

Stack Exchange: How does noise affect programmer productivity? - johnaspden
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132952/studies-on-how-noise-affects-productivity-of-programmers#comment249179_132952

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palebluedot
In my experience, it isn't noise itself so much per se, but the type of noise
- talking in particular is distracting to me. But I do find that some types of
music, and noise, seem to engage my brain in a way that lets me focus _better_
than with no noise at all... and as a bonus, it also drowns out some of the
more distracting noises. Ambient music, some electronic music, and computer
generated sound really help me.

If I were to start up a company again, I would issue each employee a nice pair
of over-the-ear noise cancelling headphones as part of their office equipment.
I think it would work wonders for their productivity.

Related - for some pink noise, here is a commandline (for those with sox
installed) that I find soothing. Play with the last two variables some, to
tune it to your tastes - it has somewhat the effect of noise from an empty
beach:

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

I posted the above not too long ago in another story, and someone else
(shmerl) replied with another one, that resembled the noise of [edit: not
space] Star Trek:

    
    
      play -c2 -n synth whitenoise band -n 100 24 band -n 300 100 gain +20

~~~
ams6110
"the noise of space"

??

~~~
colanderman
I presume that means "the noise of the starship _Enterprise_ "...

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mgkimsal
Over the last few years noise of many types has become extremely distracting.
I won't say debilitating, but it feels like it on occasion (just not
perpetually constant).

The one thing I've done is taken to wearing in-ear earbuds and running
whitenoise (actually, pinknoise usually) as well as sometimes mixing in sounds
of oceans or other water. It's not foolproof - it doesn't merge out all
distractions, but it does reduce noise distractions considerably. Whether
people in another room or minor road traffic (a killer for me), the earbuds
with whitenoise has helped.

Regular music doesn't help much, though I may mix in some classical behind the
whitenoise some.

I don't bother with 'noise cancelling' stuff. I get cheap earbuds - I'm just
using whitenoise in them(!). I usually pick up 3-5 at a time from biglots for
$5 each (or less during their friends and family special days). They don't
last forever, but at $5, who cares? I've been far more productive with these
over almost any accessory I've ever bought.

Total side note: one of the big benefits of a macbook for me a few years ago -
after linux on several laptops - is that there was never any contention
between audio programs. Music just plays. Sound effects just play.
Concurrently. I don't have to futz with various alsa/pulseaudio crap, or worry
that because pidgin is running that skype won't be able to access the sound
drivers, etc. Yeah, I'm sure I'm the only one ever who had those problems, and
linux "just works" fine for everyone else, or it was my fault for not
researching properly all the driver support for the 5 laptops I chose to buy
over a few years, and yeah windows would have done this just as well as the
mac. There's a few things I miss from linux boxes. Sound issues are not among
those things.

~~~
emp_
This is probably why I find the song A Looming Resonance by Wolves In The
Throne Room[1] so soothing, it has a white/pink noise track during the entire
song, I am sure other musicians have done similar.

[1]: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO_EuNDCSZs>

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zerohp
It's not just auditory noise, visual noise is a problem as well. The trend
toward putting programmers in open plan offices has driven me to telecommute.
I wish we could go back to the days of the boring cube farm with white noise
speakers in the ceiling.

I've noticed that as I get older I require more control over my environment to
maintain concentration than when I was in my early 20's.

~~~
pasbesoin
I used to ride the stress to some extent to (temporarily, partially) overcome
the distraction. This no longer works -- a caution to younger readers: I have
found it to be a recipe for burnout.

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bh42222
Peopleware is a book every software manager should read.

And ALL mangers I have worker for in large corporations had read it, but it
did not matter! Noise and cubicles everywhere!

So my question, is how do we prove to a majority of large companies that noise
negative affects their bottom line?

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nicpottier
Is dubstep noise? Because I seem to work just fine with that turned way up.

No but seriously, aren't headphones the great equalizer (pun!) when it comes
to noise? Our office has a good bit of road noise these days, but a quality
set of over the ear headphones makes it all disappear. And when it's not been
road noise, it has been coworkers distracting me.

I've done it so long that my headphones are both a signal to those around me
that I'm getting work done and not to interrupt, and a weird signal to myself
to get down to business. I find that I reach for them as a reflex when I know
I need to really think through something and concentrate.

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paperwork
At my place of employment, I seem to be the odd man out. On any given day,
there are 5 to 10 people programming at our desk. All of them seem to be able
to focus deeply. I, on the other hand, have immense trouble with distractions
such as TV. Why would TV be a distraction at work? Oh, there are 5 large
screen TVs within my field of vision. Often the sound from different TVs is
slightly out of sync so I can't ignore it, no matter how hard I try.

I end up using ear-plugs and try to raise my monitors to keep moving pictures
away from my eyes. The joys of working on a trading desk!

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zizee
I think that different people are affected by noise more than others and I put
it down to the learning style that person gravitates towards. My wife is an
auditory learner, where I am more visual. I have real trouble paying attention
to conversation when a TV is playing in the background (with the sound off),
where she can't concentrate if there is too much noise.

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bwarp
I find this stream (stuffed through some Sennheiser HD25 SP headphones to
block everything else out) improves my productivity considerably!
<http://bluemars.org/cryosleep.php>

The noise of humans or machines doesn't however.

