A study recently came out from Stanford “showing that small amounts of social support, ranging from friends who encourage each other by email to occasional meetings with a fitness counselor, can produce large and lasting gains against one of America’s biggest health problems—physical inactivity.” Now, you may be wondering how this is applicable to this blog since the topic is Noisy Coworkers, not Unhealthy Coworkers. Stay with me for a minute while I explain.

Your Work Buddy may have to close the mini-blinds for you so you can actually concentrate.

I would like to propose that you could also use social support to help keep yourself on track while you are working. I know. Gasp! We are always decrying conversational distraction, among many other forms. However, there are just some days, like today when it is SO nice outside and I keep finding myself peering through the mini-blinds, wishing I was outside, that it would be nice to have a Work Buddy to gently encourage me to stay on track and to keep going. I suspect you might have the same problem occasionally–you have blocked out all the other distractions, but your mind just keeps wandering. Perhaps you could then inform your Work Buddy that it would be nice if, every once in a while, they would email you or just walk over and say “You can do it! Keep working!” or something similarly encouraging. It sounds cheesy, but based on the results of that study, I bet it would work.

So, I’ll be your Work Buddy today. “You can do it! Keep working!” (And now I am going to go close my mini-blinds so the gorgeous weather will quit calling out to me.)

Are you tired of your noisy coworkers and trying to think up new ways to keep them from distracting you? Have you ever thought about if your job could be done from home? Could you work from home even a couple days a week? Before you immediately answer ‘no’ ask yourself a few questions.

• Do you have the right job? Obviously if you are a construction worker or a plumber, telecommuting is not going to work.
• Do you have a good job performance record? If you are constantly on Facebook or talking on your cell phone, your boss is probably not going to agree to you working from home. If you won’t work when you are at work, then why would you when you are at home? Also, if you are a new employee, you wouldn’t be a good candidate because you are still at a stage where you need to get familiar with office procedure and it is helpful to have other people around to be able to ask a quick question if you need to.
• Do you have the right home office environment? Will you have access to a quiet place to work that is free from distractions? If the only place you have to work during the day is at your kitchen table right next to your noisy toddler then telecommuting would probably not work for you. Its awfully hard to participate in a conference call when your kid is yelling and throwing food at your computer and you.
• Do you have the right boss and organizational structure? If your boss is like Michael Scott, then it is probably a no go.
• Are you an effective communicator? If you can communicate quickly and easily over email and on the phone, then that would be fine. If you are the kind of person that needs to have a face to face conversation, then that might pose a problem for you to work at home.
• Are you self-disciplined, motivated and organized? Basically, are you going to be able to work when you are supposed to work and get your job done?
• Do you have social independence skills? As an extrovert, I would fail this question. I am horribly unproductive when I am completely alone and have always been that way. Give me another person working quietly in the same room as me, and I am good to go. I would feel too lonely and isolated if I worked from home full time.
• Are you susceptible to overwork? If you have trouble leaving your work at your work, then you might not want to bring your work into your home where you would then have no physical separation from it, making it harder to have any mental separation. You need to have time away from work in order to rest and recharge.
• Do you see telecommuting as a way to balance work and other roles? If you are going to telecommute, you still need to give 100% to your work. You can’t expect to be able to work effectively while caring for a sick relative or trying to take care of your kids. Your family and your work deserve better than that.

If your answers to these questions look promising after you have thoroughly thought them over, then perhaps you should approach your boss and ask if telecommuting would work for you.

Sometimes it is fun to work in a new setting. Whether you work at home all day by yourself or work in an office full of noisy coworkers, I think it can help you to focus better on your work to occasionally change things up a little bit. What better place to go than a coffee shop with free Wi Fi? Nice atmosphere, yummy coffee, comfy seats. Sounds like a good idea to me!

Here are a few tips to help you telecommute from a coffee shop (or book shop or anywhere with free Wi Fi) effectively.

1. Buy a drink or something to eat. Please don’t take up valuable table space and use their internet if you aren’t going to buy something from the shop. The exception might be if you are working from a book store. I’m not sure what etiquette would dictate on that. Although if you are like me, you will have trouble leaving a book shop without completely blowing your budget.

2. Get a good seat. This means something different for everyone. Whether you want to sit in a corner, by a window, on a chair or a couch, inside or outside, go ahead and be purposeful about where you are sitting so that you are comfortable and can work.

