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Comment by TY | Hacker News Reader

Having kids (especially small ones) makes all the difference: I can't use my wonderful home office any more because of the all noise in the house: my kids, friends of my kids visiting, dog barking at all of them and etc.

Walking around with earplugs/headphones all day is too painful and not an option, so now if I really want to get anything done I leave the house.

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I'm curious, how do you mean painful? I work in an office cube farm, and it's often noisy/chatty enough that I find it hard to concentrate without headphones or something. But I find most earbuds and cheap headphones uncomfortable to wear for more than half an hour or so, so I bought a big set of over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones that are great to wear all day long. Might be worth a try if that's your problem.

There is more attention given to the sounds of your family than your work colleagues. It's a completely different kind of distraction. And it's a little bit heartbreaking every time to say to a kid that you are busy right now.

That last part. It's why I can't work at home. It's INCREDIBLY difficult for me to ignore my children when in close proximity.

I get increasing feeling of discomfort from wearing any type of headphones/earbuds for more than 3-4 hours a day and I've tried different kind of headphones/earbuds, invariably with the same result. It's probably an individual thing, I have plenty of friends who seem to wear something all day long...

Perhaps I have an incredible tolerance for it but I can work white happily with three children making a lot of noise, one of which is a mini tyrannosaurus.

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