the driving/onsite ratio reasonable? Like, they have enough clients to make a living and don't feel like doing the extra travel/setup/teardown to add more, but don't want to just go home for the rest of the day when people are supposed to be working, so... run the leaf blower? I rarely see them in a hurry. It's almost like a form of meditation for them.

Exactly this. I've confronted gardeners doing this and the homeowners who employ them. I even had the police come out on a noise complaint. Nobody seemed to care and most think it's fair game to make noise as long as it's during "business hours."

Google/Wikipedia for "Conspicuous Consumption" For this purpose, the louder the leafblower and the longer it takes, the better.

So do you have some incredible raking skills, or do trees not lose many leaves where you're from? Here cleaning leaves under a big tree in the fall, with or without a leaf blower, takes a solid hour. 2 if you've been lazy and not done it for a week.

google for leaf sweeper. I find mine to be much quicker than either a leaf blower or a rake, and much easier to use than a rake. For those too lazy to google its a human powered street sweeper that dumps whatever it sweeps up into a perhaps 9 cubic foot cloth bucket, then you dump the bin when it gets full. For $150 you can buy one that will fall apart in a year, or for $200 you can buy one that apparently will last a lifetime (so far). As an exercise it's pretty weak, rates as a bit less than walking up a hill, but probably more than hiking level with a backpack. If you're strong and talented enough you can push it one handed while talking on the phone or whatever. Its basically silent, a laptop like "whirr" from the sweeping brushes. On a good one you can adjust the brush height such that it sweeps bare air accomplishing nothing, or digs into the dirt with extreme effort, or ideally somewhere in between. With a bad one you adjust it by varying the height you hold the handle, which must be incredibly unergonomic.

In the long run the solution to hatred of maintenance of deciduous trees is a chainsaw and an evergreen sapling, but I digress. There are people trapped in prisons, err, I mean overactive homeowners associations, who have to do exactly what the warden says exactly when the warden tells them to do it, but they were dumb enough to pay a huge quantity of money to give up their freedom, so serves them right.

I had to upvote you, simply for your last sentence :)

This is one of those insane comments that I only ever see on hacker news.

Who gives a shit how they pick up leaves in Europe? Picking up leaves isn't some artful process..it's drudgery which consumes some amount of my (finite) life, and which technology has provided a quicker solution.

Muscle Over Motor: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/12/05/muscle-over-motor/

It makes sense in a large park but not for personal use? Sounds like you're ok with scaling the noise to the size of the job? It's really not a marginal 15 minutes if you're dealing with any number or large trees. Then there's the removal to deal with. I use a walk-behind mulcher. The machine is running for the same amount of time a blower would (or less), but at the end the leaves are mulched in a bag that I can dump along the edge of the lawn to compost. The material disappears in less than a year. I don't like that I'm making noise for several hours every fall, but it would actually take four times as long to rake and bag it (I'm serious about that number).

I have deferred for years pulling the trigger on a blower to clean the interminable tree cruft off the driveway, though. In light of this thread, I will have to think even harder before going that route. I do appreciate quiet.

I hate front lawns. With a passion. But, guess what, I had to fall in line and make mine "pretty", put in some sod and match the rest of the neighborhood. For now I have the greenest and neatest front lawn on the block.

Why? We have a culture where you lose value if you adopt arid climate landscape when people expect grass and flowers and that's what everything around you looks like. We had a nice arid climate front yard with rocks and plants that required zero water and maintenance. We refinanced and the bank actually objected to the look of the house. They said it looked unkept. Unbelievable. The arid landscaping cost me thousands. It just didn't match the rest of the homes on our street. So the friggin sod had to come in.

I find it beyond moronic that we are actually throwing water at the ground to grow grass. Then we come back a couple of times a month and use gasoline to cut, trim and blow it clean. The only thing worst is owning a swimming pool.

I refuse to be a weekend lawn-mower monkey. I've never had any interest in that and never will. I'd rather be doing a million other things than pushing a mower on a pointless patch of grass. Yup, that means we now have a gardener with the dreaded gas powered leaf-blower, mower and trimmer. I am not proud of this at all.

So, here's the plan: I planted fruit trees right smack in the middle of the lawn areas. Once they grow beyond a certain size they'll kill-off most of the grass. That's when I go back to practical landscaping. And, of course, I'll be producing some fruit as well which is neat.

If I absolutely have to I am going with plastic grass in the front and will learn to love it.

The back of the house is now 100% concrete, soon to be covered with solar panels for both shade and off-grid power. Great for entertaining and hanging out. Our local parks have plenty of grass if we feel the need.

My gardener is a few months away from being out of a job. I wish more people would wake up and realize what they are doing.

A lot of people actually like it - they like to have a well kept lawn, and if they want to use their time or money to do that, why not? But I don't like that you're expected, if not directly asked to, to keep it as society wants it to be. However, I can understand that the bank is concerned about the value of the house if they're financing it.

Personally I'm looking for a house well outside the city and any far from busy roads. Lots of land and I can have the wild nature I love and grew up with. I can't think of anything that'll calm me down and unwind like a walk in the nature does.

Because it wastes water, which is something a lot of areas cannot afford: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/us/to-save-water-parched-s...

To add to your answer. Yes, lawns waste water. They also require fuel burning machinery to maintain, causing pollution. And then there are the chemicals (fertilizers, weed killers, insect control, etc.). Go back one more layer and you have the sod farms which use water, fuel, chemicals, etc. And I am sure the chain continues for another layer or two.

All of what you add is entirely optional. It is possible to keep a "nice lawn" around your house, without use of fuel and chemicals. Water however is mandatory if it's not raining enough.

Water is not mandatory at all. Grass with a healthy, deep root system will survive extended droughts just fine. It just turns brown and people don't like that.

That was the point. You need water to have green grass in dry climates - all the others are optional.

Everything under discussion is equally optional. You need water to have green grass just like you need to mow the lawn to have short grass. Neither of those things are required by the grass, they are purely optional things society expects of us.

Though if your grass is both long and dry, that presents a bit of a fire hazard.

I get a nice mix in Indiana. In the spring the lawn is green and thick. I have to mow it once a week. In the summer the lack of water slows and eventually stops the growth. After early July, I mow only one more time the rest of the year. Copious shade overhead keeps it from getting too terribly brown. In this situation the grass is less work than anything else I can think of other than letting trees and bushes go wild across every square foot. I like the open space. It takes about 2 gallons of gas a year for a double lot in the city.

Growing up I wanted a smooth, green lawn for playing sports. Then I grew up and realized what that entails. Now my lawn is as weedy, hard, and bumpy as anything out there!

I think this is a big reason we've seen a renewed interest in cities since the 1980s. All of the upkeep on a home is ridiculous. Also commuting, sitting in traffic every day, dealing with the hassles and expenses of owning a car. Simplifying all of this is incredibly liberating.

haha as someone who has to cut quite a bit of grass each weekend in the summer, I totally sympathize with wanting to kill all the grass and plant some fake stuff!

