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How Do You Drown Out the Office Noise?
An anonymous reader asks: "We've recently had yet another office re-organization, which is not so bad in itself, but the noise level has increased significantly due to the type of furniture as well as job functions of those whom I share the office with. The first thing I think I'm going to do is to get a pair of noise canceling headphones, but before I spend hundreds of dollars I'd like to hear some opinions or alternatives. Two of the ones that look neat are the Extreme Isolation Headphones and Plane Quiet Headphones. What have others done to cope with noise level?"
My previous and current exployers both have an air ventilation system which ran almost constantly, resulting in enough uniform background noise to drown out most casual conversations and such that weren't immediately next door to where you were sitting.
I don't know if the effect was intentional or not, but it might have been. In any case, it helped (and helps!) to remove unwanted distractions.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
You will see many people trying to sell you on in-ear phones such as the Shure E3 or the Etymotic ER6
Trust me - these are mostly overkill. I have a set of Shure E3s that I bought to cope with our extremely loud drummer - however, unless your coworkers are using jackhammers, a good quality set of closed-back headphones (AKG 270, Sennheiser HD580, Sony MDR-7506) will sound better and be more comfortable.
While I'm not in an office environment anymore, I can recommend a set of headphones my wife got me for X-Mas since she got tired of me rockin'in the house down every day. That and my office currently sounds like an airport due to being small, no carpet (wood floor) with 5 computers (3 servers and 2 laptops) running in it. Add another person and a dog walking around clicking on the floor with its nails and its enough to drive you nuts.
Now, with my Altec Lansing's (Amazon), I can't even hear her talk to me (just like a mute button - lips move and thats it) when the volume is just on medium. I can't hear the keyboard when I type anymore either... Not bad for a $23 dollar solution.
Now, when the volume is just off (which I've caught myself doing a lot here lately), I can still here some noise, but not nearly as loud. My only gripe is that, originally, I didn't like the feeling of the cups, but thats because I had never used this type before.
Last but not least, I have a pair of ear buds too and I like the Altec's better due to in-line volume control and the cup over ear instead of in-ear. I tend to get headaches after about 2 hours of buds in the ear. That and I tend to walk around on breaks with the buds in to keep from killing my ears putting them back in within 5 minutes.
And no, I'm not trying to push them that hard, I just happen to like the cheap solution my wife found. Oddly enough, she knew about these due to her profession - professional flute player in a band...
You can get industrial grade hearing protection for much cheaper than noise cancelling headphones (check out the Leightning 31s, which are only about $20 and very comfortable). They also work much better than noise cancelling, across the spectrum, and need no batteries! You can even wear small ear buds under these if you want music too.
I bought a pair of the Plane Quiet headphones and am VERY VERY happy with them. But only on planes.
The sound they're good at cancelling is engine noies and other fairly low frequency stuff. They damp voices, but not by that much. If you wear them in a conversation, you hear the other folk -- they just sound low-fi.
My hugely favorite thing for damping noise and actually getting work done is called a DOOR. If you don't have one, ask your boss for one. If he's smart and able, he'll get one for you. Your productivity will go up.
As for using music to dampen, see Tom DeMarco's book, _Peopleware_. In it he runs tests with silence, office noise and music. The music ain't much better than the office noise for concentration. (page 78)