Adjusting Your Work Environment to Work for You?

Darvin Pope asks: "I have a rather disconcerting problem at work: the environment is uncomfortable. Its not your standard, 'I hate my job' type of uncomfortable, its more of a general physical and mental issue than that. The entire place is done in earthtones, its dark and it can be noisy. My cube is situated across the room from most others, but still, its hard to acquire a peaceful, zenlike state of mind, neccesary for me to write my best code, with all the disturbances around. I was wondering if any of the slashdot folks had any hints - ranging from a change of seating posture to color schemes, desk clutter, music/white noise, herbal suppliments, dietary changes, lighting, and so on. What works best for the rest of you?"

Comments

Do some system administration

[Linux_ho]

Take on a couple minor system administration tasks. It will not only be accepted, but expected when you adopt a surly attitude and eventually lock yourself in the server room. Nobody bothers me anymore, though it's kinda cold in here and I have to wear a parka. The aluminum pyramid hat helps keep them away when I have to leave the server room to eat, visit the restroom, or when I'm showing up or leaving. If they approach anyway, fake a seizure. That works great.

My suggestions:

[theantix]

I definately know what you mean, I work in a similar environment and have gone through what you are talking about. I work for a concrete company with trucks roaring past constantly. Plus, in Canada the daylight hours are shrinking rapidly and I don't have a window office, so I barely see the sun. That being said, I have a few suggestions that you might find helpful.

Exercise. At work, try to walk around at least every few hours. Sitting in one spot is bad for the psyche, and your general health! Outside of work, do some cardio exercise (walking, running, biking, hiking, swimming, etc). Back off the caffeine. Don't drink pints of coffee and pop pengiun pills all day. It stimulates the nervous system and makes you more alert, but more stressed at the same time. It's similar to a constant adrenaline rush, which is helpful for a few minutes but very poisonous for a long period of time. Get human contact. Duh! In your spare time, chat up the cute secretary, or ask your co-workers how their weekends were. Even if you are an introvert you need human contact that can't be fufilled through /. Eat Right. Back off the fatty foods, try eating carbohydrate-rich breakfasts and lunches. Don't skip either. Drink lots of water. Try drinking a little bit of caffeinated beverages in the morning (don't overdo it). Play right. In your off-work time, don't spend all of your time playing video games and watching television. At least once a day call a friend on the telephone, or even better visit one in person. Get a LCD. Of course, this might be beyond your budgetary constrainsts, but if you are staring at a screen all day it might as well be one that doesn't strain your eyeballs! A flat-screen monitor or a laptop might be what the doctor ordered. And if you are running on a windows platform, consider upgrading to WinXP which has ClearType support, which really does improve the clarity and readability of LCD screens. For me, that alone was worth the price of the upgrade (please don't flame). Listen to "wordless" music while working. It really helps, you'd be surprised! I'm suggesting classical or electronic music, whatever your preferences. Of course, not everyone can do this, but listening to Ludwin Van can really help you concentrate.

Hope it helps, it did for me.

Herbal supplement

[Lally Singh]

A little marijuana goes a long way :-)

(But remember, drugs are bad! bad!)

Job environments.

[billn]

Environments are important. You could be a crack hack wizard and still suck because of distractions.

The first and foremost important piece of your work environment is your chair. Make sure it's something you can be comfortable in for hours at a time, especially when coding. Get your feet off the floor and onto something. I personally use a high back leather chair and matching footstool. Medically, having your feet dangling or poorly supported for long periods of time is bad for you. Make sure you can lean back in your chair, and you're not working hunched over.

Match your chair to your desk, with regard to height. Find a working position between the two that's comfortable, or work out a way to get your keyboard lower. Ergonomics, while froofy, aren't a joke.

Noise suppression. If you're a coder, get some good noise cancellation going. Background noise reduction cuts down on a lot of distractions. Even if you're not pumping music into it, having your ears covered will quickly become a sign to people that you're busy. Train the mammals to send email instead of pop into your cube. I personally use Sony's noise reduction earbuds, which by shape alone are a functional earplug.

Lighting is important. I've had several cases of janitor combat by disengaging overhead flourescents in favor of a gentle incandescent lamp. Don't work in the dark, though. Hormonally, humans (and other diurnal creatures (this excludes Solaris admins)) are stimulated into various modes by light levels. One argument you'll be presented with should you decide to tamper with overheads is 'Safety Reasons'. Don't let this slide. It's YOUR work environment. Ground level strip lighting is just as effective, and less intrusive. Use indirect lighting where possible.

If you're in a heavy corporate environment, it's entirely plausible that certain management types will immediately single you out as a deviant, so use caution.

Some ammunition:
Oklahoma State Doc on Ergonomics and Environments: This is a good common sense doc about computer heavy work environments. You can draft a simple checklist based on the contents to see how your work environs stack up.

This document points out something important: OSHA does NOT have a standing (read: enforcable) ruling or standard for computer operation environments. Your employer can simply tell you to take a hike and get away with it. In some cases, I'd say take this up with HR, or rally your like minded coworkers, but given that most corporate HR teams simply don't give a damn, caveat emptor.

In the event your management doesn't go for it, here's a piece on combatting violence in the office.

In any case, do some homework before embarking on this quest. If nothing else, present it in simple financial terms. Personally controlled light environments tend to be less expensive to maintain than mass overhead lighting. No ladders required, less maintenance impact. Lights turned off when cubes are vacated at beer o' clock serve as pro-active energy management.

Single user monitor lamps, like these from Think Geek ($29.99 each) work very well. They did their homework about lighting advantages, as well. This brings cubespace lighting down from the ceiling and into the cube.