Do banks really do this? I thought they were primarily concerned with the ratio of owner equity to market value...

I think this is not inherently true for all humans though. Not all noise prevents me from doing "insightful" tasks. Passing cars, birds, heavy winds or unintelligible conversation don't seem to bother me.

Conversations I can actually understand or singing - I've had a colleague who sung at his job - does seem to kill any reasonable thinking process in my case.

In fact, I think absolute silence is detrimental to the thought process - I find it very hard to concentrate on hard problems without some degree of environmental noise.

I agree, nature is not silent either. Total silence is eerie. Open plan offices on the other hand are a total killer of though process, as the constant chatter around distracts you beyond hope of any focused work ever.

I have a little farm-house at the end of a dead end street.

No traffic, nearest neighbor 100 meters and he's doesn't own a leafblower. Clear view of the fields in three directions for the next 5 miles or so, 20,000 sq ft lot.

It's been up for sale for 2 years, if you're interested ;)

http://www.funda.nl/koop/oudezijl/huis-4510315-oudezijl-1/fo...

Ideal spot for quiet hacking and that new YC EU headquarters!

also doesn't hurt that it only costs 1/10 the (ridiculous) price of a normal house in Palo Alto.

I'm going to be your neighbor! Just have to convince my wife.

But serious: I've got family living 1 km away from your place and they always notice cars passing by because it rarely happens.

> Just have to convince my wife.

You're getting dangerously close to figuring out why it is up for sale ;)

Beautiful.

If this was located in the southwest of Germany, I would probably buy it.

nice, whats the internet connection in a place like that like ? :)

50 Mbit down, 5 Mbit up, 75 euros / month.

wow, that should work well :)

Wow, if I had the money, I would totally buy that place...

One of the ideas I had to do with it is convert it into a start-up kick-off resort, alternatively a hacker space. But it's far away from where I live now (200+Km). Selling it is quite painful, I put tons of work into that place, here are all the pictures of the renovations:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/buildings/neatspot/dscf1316.jpg...

Driving there once every month to maintain it is quite a bit of overhead, and my s.o. is a city girl, hence the sale.

If anyone is looking for houses in quiet locations I can recommend mountain bothies in Scotland - these are open houses (they are completely free to use) in some amazing locations:

http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/

Power and internet access are slightly problematical but to read and think they are great.

What a neat idea!

http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/bothy-code.asp

Remarkable! Thank you. And that site is very well written:

If all this sounds rather rough, you are beginning to get the picture. Your comforts have to be carried in.

What is this YC EU headquarters you are talking about?

Did you not see the announcement?

If I didn't know better, that could totally be a farmhouse in rural Saskatchewan.

If I had the money, I would buy this. A friend of a friend just offered to give me a house. They have several in depopulated areas that are basically worthless for sale and decaying if no one lives there. Some areas are so deserted, there could be hacker villages. I wonder if this is my midlife crisis…

How much are the houses on sale for if you don't mind my asking?

And is there any significant risk posed as a result of depopulation eg increased crime rates, lack of good infrastructure etc?

I'm currently looking for a cheap purchase if it makes economical and lifestyle sense.

Tonight I woke up at 4 because it was totally quiet in the city. It's strange that we feel discomfort when things are quiet.

It shouldn't be that way and it's one of the big problems to be solved. Electric transportation can help. And maybe electric leaf blowers are the next thing Tesla should promote.

I'm sitting here (Detroit suburbs) trying to read this article while the lawn service is outside cutting, trimming, and blowing. Recently I've been looking at houses closer to the city, but considering northern Canada at this point.

There are actually some pretty good gas leaf blowers that are muffled. Husqvarna makes one.

This is why I hate bans on particular items and want the language of the law to name what they are actually trying to prevent (high dBA device used in neighborhood).

So what we need is to internalize those costs somehow.

It's an opinion piece, so it's sort of anecdotal and hazy by nature, I guess (ymmv). I'm not going to complain too viscerally about it.

The problem I have, though, is that the entire piece basically says "noise kills productivity" but the only linked research is saying that "exposure to aircraft noise increases morning saliva cortisol levels in women, which could be of relevance for noise-related cardiovascular effects." [0]

So I basically have an article saying "noise is bad for productivity and concentration" and a research article saying "loud noise at night might raise stress levels in women, even if it doesn't wake them up."

To me, the former is meaningless. I wouldn't even start to make an argument about it based on the provided material without bringing other sources to bat. It would just be anecdote v anecdote. However, I find the latter interesting, and makes me want to do a little more reading on that particular subject. I happen to be male, but the idea that extra noise might inherently increase levels of a stress hormone in the human body is just as interesting and important to me as whether or not I'm more or less productive in a quiet room.

tl;dr = The article content is fluffy, but the linked research is kind of interesting (albeit saying something almost totally unrelated)

[0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2801169/#__ffn_s...

"Noise is bad for concentration" isn't exactly an extraordinary claim. What makes you skeptical?

Because it is not scientific to accept something because it sounds plausible.

For example, I can work without problems at quite a high level of noise if it is regular, like traffic noise.

I can also work with regular noise that's why I drown out voices with Russian or Japanese heavy metal, or electronic music. If I'm working on heavy concentration work I always have earbuds in.

My saying "meaningless" might have been a bit hyperbolic, but stands for the type of meaning I prefer.

I doubt I would have thought twice about it if there wasn't a research article dropped into the middle of the piece that didn't really seem to justify anything that was being put forward. I would have just gone through the article, nodded, and read something else.

Once I skimmed the research article I was in a "research journal" frame of mind.

I don't necessarily think that "noise is bad for concentration" is an extraordinary claim, but it's an imprecise claim, and at the point where it's serious enough to start citing research sources, I want more meat. I'd like to know what we're defining as noise. How loud is it? What's the duration? What kind of content does the noise have? How are we defining concentration? If it's about productivity, how are we defining productivity? Since we're talking about stress hormones, what are the short and long term impacts of stress on our definition of productivity? How large is the impact? Does the type of work being done change the impact? Does is change across cultural boundaries? Does is change across age groups? Can one be conditioned to be more resistant to noise?

That might all be a bit pedantic and overwrought for the type of article this is, but that's the path I went down

Sorry I think you are being too extreme in your rigorous quest: imagine that answering all your questions about noise and concentration could take 50 years. Will you wait for 50 years to take a decision for your own life or take an action before? "Sadly" scientific studies are an infinitesimal part of the reality.

No, I agree, which is why I said I was being hyperbolic, pedantic and overwrought.

I think my tl;dr sums it up. The article wasn't particularly bad, and it was an opinion piece, but the linked research was more interesting, yet didn't support the claims at all, so why even link to it?

