I personally can't concentrate in any kind of open-space office. When I need to focus, the very feeling of other people being present is a huge distraction to me. It was true since early childhood - I couldn't do homework or learn anything at home if I wasn't alone in a room with doors closed.
I have the same problem. I grew up on a ranch in rural Texas. It was remote enough that I might as well have been on Asimov's Solaria for all the human company I had. Over the years, I became accustomed to reading, thinking, and tinkering in relative isolation.
Whether the cause is simply my background or is perhaps strengthened by some neurological factor, I am completely unable to filter out superfluous external stimuli.If someone is talking on the phone in the same room with me, I can't not listen to their conversation no matter how much I wish otherwise.
The people with whom I work tend to have difficulty understanding this aspect of my nature. I'm afraid I come off as rude and aloof when I put on my headphones and request to be IMed rather than tapped on the shoulder. Generally, these requests are ignored. One of our sales people actually came over and pulled my headphones off my head. My startled reaction did not go over well with her.
I'm not asocial. I like people. I just need silence to think.
Same here. Nobody believes me when I tell them I can feel others' presence in a visceral way.
I have lesser but still significant problems in cube environments. Would love to get out of the cube farm...and I believe I'd produce a lot more value if I weren't stuck in an uncomfortable place.
This is a very frustrating aspect of the experience.
After being coaxed/coerced for years to "be like everyone else", I finally learned to take this as a sign -- as a mandate -- to GTFO.
Such an environment will wear you down and eventually destroy you. The sooner you leave it, the better.
(And, if we are indeed that good, leaving may be the best way of counter-acting such attitudes, as the institutions we leave struggle to make do with what is left. If this is not the case, you've nonetheless extracted yourself from what, in my experience, is a personally self-destructive position.)
Yeah, I also think that I'd produce a lot more value if allowed to work in different conditions...
Also, I often find myself in a free conference room with a whiteboard, or in a park outside with paper and pencil, and do my thinking there. I'm having a hard time thinking near computers, and it's three orders of magnitude more difficult if there are co-workers nearby.
I don't really know how to explain it.