The New Habit Challenge: Can The Right Kind Of Music Fix Open Office Distraction?
Join our resident habit expert Rachel Gillett and other Fast Company staff on Friday, January 30 at 11 a.m. ET as we discuss what happened when we used noise to tune out distractions at work.
The open office debate has been widely chronicled here at Fast Company, and one of the major issues we have with this floor plan that we’ve yet to overcome is how distracting the whole arrangement can be. Apart from the times that you want to collaborate with those around you, this no walls atmosphere is just not conducive to focused work.
In fact, recent survey data from Cambridge Sound Management reveals that nearly 30% of office workers are distracted by coworkers's conversations.
But noise in general isn’t to blame when it comes to lost productivity. "When we talk about distractions, what we’re primarily concerned with is intelligibility," says acoustical expert Justin Stout. In other words, what’s distracting about our neighbors’ conversations is that our focus shifts from our work to figuring out what they are saying.
Since shutting your office door is no longer an option, Stout says that the key to enhancing productivity is consistently generating an office "hum"—the unintelligible mixture of sounds.
Stout recommends accomplishing this by listening to music without lyrics, such as classical or electronic music. "The cognitive processes that are needed to understand and interpret lyrics are very different than the processes required to simply listen to rhythms," he explains.
For this week's habit challenge, a few of us at Fast Company are putting the syndicated office hum to the test. When we want to accomplish focused work we’ll funnel some lyric-less tunes or noise into our ears.
Join us here at 11 a.m. ET on Friday, January 30 to find out how it went for us, share your thoughts, and ask us questions.
Did you tune out conversations and lyrics and break the open office curse? Tell us about your experience in the "make a comment" box below and join in the discussion on Friday.
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The Not So Silent Office Productivity Killer
Fast CompanyThere's a reason you work better in the coffee shop, and it's not because of the caffeine.
I definitely hear that. Recent survey data from Cambridge Sound Management reveals that nearly 30% of office workers are distracted by coworkers's conversations. -
The study found that noise in general isn’t to blame when it comes to lost productivity. What’s distracting about our neighbors’ conversations is their intelligibility—and because of this our focus shifts from our work to figuring out what they are saying.
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What are some of the most distracting things you experience on a daily basis?
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I’ll start. Without calling anyone out, I work next to some of the most brilliant and collaborative teams at Fast Company. Their amazing work stems from how well they work together, but unfortunately for me, this collaboration can get pretty noisy at times.
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Also don't want to call anyone out! But I find there are particular voices that are harder for me to block out.
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It's also much more than conversations. I'm very aware of people walking behind me, or someone getting up in my row. It's like all of the sudden I'm wondering in the back of my head whether someone is looking over my shoulder.
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Totally. Every office (including this one!) has that one or two or three people who are just super loud. But I have trouble blocking out anyone's voice. And that, by the way, makes me pretty aware of how annoying I must sound when I'm talking. It makes me not want to talk to my colleagues, which is a shame!
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Jason, I totally get that. You're aware of others distracting you, which makes you self conscious that you're doing it to others. Any advice for overcoming that?
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Well, you have three options: Just talk however you want, talk quieter, or walk over to some corner every time you want to have a conversation. None are great options, in that someone—you or someone else—is always going to be annoyed.
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We have dogs in our office weekly. It's not so much dogs that are distracting, it's peoples' reactions to the dogs. And how they swoon over them and are very loud -- that is the most distracting thing.
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Just to chime in with one benefit of open offices: One thing I enjoy about being able to overhear people is being able to learn from them. Many of us are journalists, and we're doing interviews on the phone. Everyone has their own technique to doing interviews, and I often learn from others in that way.
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That said, I'm often talking softly when I do phone interviews, because I don't like people listening to me! Sometimes my source asks me to speak up.
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It's so true. One of the difficult parts of this week's challenge was feeling like I was missing out on something constructive. As a young journalist, I want to soak up every last bit about how more seasoned journalists work. But at the same time, you've got to focus on what you need to get done.