I didn't mean to imply that you have to answer all of those questions in a piece of research, but that trying to answer any one of those pieces would be more useful and interesting than the speculation.

Even absent rigorous research, when I have a conversation about this kind of thing with friends, we pretty quickly try to hone in on some reasonably precise definitions of what we're talking about. Defining the question is half the fun of the discourse for me a lot of the time.

edit: and besides.. listing all those criteria made me look super smart ;)

While not extraordinary by quantifying and studying it we can learn to understand the mechanisms behind it. If we understand concentration and thought better we can start implementing habits to maximize those values. Seems like a pretty decent goal to me.

IIRC Peopleware pointed out a study where they compared two groups of programmers, those working in a quiet environment and those working with music. Given identical assignments, both groups completed it in roughly the same (median) amount of time. However, the assignment was such that there was a "shortcut", i.e. if you thought hard enough about the requirements a much easier solution was possible. Only the programmers in the quiet group got this shortcut. Thought this was interesting.

How was it a shortcut if both groups completed it at the same time?

I think the point was that the programmers working in the environment with music produced solutions with more complexity. Over the lifetime of a project that complexity is going to add up.

Only the median was the same. The way I interpret this is that a quiet work environment sort of "unlocked" the ability to see the shortcut for a small number of workers. However, most still used the normal method and had the same performance as the workers with music, thus the same median.

It was a bit more than a shortcut.

    The Cornell experiment, however, contained a hidden wild card. The
    specification required that an output data stream be formed through
    a series of manipulations on numbers in the input data stream. For
    example, participants had to shift each number two digits to the
    left and then divide by one hundred and so on, perhaps completing
    a dozen operations in total. Although the specification never said
    it, the net effect of all the operations was that each output number
    was necessarily equal to its input number. Some people realized
    this and others did not. Of those who figured it out, the overwhelming
    majority came from the quiet room.

This experiment sounds interesting. Do you have a link to the source?

Music/noise isn't the issue so much as lyrics for me (or background phone calls, etc if we're talking about general noise).

same here! i generally listen to classical when writing code or just needing to THINK

>>both groups completed it in roughly the same (median) amount of time.

Sometimes if there is no other option people just adapt. Even if it is uncomfortable.

Besides, it also depends on the tasks you are doing. I can pretty much code any regular problem-solution pattern in a noisy set up. But if I need to debug/trouble shoot. Or if I'm doing something new which I haven't done before I need some silence and undisturbed time to focus and get it done.

So I can't find an online reference to this anywhere, but years ago I read a relevant anecdote about (I'm pretty sure) Isaac Asimov.

He used to go into the most noisy environments he could find to write; places like a noisy restaurant or cafe. He found that this forced him to focus in a way that a quiet environment did not. For example, in a quiet environment, you occasionally still hear sounds, but it's rare enough that you don't have to keep your focus actively engaged. So when the sounds inevitably do happen, they distract.

Note that I'm not suggesting that this would work for most people. I've tried it, and maybe it's worked for me once or twice. It's an interesting way to try to get of writer's block, if nothing else.

I code in bars for exactly this reason.

I'll never hear the word 'barcode' the same again.

Great name for a geeky nightclub.

> places like a noisy restaurant or cafe.

This is an opinion, but it seems this can make it easier for some. Because it's a constant noise that doesn't often change much, you eventually tune it out. It feels like it's the sudden change in ambient noise that causes a break in concentration. I use white noise, or a rain noise generator (they both do well for me) to get this same effect while studying.

Would love to know which white noise generator you use. I use "nature sounds" from spotify (usually beach sounds, lakes, birds chirping etc...)

http://simplynoise.com/

I have this same problem. In a quiet environment, I'm distracted by every single noise. In a busy, noisy environment, I'm undistractable.

There has been some research done into why this is (I'm citing a personality course I took), and it could be because some people's brains have a lack of stimulation, and others are overstimulated. The people lacking stimulation find it easier to think in noisy environments because they're full of stimuli. This might also explain some of the traits of introverted/extroverted people.

interesting! that seems to be consistent with my experience. I can never work at my quiet office where just sitting down bores me to tears and puts me to sleep in less than an hour. working at a cafe on the other hand I can go on for hours.

Do you have more info on the introvert/extrovert link?

I found this link which is basically what the prof said: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/persona... and an actual study: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&UID...

Of course you should keep in mind potential confounding factors, but it's certainly interesting as an explanation. I'm not sure if there've been any studies where they took fMRIs while doing the lemon juice test, which would probably be a bit better.

This isn't about Asimov, but purposely introducing noise showed up on HN earlier this year.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5325012

Apparently the same was true for John von Neumann. Wikipedia says he

> did some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its TV playing loudly.

Ha!

The term 'distraction' is defined as 'A thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else.'

Note, distraction specifically refers to a thing that 'divides your attention' in other words a 'distraction catches your attention'. If you surround yourself with 100 people doing things no way connected to you- and are pretty busy and loud, you are essentially isolating yourself! Have you ever had that 'I feel lonely in the crowd' feeling?

Walk into a hall full of accountants and tax consultants, and then try to code. Tax laws will seem so alien to you, and those guys will be so busy talking and chatting aloud. You will essentially be isolated and that will help you focus. On the other hand, walking into a room full of programmers or some topic in which you like. You will never be able to give your full, and will always have a tendency to eavesdrop on some ones conversation and that will tapping into your mental bandwidth.

You can file my response in the "Everyone is different bin", but here is my situation:

> Note, distraction specifically refers to a thing that 'divides your attention' in other words a 'distraction catches your attention'.

Almost everything catches my attention.

> If you surround yourself with 100 people doing things no way connected to you- and are pretty busy and loud, you are essentially isolating yourself!

No, I will have 100 extra things to try and pay attention to. That what everyone else is not connected to me is irrelevant. Think of it as subconscious people watching on steroids.

> Have you ever had that 'I feel lonely in the crowd' feeling?

No, actually I find crowds to be disorienting. The louder and denser the crowd, the more severe my disorientation. I can also get tense, dizzy, and nauseous.

> Walk into a hall full of accountants and tax consultants, and then try to code. Tax laws will seem so alien to you, and those guys will be so busy talking and chatting aloud. You will essentially be isolated and that will help you focus. On the other hand, walking into a room full of programmers or some topic in which you like. You will never be able to give your full, and will always have a tendency to eavesdrop on some ones conversation and that will tapping into your mental bandwidth.

I cannot selectively ignore conversation based on the subject. Any signal I can separate from the background takes bandwidth, because I can't resist paying attention. Additionally, "uncooperative" sounds make me tense, if for no other reason than I have no control over them.

That can work for me, but the nature and quality of the noise matters a great deal.