The drawback to this, and one of the first things managers (and site security) like to point out, is the reduced light level for the rest of the office. It's a perfectly valid argument, and generally brings lighting wars to a screaming halt. This can be replied to with something simple and inexpensive, like these Mini Lights, which would sit well on the exterior of any cube wall, illuminating the aisle.

As for general office lighting a few well placed torchiere style lamps (check your lamp types, though. Some suck more power than others) provide excellent indirect lighting.

Stand-up work area. Really!

[Bob_Robertson]

Along with all the other calls for "taking control of your audio input with headphones" and such, I must suggest one of the most effective things I ever tried: Stand up.

Most if not all cubicle desks are latched into the vertical. Put them at 44 inches, or whatever is comfortable for you, and get a bar-stool style chair. Adjust the so you can comfortably work standing up, and sitting down, or with your butt half on the chair, whatever is most comfortable at that moment.

The human spine evolved for movement, walking, not sitting for long periods of time. This setup allows you to adjust your position constantly, exercising your lower back, legs, etc.

Of course, being in a Japanese company means that I don't get to have a cubicle to work with for the forseeable future myself, and I can really feel the difference.

So try the most ergonomic position of all. Stand up for yourself!

Bob-

Telecommute

[Snafoo]

I'm sure you've thought of this before, but telecommuting is the ultimate answer for your all your crappy-work-environment needs.

I myself prefer telecommuting from a cafe. Cafes, I find, are ideal for working because:

(1) Nice persons bring hot tasty caffinated things right to you.

(2) No one cares if you get up and go for a half-hour walk.

(3) No one asks you annoying questions about how to "program" cells in Excel. (sigh)

(4) I live in Montreal in a Francophone neighbourhood, so (and this is utterly fantastic) I have *no* *idea* what people around me are nattering about! It's all the advantages of being around peeps enjoying themselves (which for some reason *always* relaxes me; it must be tribal psychological throwback) minus the drawback that you have to listen to fifteen-year-old girls psychoanalyzing each other and making grave pronouncements about each other's mental health or dateability or some such. At any rate, I imagine non-Quebequois can get a similar experience via a walkman.

<offtopic>The really weird thing is that I do, in fact, speak French, and not too badly at that; however, it's a second language learned after the childhood 'window'. For whatever reason, the consensus among myself and my friends with similar experiences is that comprehension for such languages is purely voluntary, whereas with your mother tongue eavesdropping is sometimes an uncontrollable fact of life. </offtopic>

Here's what I do ...

[Zebaulon]

While I don't work in a cubicle, I do have my own office. So it's sort of like a cubicle, just bigger and better. Here is what I have found:

First, as others have mentioned, lighting can work wonders. The overhead lights (florescent) are about the worst thing you can use in an office environment with computers. On the other hand, too little light can be just as bad. I had a floor lamp (one of the ones that opens up toward the ceiling) that had a bulb go out, so I temporarily used a small (and very dim) desk lamp. It was about as bad as having too much light. The floor lamp is much better.

Also, here's a few other tips (some have been mentioned previously) that work for me:

• Keep background noise and distractions to an absolute minimum. This will do wonders in improving your train of thought.
• If you have the luxury of a DOOR for your office (or cubicle) then CLOSE IT. If you do not have a door, install one. :)
• Find some good classical music to listen to as you work. If you have an Internet connection at the office, check out my favorite. (If you don't, check out the local radio stations.)
• Most phone systems have a DND (Do Not Disturb) button on the individual phones. It's there for a reason -- use it. If you don't have a phone in your office, be thankful.
• On a similar note, if your phone system has direct dialing from outside (either via DNIS or an automated transfer) only give your extension number to close friends/family that you don't mind interrupting your coding. (Make everyone else go through the operator.) If you DND your phone, they will usually get your voice mail if they dial you direct, but still, if you phone doesn't have DND, this is your second line of defense.
• Don't keep your E-Mail client open while you work on other things. I have found that doing so creates a temptation to go read your new mail whenever it comes in.
• Minimize any other distractions that you may come across. Encourage people to send E-Mail or leave voice mail when they need something, instead of bothering you personally. Every time you stop and help someone, you have to spend time getting back into the swing of things. (I know this may sound a bit mean, but you do have a job you have to get done, right?)
• Depending on your network and/or what type of access you have to things, you may be able to install VNC on your machine and then work remotely from home if things get too nasty.
• Customize the color configuration of your software. I do as one other person has mentioned here - black backgrounds with white (or gray) text. Most of the time I even turn off the syntax highlighting of my favorite editor when coding.
• Anything else that might make you more comfortable and able to be more productive...

Remember this -- you aren't there to look pretty, you are there to do your job. If you need to make modifications to your environment in order to improve your job performance, then it's worth it. I personally wear jeans, a sports shirt, and tennis shoes to work every day. It's a lot easier to work in that than it is to work in dressy clothes.

Also, a lot of what works and doesn't work will depend on the person and possibly the company you are in. Each person has their own needs and what environment works for me may not work for others. YMMV.

Oh, and if your phone system uses standard phones (in other words, no proprietary multiline garbage, your call hold/transfer/conference uses flash hook, and you can use standard Wal-Mart phones on it) then you most likely don't have a DND button. Nortel's Meridian system can have add-on cards to support standard phones, as can many others. Just buy a project box, mount a SPST switch in it, connect one leg of the switch to one leg of a 600 ohm resistor, the other leg of the switch to one side of the phone line, and the remaining leg of the resistor to the other side of the line. When you flip the switch, it puts a 600 ohm load across the line, which is like taking the phone off hook. Instant busy signal. :) (Just make sure it is a standard phone compatible system -- else things can get a bit hairy when you start plugging things in like that.)