This is spot on! I used to get much more done per hour when I was self employed and worked out of Dean & Deluca and the Tea Spot than I do in my “open”, née “crappy”, workspace at Google.
https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-you-can-focus-in-a-coffee-shop-but-not-in-your-open-office
I tried the open office situation for about six months. This was maybe five years ago. I’m talking about serious coders, gunslingers extraordinaire. Nice enough place, everyone had things the way they wanted them, so we thought.
So we’re sitting in this conference room, finally I broach the subject of how everyone’s feeling about the situation, we’d all kinda agreed to try it out, see if it made us more productive. Rent was coming due, we’d signed on for six months.
We all agreed it was a failed experiment. Everyone was more productive in their own chosen spaces.
Depends on what do for a living and how good you are at focusing on what needs to be done and signalling when it’s not ok to be interrupted.
I have worked in open office spaces for last 15++ year and find collaboration is easier and better then in closed offices or cafés. Then again I can opt to stay at home or book a meeting room when needed.
Actually as of September 1st I am paid extra to stay in home office…
But I do prefer open offices over closed ones.
If it is problematic get a “do not disturb” flag, use it when needed, not all the time and get some proper noise cancelling headphones
“The problem may be that, in our offices, we can’t stop ourselves from getting drawn into others’ conversations or from being interrupted while we’re trying to focus.”
THIS is the point. I rent a table in an open environment. As long as there’s a call going on or some such i have no problem whatsoever to focus because i know that it does not concern me. But when people start mentioning the rent or something having to do with the office as such i lose it. That is why it was impossible to work at home when my daughter went in and out as she liked, when how and with whom was my concern. So i could not focus. The noise in a coffee shop is not my concern so i can focus there (but being old i need my huge screen and expensive chair).
Dany Marmur noise cancelling headphones 🙂