Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

Not my experience. Here's why...

A coffee shop and a laptop are convenient, even fun ways to produce mediocre content. A blog entry, email, maybe even cleaning up a few lines of code. But as most programmers know, sooner or later, you have to enter another mode to get that additional "oomph" to get the important critical-path work done. Some call it "the zone".

In fact we just talked about this the other day:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2450260

A coffee shop is probably the best way to think you've entered the zone without actually entering the zone. The can be very dangerous. You've had a good time surrounded by like minded people (kinda like being here at hn), but you've never actually transcended anything really important.

I spend time at the library one or more times per week, sometimes just to get out of the office. It's fun to think and get transactions done, but fortunately, I have an internal guide that tells me, "Time to get back to the silence, large screen, and comfortable chair of the office to get the real work done."

I realize that this isn't the same experience as others, but I still often want to ask them, "Did you really get done what you wanted to get done in the coffee shop?"

This subject reminds me of a great line from Joel Spolsky's "Hitting the High Notes":

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html

"Five Antonio Salieris won't produce Mozart's Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years."

My version:

"Five workers in the coffee shop won't produce the killer work that one in a dedicated space can produce. Ever. Not if they drink 100 lattes."

I absolutely agree that my best work is done in a silent atmosphere. I can't even listen to music, it's so distracting.

But, having observed this, I tried locking myself in a completely private apartment all day, with the perfect ergonomic desk and everything, and waited for the magic to happen. That turns out to be too much of a good thing. It just does not work. I knew that I was cracking up when I went to the barber one afternoon and it ended up being the highlight of my day. When you find yourself tearing up at the prospect of spending fifteen glorious minutes making stupid small talk with a barber that you've never met before you know that you're spending too much time alone.

My guess is that what I really need is a small private office (home office, or otherwise) within easy walking distance of a library or coffeeshop or, better yet, both. Mix it up a little.

Silence is great, but sometimes silence can be, well, too silent. I bounce back and forth between coffee shops and my home office, because sometimes I want to sit at home in silence or listen to music, and othertimes sitting at a coffee shop with a lot of ambient noise helps me get into the zone. Something about having a lot of random noise around that I don't care about listening too helps me concentrate.

http://www.simplynoise.com and/or http://www.rainymood.com

Or more customizable: http://boodler.org/

sometimes I want to sit at home in silence or listen to music, and othertimes sitting at a coffee shop with a lot of ambient noise helps me get into the zone

Sounds like a DIY version of the Hawthorne effect - you just need to occasionally change your environment, it doesn't matter what to, because change itself is stimulating.

When I need to focus, I listen to music, but it has to be instrumental. Jazz, classical, even ambient (Brian Eno's "Music for Airports" is my go-to album for focusing). I've also used noise generators, like Ambience for the iPhone, or Bloom (also by Brian Eno).

I have a real hard time getting focused unless there is some sort of music playing.

I just have to disagree here. I learned to code in a Starbucks in New York City, totally immersed in my computer for hours on end every day for a summer, years ago. Today I work from them whenever I possibly can, even if this means Zipcar'ing it. I like the atmosphere of Starbucks, and in general I like being surrounded by activity. Coffee shop + headphones = my most productive; yes, doing good work.

Like melling said, this looks like it goes down under "there's no one right answer." You experience was obviously different. But it's definitely the place where I get in the zone the quickest, do the best work the fastest, and in general are the most happy.

This comes down to there is no one definitive answer. I've been very effective in coffee shops and in my dedicated space. The change is good and can help with creativity and energy. Sometimes I go to a coffee shop because I know that I'll be there for 2 or 3 hours and I'm motivated to getting something done in that time.

To each his own. Some tasks I find (writing is one of them) are best done in a coffee shop. Somehow I find it easier to "zone out" the hustle and movement and focus in coffee shops, while a more silent and still environment makes me very restless and leads to jumping around between tasks.

There are other tasks that I prefer to do at my desk, with loud music

>I realize that this isn't the same experience as others, but I still often want to ask them, "Did you really get done what you wanted to get done in the coffee shop?"

Interesting fact: yes, I actually do. Last couple of weeks, I started putting in quite a lot of hours besides the 9-5 grind and quite frankly, I tallied up about 38 hours of solid good work. Most of these hours were at spent at many of close-by coffee shops.

In contrast, work at home suffers because of my apartment size and total lack of personal isolation from my family. The chaos and noise in a coffee shop or on the street is very easy to tune out in comparison to someone asking questions every few minutes.

This might be attributed in part to studying long hours in very busy environments while at school.

In contrast, work at home suffers because of my apartment size and total lack of personal isolation from my family. The chaos and noise in a coffee shop or on the street is very easy to tune out in comparison to someone asking questions every few minutes.

I think this is the critical factor for me. If I'm at home, there are still people coming and going all day, and they're people I know who may at some point be looking for my attention[1]. At the coffee shop, the only person who expects to interact with me is behind the counter.

1 - This is probably not going to be everyone else's experience. I am a student, and my house is across the streets from campus.

I think the important part is that, if you have telecommuting in place, you can choose. Some days I need quiet, some days I need caffeine, some days I feel like being around activity, and some days I really need to talk to someone in the offices.

But where I work essentially doesn't "do" telecommuting, except in odd circumstances. So I don't have the choice. So some days I'm drained in-office when I could be energized elsewhere. I use their desks. I sit at the same chair. I can't walk-and-code, I can't have random-amenity-X, and I'm surrounded by either oppressive silence + keyboard clicking or the occasional partial conversation.

It's their choice, but I'm the one who's losing the most because of it.

>> It's their choice, but I'm the one who's losing the most because of it.

Surely this is a case of "it's their loss"? If your employer does not choose to see the benefits of flexible working arrangements then they are the ones that lose, both in lost productivity and being unable to keep top staff.

It will be eventually, but not yet. They're growing quickly enough they just need more brute force, currently.

I would agree with this. While my other comment distinguished between different kinds/volumes of "ambient environment", in total I find I don't -- can't -- reach the depth of thought that your descriptions describes and that I (sometimes) experience myself in the same kind of setting.

Although, sometimes what I may need for a bit is more "breadth" if also less depth. The occasional cafe can actually be quite beneficial to a balanced personal philosophy.

I guess it's like the coffee. One cup is good. Three, and I start to get pretty jittery. ;-)

ADDENDUM: Two hours is about my max, even in an "optimal" cafe. Sometimes three. After that, walking out the door to relative silence is a blessed relief.

Interesting. Fwiw, my best work has actually been done standing at a terminal in the data center, coding to the hum of big iron (or the lots of little iron that passes for it these days). And that was even before I was aware of the health benefits of standing desks. That's the one thing I really miss about working for a big company with its own datacenter, now everything is just in the cloud somewhere.

My best learning/studying, in the library or bookstore. There's something about being in an environment where most everyone is focusing and concentrating that makes it easier to get into Flow.

I also find it difficult to get certain kinds of work done in a coffee shop or other public place. I always seem to get this feeling that people are watching over my shoulder, despite the fact that nobody actually is. That feeling is somewhat unsettling, and makes it difficult for me to concentrate on things like code.

So, for me at least, coffee shop time is 'thinking' time. Time to enjoy the brew, do the crossword, let the mind go wild, and write down notes of ideas that pop into my head.

I have always found a coffeeshop to be very hard to get in the zone with unless there's some sort of good band playing to help me make the zone shift.

I'm too distractable, and the chairs are not comfortable for serious thinking.

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