I'm increasingly finding that even voices on radio (typically PBS/BBC type broadcasts) are distracting and/or annoying. I've been listening to classical radio, though the station I tune to most frequently has the annoying habit of adding some "light" (mostly pretty condescendingly stupid, IMO) chatter to their morning program. I generally switch away during that period.

I noticed one announcer who would begin breaks with a question (again, light/trivia), just before a pitch would begin. I found that tremendously annoying once I clued in to it, and again, switched away from her programming.

In an office, the problem with conversations is that, well, they're work related, which is to say, the consequences of conversations may affect you.

Cafe / public discussions are rarely of this nature. You can tune them out because they have no impact on you. One downside of finding a regular cafe is getting to know enough people that they do start to matter -- at which point your lack of social significance to what they say goes away.

Increasingly I find I vastly prefer a quiet and non-distracting environment. Diametrically opposite of open-plan offices.

I'll bite. From my biased viewpoint, based on who complains most, people prefer the quiet more as they get older. Kids don't seem to care, middle aged prefer some separation, and my elders can be derailed by a greeting. I've always assumed it was the skill to tune out, but perhaps theirs are weightier thoughts.

Personally, I need some mindless noise in the background, but nothing with any meaningful signal. The noise keeps me slightly alert and keeps the bored parts of my mind busy (like reading ingredient labels in the bathroom). The rest of my mind can then concentrate. When I was a kid, I was a walking hazard if I let my mind wander too much, and have walked straight into walls (I'm assuming sight to be an even higher bandwidth signal than hearing, but perhaps it lacks the same interrupts?)

While complete silence is certainly soothing, it won't spin my mind up either. There's strong utility in getting zeroed out in silence, and I bet it pays off, but I have few opportunities for that (work in a plant, ride a motorcycle, and apartment is near train tracks). But the rumble of the Harley and wind is soothing too; that's where I think or decompress usually.

I find airports nearly impossible to sleep in (two terrible childhood overnight stays). But a train is lovely. One had a detached mumbling voice, the other a lulling rumbling with random clacks like rain.

Perhaps there's some way to run a controlled experiment to figure out if it's the quality of the noise that does it?

As we age it appears that it's harder to filter out distractions:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081125181035.ht...

> I'll bite. From my biased viewpoint, based on who complains most, people prefer the quiet more as they get older. Kids don't seem to care, middle aged prefer some separation, and my elders can be derailed by a greeting.

Or maybe, older people complain more about noise because they actually know what sane conditions are and how life was back when ADD wasn't a thing yet.

I was going to say something similar -- that it might not be because of age, but rather intelligence and self-awareness.

"Kids don't seem to care", but kids also often don't have the slightest idea of what's good for them. They might prefer to study with the TV on instead of in silence, but that doesn't mean their studying isn't worse because of it.

My thought (ha!) is that as one ages, there's just more context to swap into to think about something. Kids can flit about because everything around them doesn't overwhelm with context, whereas the elderly have experienced enough that any context switch carries a burdensome overhead. (That's what I meant by weighty thoughts.)

I don't think intelligence has too much to do with it, except perhaps in overall speed in coping / filtering. (But here I'm just arguing about the number of teeth in a horse; the empiricist in me would like to be able to spend a few weeks with an academic article subscription to just survey the experiments that have been done. I bet there are lots!)

I read about some interview with people from before cars were common. They liked how much cleaner and quieter (!) the streets were with cars than with horses.

I would agree, but the article spends a lot of time in the past too. Cities weren't quiet in the olden days, and even the countryside is remarkably noisy with life. 'Course, nothin' beats the distraction potential of the modern Internet (as my reply is demonstrating), so I can't fully discount it.

Yes, the countryside can be quite full of sound. For example, the cidadas are going outside my windows this evening. But there is a difference between hearing this natural sound and hearing a siren every ten minutes, the swish of tires every minute, the voices of unknown people intermittently, etc.

I think the reason so many turn to constantly on music in the city is it drowns out the more subconciously distressing sounds with sounds that are familiar, that repeat, that you control. Since moving to the country, I only put on music when I want to really listen to it, to the exclusion of all else.

In the noise/age relation lies a little frequency thing, when you don't have regular event of mind-flow, you care about not disrupting them.

A dev I know and I experienced another strong disrupting setup: having unsimilarly thinking person near you (colleagues, parents). Their mere presence shuts you down even if they make no sound. As soon as they left, your mind fills the room.

Comparing airport (place) with train (vehicle) is not fair. With large enough seats and no AC a plane is as nice as a train. Engine sound filtering through ~= rain sound. I stumbled upon laptop fan recordings, the low freq air flow has the same texture and effect as an engine. Guess fest explanation : pre-birth frequencies heard through the mother's body.

You're absolutely right about the comparison. My bad.

No problem

I've become more sensitive to noise and auditory interruptions as I've gotten older. I don't think it's because I'm thinking weightier thoughts, or because my general multi-tasking ability has decreased. In support of that last point I'll add that visual interruptions don't seem nearly as annoying. I don't think there's anything wrong with my hearing at a purely physical level, either. However, I do think the effort of converting the sounds of spoken language into meaning has become more stressful. For the same reason, I positively loathe it when two people keep interrupting and talking over one another. One person talking plus random noise is OK (though not ideal); two people talking will make me angry very quickly. So it's not the ear, it's not the conscious part of the brain, it's the piece in between.

I don't know if my experience is the same as anyone else's, but it's certainly consistent with observations I've made over the years. Some people just aren't as good at turning sound into words, and some get worse at it as they age. Maybe those who are lucky in that regard should show some consideration for others around them.

I tell every developer buddy I have that they should get a pair of Fuck Off Headphones [0]. They need to be big enough that people can't try to say, "Oh, I didn't see you had headphones on".

I work from home now, and they work just as well for keeping my family at bay as they did for chatty coworkers when I had to be in an office.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Wireless-Gaming-Headset-Surro...

I used to go this route (before I too started a telecommute job), but I've found that Sennheiser's PMX series of running headphones do a great job of isolation without the ear-sweat that comes with the giant cans. They don't have the fuck-off effect, but you are not hearing anything around you and they're super lightweight with great sound.

Which, if you think about it, is probably kind of bad for runners, but I wear them only for code.

This is exactly what I do, as do many folks at my office. I just don't use quite as colorful language. :)

The only downside is that if you use them too much, you might get the reputation for being someone who doesn't have time for questions from colleagues.

At home, I just recently replaced my fraying HD280 Pros with a pair of HD380 Pros. Recommended!

I have a pair of Denon AH-D2000s and they work pretty well for this purpose. It doesn't do the job perfectly though it cuts out most idle chatter.

The problem this approach has for me is I get startled if someone suddenly appears in front of me. I find ambient noise works best for me, though these days I find distractions from multiple monitors, tablets and phones are increasingly getting lethal.

I'm extremely sensitive to sound, and I've been hoping that the the powers that be will eventually come to the realization that open seating plans are highly suboptimal (http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/08/open-office-layout, for example).

