
Ask HN: Productivity - gnikflow
I worked 3 years for a startup remotely. The major con was the lack of social interaction, while the pro was the ability to completely immerse myself in coding and solving problems on a deeper level. For the past year, I&#x27;ve worked onsite at a great startup with a great culture, but an open floor plan. Things that are perfect with this setup: ad hoc meetings, fixing the build, grooming sessions, small&#x2F;medium size stories with relatively simple scopes, responding to slack, doing code review. Things that are terrible with this setup (in my opinion): any sort of truly deep coding&#x2F;thinking&#x2F;tinkering.<p>When I honestly evaluate my last year, almost all of what I consider my best work was done at home at nights or on the weekends. I&#x27;ve also noticed that a really good senior engineer on the team <i>almost</i> always comes in with his best new&#x2F;gamechanging code when he took a Friday off and hacked over the weekend. There&#x27;s something about the hustle of people constantly talking around me, having impromptu meetings, etc that triggers a part of my brain that keeps it in a very shallow mode (which is sometimes appropriate).<p>Btw, I&#x27;m not even antisocial or anything, I could sit around and hang out all day in the office, but I&#x27;m trying to get to that &#x27;deep work&#x27; (to quote Cal Newport). Does anyone have any advice on this?
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jean_claude
Open plan offices are the bane of work requiring uninterrupted thought. I'd
say buy a set of good on- or over-the-ear closed headphones and listen to
music or soundscape to drown out the distractions when you really need to
concentrate.

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gnikflow
I do have closed headphones, but I'd never heard of soundscapes. Definitely
seems like ambient music would help out, thanks!

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jean_claude
No worries. If you like classical minimalism/ambient music, check out Erik
Satie's work, specifically, his three Gymnopédies compositions for piano. If
you've played Minecraft, you'll instantly recognize No.1[1].

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU)