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dhimes
I personally find a little white noise helps me focus. Sounds of the seaside
or rain work very well. Of course, YMMV

[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ask-the-
bra...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ask-the-brains-
background-noise)

Goran Soderlund, Sverker Sikstrom, Andrew Smart (2007) Listen to the noise:
noise is beneficial for cognitive performance in ADHD Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry 48 (8), 840-847

(writeup of above: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-
health/condit...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-
health/conditions/brain-health/article1736286.ece))

~~~
mitchty
I agree, its why I always have <http://www.rainymood.com/> running when I want
to focus on things.

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zedwill
Absolutely yes, and how it does depends on the type of noise.

I read something similar on reddit/r/askscience time ago, referred to studying
with music. Programming and studying are different activities that will
probably activate different areas of the brain, but they are both very
demanding and I believe similar enough for the comments on that thread to
apply here.

The fact is that when listening to vocal music the brain needs to do
"decoding", no matter if you like the music or not. Apparently, it only
happens with vocal music. This takes a dent of your brain "processing power"
and study worse than the control group.

I believe something similar might be happening when programming. If you are
not 100% in the task because your brain is busy working on useless data, it is
going to affect the results.

Link to "How music effects the intake of information": <http://redd.it/oi2pc>

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tudorw
There was a good quote from someone wise about getting over the desire to stop
interruptions by learning to deal smoothly with them, the argument being that
any feelings of frustration with being interrupted was far more disruptive
than many of the interruptions, it's not a skill that comes easily to me, but
I can appreciate it's desirable nature!

~~~
DanBC
That may be true for some people, but for others[1] your advice is similar to
telling color-blind people to just learn to deal with red and green; or
telling deaf people to just learn to hear to deal with people who talk
quietly.

[1] Some people with Asperger's in particular.

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n_time
answer: wonderfully <http://simplynoise.com>

~~~
huuhuu
Simplynoise is great, and its brown noise stream is half of my solution to
cubicle noise. The other half is a pair of shooting range style earmuffs. The
model I use is called "Peltor Optime 105," and I find them very comfortable.

I put my earbuds in, put my earmuffs over them, and set the brown noise feed
playing at a very low volume. It's kind of silly looking, but the ability to
concentrate regardless of what's going on around me is well worth it.

------
yread
_Workers who reported that their workplace was acceptably quiet before the
exercise were 1/3 more likely to deliver zero-defect work._

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prophetjohn
Interesting that I get to work and sit down to see this, then immediately have
to put in headphones to drown out the noise.

My anecdotal evidence indicates that noise makes it hard to concentrate and
it's hard to be a productive programmer if you can't concentrate.

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sehugg
In my experience it's not so much the noise itself, but the noise being an
indicator of the probability that you'll receive a really distracting
question.

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ohyes
I have noise cancelling headphones. They cost maybe $50 dollars. Therefore, it
doesn't effect my productivity at all.

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CPlatypus
Unfortunately, this result might just mean that there's a correlation between
noise _tolerance_ and performance. It would have been better if they had
studied objectively measurable noise levels instead of subjective
acceptability of noise levels.

~~~
e-dard
I listen to music all day every day when working (from home) and feel it helps
me to be more productive, mainly because I'm relaxed and enjoying it, which in
turn contributes to me enjoying my work. However, if my other half comes home
and starts having a phone conversation–at a significantly lower volume in
another room–the muffled voice really distracts me.

I certainly feel there is a correlation between _tolerance_ and performance.

~~~
nickolai
>However, if my other half comes home and starts having a phone
conversation–at a significantly lower volume in another room–the muffled voice
really distracts me.

I find hearing a muffled conversation is actually worse than hearing a plain
conversation. My pet theory is that either way, the brain has to commit some
resources to parse the voice into actual concepts, but if the conversation is
muffled it has to do even more work to 'clean the signal'. Using resources
that are taken from your concentration ability.

You can consciously try to ignore the voice as much as you want, your
subconscious still have to parse it. At least i've never been able to avoid
it. I think that thats why white noise or music does not affect concentration
nearly as much as a conversation of the same Db-level.

~~~
mechanical_fish
This is why headphones, noise-canceling or not, are not a perfect solution to
the problem of conversational noise. You can still hear conversation through
noise-canceling headphones; it's just quieter. And not necessarily so quiet
that you don't parse it.

You can try to train yourself not to parse conversation, to think of it as a
slightly irritating set of noises. I think we all try to do this to some
degree – it may be one reason why programmers are famously uncommunicative
when we're in the zone. I mumble and wave people away when I'm trying to
sustain focus, and even if I deliberately break focus I tend to take a couple
of minutes to snap out of it and get back into the flow of conversation, and
in the meantime I struggle to produce words.

But, like you, I'm not convinced that consciously ignoring words really works.
Your brain is still parsing them at some level. It's like the studies which
show that noise, in general, is stressful, even if that noise is just white
noise. Your brain is trying to find signal in the noise. It never really stops
trying. The more noise there is, or the more structure your brain detects in
the noise, the harder it will try.

Studies have shown, and my own experience bears out, that voices are hardest
to tune out, and that structured music is also relatively distracting: Your
brain parses music too. Ambient music, which is deliberately designed not to
attract conscious attention, works better for me. White noise works, too, to
some degree, but silence is still best.

Of course, some people are conditioned to have noise all the time. These
people are both lucky and unlucky, in my opinion.