I've used a decibel meter on occasion and have observed that my current office sometimes averages 75-80 db. Which, were I in a coffee shop, I could tolerate for some reason[1] much better than at the office.

In any event, I'm now highly dependent on noise canceling headphones (these I highly recommend: http://www.bose.com/controller?url=/shop_online/headphones/n...)

[1] My guesses are a) local conversations at work capture my attention in ways that anonymous ones at a coffee shop don't, b) coffee shops play music and tend to have other noise that create a generalized din that actually works a bit like white noise.

and have observed that my current office sometimes averages 75-80 db.

Is that A-weighted ("dBA") or linear? If that result is A-weighted, that noise level is dangerously loud - it may meet OSHA but it's almost certainly causing or contributing to hearing damage.

I'm not sure -- it was just a free meter off the apple app store. That level isn't constant; it's just what happens when everyone around you is having animated conversations simultaneously. I probably shouldn't have said "averages." More like, averages over short bursts of time.

> I'm now highly dependent on noise canceling headphones

When you wear them are you listening to music, white/pink noise, etc. or just have them on with nothing playing?

What kinds of noises do they cancel best, and what do they have the most trouble cancelling?

+1 on the noise canceling headphones. They're best at canceling ambient noises. Human voices around you do tend to somewhat leak in. Thats suppressed too if you put some music on. The other advantage is that you tend to hear music on much lowers volumes since a lot of the background noise is cut out.

I've also used dB meters (there are Apple and Android apps), which can be quite revealing.

Server closets in offices can be amazingly loud, even through closed doors. The worst are false ceilings and hard-surfaced walls, which can reflect and amplify sound.

Agree on your anonymous conversations observation.

The flip side of noise, distraction and interruption is people. I still find it hard to get this part of my working life just right.

On the one hand, to do really thoughtful work does require quiet and isolation, something that's difficult to get in open-plan spaces. On the other hand, avoiding garden paths and finding better ideas also requires the kind of impromptu chatting that happens with others around. Plus, company is nice.

I feel like my ideal would be an office with two sections, the "library" and the "coffee shop". The library part is dead quiet, by design and by convention, somewhere always available when you need to focus. When your work is more mundane, you need a break or you feel like company, you can emerge and work around others in the more traditional open plan environment (i.e. the coffee shop).

It doesn't seem that many workplaces are able to provide both environments well. Most favour just the latter.

I have a problem with spoken words, not 'noise'.

I'm quickly removed from 'The Zone' when my brain starts to unconsciously process speech. Indistinct chatter, environmental noise, loud instrumental music, etc aren't bothersome. In fact my best sessions occur in bars, on public transit, or outside.

me too. I can also be fast asleep and I'll wake right up if people speak to me.

Interesting, but plenty of examples of just the opposite.

"Von Neumann ... received complaints for regularly playing extremely loud German marching music on his gramophone, which distracted those in neighbouring offices, including Einstein, from their work. Von Neumann did some of his best work blazingly fast in noisy, chaotic environments, and once admonished his wife for preparing a quiet study for him to work in. He never used it, preferring the couple's living room with its TV playing loudly."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann

I'd believe that noise universally causes more stress, but that doesn't mean that more noise is always bad. An interesting thing about stress is that we're most productive with some stress; not too much or too little. (Sorry I don't have a citation for that). So it could be that Von Neumann used that noise to reach the sweet spot of stress.

He also got very little sleep apparently (This is according to Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson), which we also know to cause a drop in productivity/thinking skills for most people.

Loneliness is killing us, and now noise? What fragile creatures we are, how unfit and utterly unprepared for this world!

While Schopenhauer makes a great anecdote, I think the reality is some people think better with silence, and others think better with background noise. I think recorded music in particular has ushered in an age where productive thinking can even be enhanced through "noise" rather than diminished.

"Every time a siren shrieks on the street, our conscious minds might ignore it, but other brain regions behave as if that siren were a predator barreling straight for us. Given how many sirens city dwellers are subject to over the course of an average day, and the attention-fracturing tension induced by loud sounds of every sort, it’s easy to see how sensitivity to noise, once an early warning system for approaching threats, has become a threat in itself."

I see this come up over and over in these types of articles, on adrenal response to stimulus, like noise or driving or even conflict in the workplace. I think this is an extremely primitive way of thinking about the human brain. Yes, hearing evolved to be sensitive due to natural selection. Over-reacting to non-threatening stimulus? Hardly. The brain is not static. We are, in fact, highly adaptable to our environment. And I don't see any evidence suggesting a modern din is snuffing out our intellect.

I personally find that I am much more distracted by people who are trying to get my attention than I am by background noise. This article reminds of an anecdote about Poincare that can be found on page 533 of the excellent book "Men of Mathematics"[1]

"...when a distinguished mathematician had come all the way from Finland to Paris to confer with Poincare on scientific matters, Poincare did not leave his study to greet his called when the maid notified him, but continued to pace back and forth - as was his custom when mathematizing - for three solid hours. All this time the diffident caller sat quietly in the adjoining room, barred from the master only by flimsy portieres. At last the drapes parted and Poincare's buffalo head was thrust for an instant into the room. "Vois me derangez beaucoup" (You are disturbing me greatly) the head exploded, and disappeared. The caller departed without an interview..."

[1]http://books.google.com/books?id=BLFL3coT5i4C&q=533#v=snippe...

>...people who are not philosophers lose whatever ideas their brains can carry in consequence of brutish jolts of sound.

This makes me wonder if the brutish jolts of sound being emitted from the many casinos throughout the world are accomplishing the same task (and emptying people's wallets more easily?)

"I think I should be goi.. >BINGK!< ...go win my money back!"

I can't agree with this article more, however. I should probably read it again so I can better explain myself when asking that somebody not address me while I'm working.

I sometimes listen to white noise in my headphones if surrounded by incessant noise.

I'm convinced the noise in casinos is intentional. I remember reading all the repeating pattern carpeting, garish lighting etc serves the same purpose: confusing and disorienting people in casinos in order to get them to make less rational decisions.

edit: link http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2010/09/ugly-vegas-carpets/?pid...

Relevant (and recent) tweet from John Carmack: "I wonder how much of the annoying sound of leaf blowers is fundamental to the high velocity airstream,and how much could be engineered away." https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/369487626035675136

If you're the sort of person who thrives in a quiet atmosphere or is really sensitive to sound, I can't recommend Bose QC-15 noise canceling headphones enough. They've totally transformed my life and I still lament for the days of productivity I lost while living in ignorance of their existence.

Even when I'm not listening to music, they take the edge off of the all the sound and noise around me so that even conversations happening within earshot aren't distracting, even though I could tune in and understand what people are saying if I wanted to. It's pretty amazing.