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Totally! I do the same—talk quietly on the phone, such that the person on the other end can't hear me well. And I should note that I'm not some quiet introvert. I like having long, loud conversations. When I worked in an office in which everyone had a private office, that's what we all did: We popped into each other's private spaces and went on at length. It's not that I fear being overheard. It's that I know how annoying it is to overhear me.
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Jess, you told me that you didn’t listen to music at work previously. We work in the same office, pretty close by. How did you get by before this challenge?
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If you work in an open office, chances are you often focus on your coworker’s conversation more than your work. Recent survey data from Cambridge Sound Management reveals that nearly 30% of office workers are distracted by coworkers's conversations. But noise in general isn’t to blame when it comes to lost productivity. "When we talk about distractions, what we’re primarily concerned with is intelligibility," says acoustical expert Justin Stout. In other words, what’s distracting about our neighbors’ conversations is that our focus shifts from our work to figuring out what they are saying. To combat this onslaught of distractions, our resident habit expert Rachel Gillett (@rgillett23) took to her headphones for the week. (Video by @vlapinski)
by Fast Company via Instagram edited by Sam Cole 1/30/2015 4:21:01 PM -
I'm actully pretty good at "getting in the zone" when I'm really working. Like I tune everyone else out so much that I'm often startled when someone comes over to talk to me. I think I must look crazy, hunched over and my face close to the screen.
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So most of the time, I'm not listening to music. I occassionally do when I have more boring tasks to get through though.
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Any tips for us about how to get in the zone without music?
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It's really just not caring what's going on around you, and being ok with seeming anti-social if someone is chit chatting right next to you.
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For what it's worth: I find it really helpful to take my own state of mind seriously. Some days I can concentrate despite some chatter around me. Some days I need absolute silence. Some days I need music. Some days I need white noise. And I don't try to force any of those. If one isn't working, I try something else. Some days I'll be unable to tune out a conversation nearby, try music, and after one minute find that it's equally distracting. Then I'll try white noise. That doesn't work? Then I go somewhere else.
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Ahh, I wish I had a laptop at work. I feel very pinned to my desk with my work desktop.
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The study we previously mentioned found that music with lyrics can be just as distracting when trying to complete tasks that require a higher level of focus as a colleague speaking loudly on their cell phone next to you. It all comes back to that issue of intelligibility. The proposed solution then is to listen to music without lyrics. How does this work for you?
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While I'm writing, which is the task that requires the most focus for me, I absolutely cannot listen to music with lyrics. I found that music without lyrics was doable though. That said, I don't think it necessarily improved my focus due to a few challenges which I can get into later.
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Very well. I never listen to music with lyrics while trying to work—or read, for that matter. And I typically go a step further: I find that it's helpful to listen to the *same* lyric-less music, because once I'm really familiar with a tune, it becomes like background noise. The goal is to find something that blocks input, basically. I want my brain to be focused on the task, not on the things coming into my ears. So I have a bunch of go-to music that I've been listening to for years.
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There's a nice middle ground by the way. One band I was listeing to was Sigur Ros. They sing along to their tracks in Icelandic plus a made-up language called Hopelandic! I couldn't understand the words and it was somehow very soothing.
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Funny. I've tried music in other languages—because to me, well, there's no difference between Icelandic and Hopelandic. But I still found it distracting.
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Overall I think that listening to music without lyrics did help me focus more than when I listen to music with lyrics. I wasn't singing along in my head to my favorite songs. But I will say that I think what this challenge didn’t take into account is the impact different kinds of lyric-less music have on us. Did you notice a different effect on your focus between different genres and tempos?
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For example, one study by Canadian researchers found that undergraduate students performed better on an IQ test after listening to an up-tempo piece by Mozart compared to a slow piece by Albinoni.
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They concluded that the different tempos had different effects on the participants’ emotions, which altered their cognitive performance. Ie, up-tempo music can get you in the mood to do focused, creative work.
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The Surprising Science Behind What Music Does To Our Brains
Fast CompanyYou're probably listening to music in your headphones at work right now. Whether you are powering through your to-do list or brainstorming creative...
And in this article we see that moderate noise levels are just right for creative thinking. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise do.