It'd be interesting to plot Distraction vs. Noise Level, because while it's clear that Zero Noise maps nicely to Zero Distraction, I've noticed that Near Constant Noise also maps to Zero Distraction.

I used to live on Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona, backing on to one of the main bar streets in town. Friday and Saturday nights were pretty loud, even after closing time, with random whooping groups wandering past at intervals until nearly daylight. We had a windowless room in the center of the apartment we'd dubbed "The Bombshelter" to sleep in on nights like this.

But during San Fermin, things would kick up a few orders of magnitude. The party would crank up on a Sunday and go non-stop for 8 solid days. There were no more random groups to be identified, just a constant insane roar. I recall seeing three marching bands collide in the midst of a swarm of thousands of people directly under our bedroom balcony, at 3 in the morning on a Wednesday. They were playing but you couldn't really hear them from 20 feet up from all the other noise.

You'd think that week would be impossible, but it wasn't. Quite the opposite. I slept like a baby (even on the nights when I hadn't spent any time down among those crowds yelling and spilling wine). The noise was constant and even. No spikes could penetrate it, so the mind could relax and sleep soundly. It was actually kind of nice.

I notice the same thing on planes, and in loud, crowded coffee shops. There are lots of people talking, but little risk of anybody talking to me, so it's all just background noise. No spikes, so my brain can filter it out. I've done some of my best work in those places.

Strange.

This is massively important to me, and it's why I live and am extremely productive in the middle of nowhere.

Also, since moving from an environment with constant noise pollution, my high blood pressure has gone down to the point that the only reason I'm taking the medication anymore is it would make my MD sibling very unhappy if I went off them. I suspect that chopping wood and carrying water also helped with that, but when I learned of the noise to BP link, it was an aha moment.

Anyway, I'm curious about how different countries seem to have different set levels for acceptable noise. In Honduras, noone seemed to think anything of trucks driving around with loudspeakers blaring various messages. That seems slightly less acceptable in America, but there is still enormous tolerance for more subtle noise pollution here. Are there other countries that are less tolerant?

I see a lot of developers using earphones and listening to music while doing their stuff. As someone that prefers relative quiet I have always wondered if this makes them more, or less productive.

This article would tend to indicate the latter but of course there is a big difference (generally) between music and noise.

There was a study about that. Basically, those who listen to music are more productive but less likely to think outside the box, and vice versa.

I wonder if the type of music factors into that at all. Ambient background noise I'd assume is a bit different from listening to death metal. I know programmers from both camps.

Have you tried grey/pink noise or any of those derivatives?

I found noise generators to be very helpful when I was studying or reading in places prone to distracting noise. I did find that either the noise or the presence of the headphones started to get annoying after an hour or two

I find music or even some banal sports talk (almost functioning as noise) to be helpful in allowing me to accomplish tasks that require some thought, but nothing deep. Anything requiring deeper thought, I need quiet.

I find music too distracting, so I use ambient rain or wave noises - nothing with too much sonic contrast, no details to stand out and draw my attention.

The "focus at will" app is pretty good for minimally distracting music though.

I only do this when there's no other choice: I work in an open air office that the startups du jour are so proud of, so I'd rather listen to a coherent stream than dissonant chatter.

As others have said, I think most developers would take a nice, quiet office. Given the horrible open plan office I currently work in, you need some way to drown out other people "collaborating", so headphones it is. Sometimes I just wear the headphones, without any music ;-).

For me personally, I only listen to music when doing menial tasks. But if I'm writing code or trying to design my plan of attack, music noticeably hampers my ability to focus and think creatively.

When I want quiet, I try to just use my over-ear headphones without any music. They typically dull surrounding sounds enough for it to be tolerable. But if I'm still having trouble, I use my less comfortable earmuffs[1] to block out almost everything.

[1] - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009LI4K/ref=oh_details_o...

A trick I use to really get in the zone is to blast a good song on repeat. I suspect the reason this works is that the repeating song blends with itself. You don't have the distinct transitions every 3-4 minutes, making it easy to lose track of time.

I find it is a tradeoff. For the deepest thought, I feel I'm best in a quiet environment. However, if I've got to have sound, then music I'm very familiar with is better than something more random.

For instance, from my office I can hear the tech support people. If I'm trying to solve a hard problem, and I can hear some support person trying to explain for the 10th time to a customer that if the customer schedules our software to run overnight, the customer has to leave the computer on overnight for this to work, I'm probably not going to be able to think effectively about my problem.

If I then put on the headphones, open Spotify, pick a playlist that I've listened to a hundred times, and turn the volume up enough to mask the support person, then I can pretty much ignore the music and concentrate on my problem--maybe not quite as hard as if I had quiet, but enough to feel useful and not get frustrated.

I once had to do software development in an open plan office with sales, business manager and someone from a different company in it.

Never again (it's actually a large part of why I have my own company), I actually threatened to quit unless I could work somewhere quiet (hell I'd have worked in one of the storage units as long as it was quiet).

I'm 2-3x as efficient in a quiet office where I can listen to music when I want to and have silence when I don't than I am in a noisy one.

Noise is a big deal for some people. It's one of the reasons why I dropped out of Columbia a few years ago. Not something I regret, but I can't help but wonder if quiet, still places are a cornerstone of the most innovative societies. A cornerstone of successful lives. Not quiet all the time. Not faccistic silence. Gentle, comfortable, quiet places to come to for a few hours a day to help cultivate peace in the mind. For if we see everything through a filter, as many of us claim, I think noise, disturbance disrupts the milieu our through which our senses travel.

1) Sound isn't necessarily distracting. Sometimes it could be helpful. Focus@Will (https://www.focusatwill.com/science/science-primer/) is based on this.

2) You can usually find quiet if you want to rather easily.

3) If you're going to argue that society (or parts of society) should be more quiet, you have to be specific about what parts, and about why restricting sound outweighs the costs. The costs of restricting sound weren't addressed at all.

< 2) You can usually find quiet if you want to rather easily.

What are you basing this on, exactly? About half the people on this thread a) have been reduced to wearing sound-canceling or over-the-ear headphones; b) work in open office setups where there is no quiet to be had; or both.

That might be your experience, but it certainly isn't the experience of the people on this thread; of the author of the original post; or of most people I know.

I meant that you can find quiet when you have the choice of where you want to be. If you're in an office that's noisy, obviously you can't really leave and work somewhere else. But even in a noisy office... you could just use earplugs. Because it's so easy to find or create quiet, it doesn't really seem worth it to restrict noise.

+1 for focus@will. It has become my default background "noise" for concentration, reading, sports ...

If "paleo" concepts apply to food, why not thinking?

Its very interesting that we've existed as thinking animals for a lot longer than "office jobs" have existed.

From an evolutionary perspective, our best thinking was almost certainly done in near perfect silence or at most calm animal noises. Hmm, we're tracking that yummy large mammal and I'm hungry, whats the next move? So I hear my neighbor chipping away quietly as I think up the best way to whack this rock to make it a better arrowhead. How do I cut this tree down so it doesn't land on my head? So I'm staring at these wheat seeds, thinking about what would happen if I buried them in the dirt and came back later. So looking at the position of the sun / moon / stars, is this the time to plant the wheat seeds?

I don't see an evolutionary example of hard successful thinking in an intentionally noisy distracting environment. In fact if its noisy its because the lion is roaring at us trying to eat us, so deep thinking is probably not advised compared to fight or flight. I guess fight or flight style coding exists at places swirling the drain. Finish this report or we're all on the unemployment line next week. Um, OK, crank up the death metal on the speakers and see ya in twelve hours with a finished product ...

From an evolutionary standpoint we should be able to do our best, deepest thinking/coding on a bench at the zoo by the "food" animals, or perhaps sitting in a cow pasture. In (rare) good weather, I've had decent results with a laptop sitting in a covered (dark-ish) park rain shelter.

I'm not sure your examples of our most demanding thinking are accurate. Mightn't those historically have been social? In which case voices might very well have been part of the environment.

No, silence is vital for hunting. Also if a possible mate or friend is talking to you, its not exactly helpful to be daydreaming about growing seeds or moon phases. If you're doing hard manual labor while visualizing a simpler way to do it, you're probably breathing too hard to talk.

I will give you credit that sometimes ancient humans probably had to think pretty hard while talking. Planning a hunt. Trying to organize sleeping arrangements. Primitive military operation planning beyond the level of a crude bar fight (so they basically stole one of our proto-cows, can we take them and how?)

(I should edit this to remove the second paragraph, upon contemplation, that's not thinking while talking, thats concentrating hard on listening to the other person in order to plan how to manipulate them, which is at cross purposes to writing great code or daydreaming as the original topic... We've had strong evolutionary pressure to think very hard about verbal language we hear, which isn't going to help much when I'm trying to debug something while some sports water cooler conversation is going on)

I didn't mean that the hunts were social, but that hunts might not present as large a cognitive challenge as social dynamics. Otherwise, I basically agree, I think - it does seem likely that the drain on attention would outweigh whatever other benefits - I'm just saying it's not clear that we'd get an extra cognitive boost from silence just because it's silence for evolutionary reasons.

>If "paleo" concepts apply to food

There is no evidence that they do.

That doesn't even make sense. Other than a "god created us this way to test our faith, not evolution" or some similar argument. You'd have to elaborate.

WRT "paleo" I'm talking specifically about applying the same anatomical/digestive/biochemical analysis that works pretty well with any other animal to figure out ideal foods and such. Not "paleo" as a large scale social movement, or as a podcasting/blogging/social media trend subject, which is not as directly evolutionarily relevant.

For example, if you dissect a cow its not hard to figure out its should kick butt WRT eating raw fresh grass. Or dissect a cat and its not hard to figure out its "supposed" to eat mice and mouse size (or smaller) animals. People? Obviously mostly carnivore by design, omnivore as a suboptimal backup plan, although given our horrible ability with vitamin C and such, we're obviously better off eating "some" citrus fruit on a regular basis or other source of vitamin C. Vitamin B retention is legendarily bad too, we're supposed to eat lots of stuff promoting vit B. On the other hand take it easy with sources of vit A and D our innards handle that even worse than wheat and corn.

The analogy is we've been thinking for a long time in vaguely known environments. The evolutionarily "new" environment of offices and desk jobs has the responsibility of explaining why they need special rules different than the past. What made our ancestors successful is probably a good starting point.

>WRT "paleo" I'm talking specifically about applying the same anatomical/digestive/biochemical analysis that works pretty well with any other animal

That has nothing to do with paleo, so forgive me for not guessing that. Paleo specifically means the time period before recorded human history. Dissecting a cow has absolutely nothing to do with paleo anything. Paleo is commonly used as a short hand for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet which is the naturalistic fallacy applied to modern human behavior. It is not supported by evidence.

I see lots of strategies for dealing with noise, so here is one of mine. I got a pair of one of those industrial ear protectors, the kind that carpenters or construction workers wear. Then I use simple in-ear buds and listen to ambient music or jazz. Anything without vocals.

I use this setup pretty much anywhere I am around annoying sounds and it's pricelessly quiet. I've tried numerous noise cancellation BS headphones and none of them can come close. On airplanes it's like entering a warm cocoon of sound that allows me to forget I'm there. I can listen to an airplane movie soundtrack at the lowest possible volume and hear nothing else. The only problem is when the captain pipes up and blasts me away with some stupid announcement. So I keep my hand near the socket to remove the plug and when I hear the click of the captain's mike I immediately unplug.

Forget about these overpriced over engineered noise cancellation whatever devices. My low tech solution is way better for concentration and it costs only around $50-$70. I've actually had people ask me what kind of noise cancellation headphones I'm using when wearing my ear-muffs. I even had a guy in a datacenter ask me if they were USB enabled ;)

Being sensitive to useless noise, I want to make love to this article.

But most people I know seem uncomfortable with silence, and sleep through any noise. There are exceptions, but that's what they are, exceptions (in my anecdotal experience). If the science mentioned in the article is right, does it mean most people I know are what: either out of touch with themselves, or trying to cope with the fear of the noise by burying it under a stream of constant sound?

I wear earplugs. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0033YLEGO?ie=UTF8&ref_=pd_...

At work they're just enough for me to be able to concentrate while still allowing people to get my attention without raising their voice. At which time I take them out and repeat what I heard of their question.

Don't you hate how your "internal sounds" get loud?

I got an ear infection since I used them often (3-4 times a week st nights). The ears also dry out. My doc said I should use them rarely, but YMMV.

They have their issues, but quality ear plugs can be a decent substitute for a quiet working (or sleeping) environment. The key is to find a variety that is comfortable and works well for your ears. I started by ordering a variety pack of 35 different types: http://www.earplugstore.com/unfoamtrialp1.html

From these I ordered a large box of the two that I liked best:

3M E-A-Rsoft FX: http://www.amazon.com/3M-E-A-Rsoft-Uncorded-Conservation-312...

Howard Leight Max Lite: http://www.amazon.com/Howard-Leight-LPF-1-Uncorded-Earplugs/...

The (green) MaxLite are the most comfortable I found and quite effective, and the (yellow) SoftFX are quite comfortable and extremely good at blocking noise. I mostly use the MaxLite for sleeping, and the SoftFX when I want something in the daytime. Since each pair can be reused at least a half-dozen times before they become too soft and start losing their effectiveness, I should be set for another 5 years or so.

If you've tried ear plugs before and felt that they weren't effective enough, it's possible that you weren't wearing them correctly. They need to be inserted quite deeply into the ear canal, and need to be rolled tightly before insertion to make this possible. And then there is the slightly-embarrassing-but-essential "pinna pull": http://www.e-a-r.com/pdf/hearingcons/tipstools.pdf

I can just speak from experience comparing different open offices and working at home. The primary office I work at is all open, however the acoustics are horrible and the place is extremely noisy. Days I am in the office are mostly relegated to meetings with other team members and a marginal amount of coding. Putting in headphones and working at a desk on days we are supposed to be mingling, working with one another, etc is no better than working at home. That said, two other regional offices which I have spent time in that were also open, while not meeting with direct team members, I was more productive without headphones -- things were generally quiet.

When I work at home, I am actually more productive coding than I am in the office due to having more control over both noise and distractions.

I can't speak to research, I just know I prefer environments that are either quiet or the noise is specifically relevant to myself and colleagues over hearing the ramblings of disparate teams in the background.

This used to be a problem when I started working at a company in 2009. Lots of office noises and conversations going on, I couldn't focus. Pretty sure I have an oversensitivity to noise too, as mentioned in this article.

The solution for me was buying a (not cheap) pair of Bose QC15 noise-canceling headphones. One of the best decisions I've ever made.

That worked? I had to deal with conversations happening near my office a while back, and looked into noise-canceling headphones, but the reviews and articles I read claimed that they didn't do a good job on voice. They were designed for the kind of continuous noise you get from things like airplane engines, not for sporadic things.

Yeah. It worked so well that people would have to turn my office light on or off in order to get my attention, I'd really get in the zone and without external noise I would hardly notice people walking around.

I use QC-15 Bose headphones daily. You have to be listening to music (or your favorite white/pink/etc noise) while wearing them to be effective blocking voices nearby, don't believe anyone that tells you otherwise.

The paradoxical effect is that since they are effective blocking low frequency noises, the voices kind of stand up if not listening to anything.

I started by making one of these many years ago: http://www.instructables.com/id/Jackhammer-Headphones/

for $20 I think it's a good investment and worth a try. I made two of these, one to have at home, other at work and even took them on airplane traveling.

Do you use them with glasses? I switched to IEM's because of that (HF5 here)

Ah, Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer - Über Lärm und Geräusch http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Ueber_Lerm_und_Ger%C3%A4usch

Interestingly enough his main ideas were influenced by Hinduism, but there was little known about Buddhism around 1818 in Europe. He later acknowledged that his philosophy was essentially buddhistic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer#Buddhism

John Cage ventured into this arena in a different way. He is famous for his silent piece 4'33. John Cage on silence and sounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y

I coded from essentially an open warehouse for several years with shop noise, sewing machines, various noise generating machines, packing tape noise and people. Talking on the phone was difficult, let alone CODING. I honestly feel like I might have some noise sensitivity complex from working in that environment for so long. Tried not to complain, but my noise cancelling headphones were the only thing that allowed me to be productive. I eventually got an office and that helped considerably. I don't work for that company anymore.

I work from home now and it is the opposite spectrum, I get total piece and quiet, I love it. I can't say enough about a good pair of over the ear noise cancelling headphones though if you find yourself sensitive to noise.

Many years ago, I had cubicle next to phone order takers while writing software for the company. Prior to that I had worked from home for several years so it was a difficult adjustment for me. After repeatedly asking for an office and being rebuffed, I offered to quit instead and got an office the next day. I think my productivity shot through the roof then. I left as soon as I finished the software; the environment was simply not condusive to thinking.

All the more reason why the "standard layout" of cubicle farms in modern offices really, really sucks for people whose jobs involve continuous, unmolested concentration. Sure, there are benefits to being in close proximity and to collaborating. But sometimes people just need to focus.

While it's not exactly cost effective or feasible to give every programmer, designer, writer, etc., a private office, it should be a priority to have designated quiet spaces. Something as simple as a conference room that you turn into a quiet zone, almost like a small library.

On a related topic: If you're in the Denver area this week, feel free to drop in on a Free Public Workshop on Noise in Communities and Natural areas: http://www.naturalquietworkshop2013.org/ which is being held in conjuction with Noise-Con (an annual conference for noise control engineers). The workshop is mostly geared toward noise in public parks, but it covers a lot of the same concerns in the NYT piece.

I wonder if that is what drives some typical programmer behavior, like coding at night (less noise), or super-star freelancers moving to rural cities.

Currently (office for me and the CEO in a busy area of a 30million people metro region) I am nowhere productive as I was when I lived in a rural area and coded at night. (but I am more productive than when I worked into a open layout office with 40 programmers...)

While quiet time is good for concentration, it totally discourages collaboration. I end up over-analyzing things and procrastinate due to the fear of breaking the silence and collaborating. In my eyes team productivity actually drops in quiet environments. And all lone wolfs head off in their own direction. In short, a recipe for disaster.

I really like background noise when I work, as long as it's nothing that I can focus on.

Just the wind blowing, birds making noises outside, or the clinking and chatter at a cafe. I find that I work about 50% faster in those environments.

When there's dead silence or music I am much slower and more easily distracted. Also far less creative for some reason.

It is funny because when I was studying a language in college, one professor came into one of my freshmen year courses, and administered a test without noise, and then varying levels of background noise. This obvious experiment led me to believe, given my annoyance and inability to focus, that this must hold true.

Two words: white noise.

My favourite is the linux SoX (Sound eXchange). sudo apt-get install sox with this command (which varies the sound, rain-like):

  play -t sl -r48000 -c2 - synth -1 pinknoise tremolo .1 40 <  /dev/zero

At my parents house where I lived for around 15 years, next door the lady was a professional breeder of dogs. 5 Dogs at any one time at our house. They bark all day and all night. It used to drive me insane.

I tend to think better with low level background noise. Or I'll do a completely different task whilst my brain is chewing on something in the background. I find total silence distracting.

A lot of those cool deconstructed offices with high ceilings and exposed ductwork are about 80-85 dB. That's about as loud as a bus going by.

Some people can write with noises but I cannot stand it! I keep on reading the sentence, over and over again.

thanks hackernews for deleting my post. I linked to the original source in the article and the post gets delted - what the...?

My takeaway from the article is that you can get just about snything to the top of hacker news on Sunday night.

I don't understand how this can be accurate. Have you ever heard nature? It tends to be quite loud.

headphones. white noise.

Every time a siren shrieks on the street, our conscious minds might ignore it, but other brain regions behave as if that siren were a predator barreling straight for us.

It's worth mentioning that a siren is specifically meant to pull your attention. It's not really the same as a constant background susurrus.

I work in the heart of a city, and there's a constant babble of traffic and pedestrians a few floors below. That's fine and can be tuned out - the noise that's distracting me from concentration is random loud office noise. Noise that can't be filtered out as 'background'.

Wasn't Schopenhauer the one who noted an inverse relationship between noise tolerance and intelligence?

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