3. Make sure you have everything you need to work. Nothing is more annoying than getting there, buying your cup of coffee and sitting down ready to start being super productive, only to realize that you forgot your power cord, or a book you needed, or any other of a myriad of things. Take a couple of extra seconds before you leave the house to make sure you have everything you will need to do your work.

4. Bring headphones. You are going to the coffee shop to be productive, so be proactive and get rid of conversational distractions before they begin. A good play list of songs or some white noise will keep you from listening in on others conversations.

5. Don’t go when there are events planned. If you go during the day, there’s a pretty good chance nothing out of the ordinary will be happening. However, if you go  in the evening, check first to see if there is a band or other activity taking place. Its really hard to work if there is live music blaring in your ear or if the weekly knitter’s meeting is taking place.

6. Make sure laptops are allowed and welcomed. I guess some small mom and pop shops have recently started discouraging laptops. Seems like they might be biting the hand that feeds them…. Anyway, you don’t want to go where you aren’t welcome, so a quick look around to make sure there are others with laptops and that there are no signs discouraging their use would be a good idea.

There are many more tips out there, but these are a good start. Can you think of any more helpful tips or practices?

A lot of offices have casual Friday when you can kind of ‘let loose’ with your wardrobe and wear more casual clothes to work. This is all fine and good, except when your coworkers take the idea of casual Friday a little too far. We all know you’d never do that, but just to make sure, we’d thought we’d give you some tips to still look professional and casual, but not distracting. Because even though we here at Noisy Coworkers love us some white noise, it can only help so much with certain distractions.

Tips for Casual Friday

1. Wear clothes that fit. This seems obvious, but it  is not always a given.

Wow! I think this woman violated every rule but number 5. What do you bet she is wearing white tennis shoes?

If you have flesh bulging out anywhere, it is safe to say that you should probably just put that back in the closet (or the trash can). For good. If it looks like you painted the clothing on or have to really squeeze yourself into, again, please put that back in the closet.

2. Don’t wear clothing that is too revealing. Nothing too low. Nothing too short. If you would wear it to a night club, then please don’t wear that to work.  Another good rule of thumb is that if you have to keep adjusting your clothing, it might not be a good fit (pun  intended).

3. Don’t wear clothing with holes in it. I know the fashions come and go about whether having holes in your jeans is cool or not, but at the office, it just looks like you didn’t care enough to change into some decent clothes. If there are holes in the article of clothing, or if you have ever worn said clothing to do yard work in, then these items are also a no no at the office.

I know these are supposed to be fashionable, but this is definitely not professional.

4. Please try to match. My husband once had a professor whom we wondered if he didn’t close his eyes every morning, reach into his closet and pull things out and then put them on in the dark and never look at this outfit again. Seriously, they were hideous.   Don’t mix patterns. Black and brown do NOT look good together. (I know some would argue, but I’m sticking with this one.) No day glow colors. Simple principles like that. (If you are in the fashion industry, please disregard everything I just said. You guys make up your own rules, it seems.)

5. No tennis shoes, especially white ones. There are lots of other nice looking and comfortable shoe options out there. It looks a lot more professional if you don’t have tennis shoes on. (Unless you work at a gym. And then I still don’t like white tennis shoes.  How hard is it to throw in some blue or, Lord forbid, yellow?)

6. If you would wear it to bed or to exercise in, then leave those in the gym bag or the laundry room. Definitely not work wear.

7. Just because you are dressed casually doesn’t mean you need to act too casually. Keep it professional, people.

I’m sure you could think of a lot more rules regarding this subject, but if you follow these, you’ll be well on your way to looking good. And for all your other coworkers who don’t read this? Feel free to print this out and post it somewhere highly visible. You’ll be glad you did.

I recently found a site that talked about avoiding distractions at work.  I enjoyed reading some of the comments left:

One (wo)man's gain is another man's distraction.

Background Noise

Thanks for all of the tips. The background noise thing is huge for me. If I can hear other people’s conversations, then my mind automatically tries to zero in on that rather than my task at hand. If I am really having trouble, I will turn on some white noise so that way I can’t hear the conversations as well. There are lots of free online noise generators.

Agreed.  In fact, I can even supply you with a free online generator.

A woman amongst Men

I am the only woman on a floor with all guys. The locker room banter and bodily noise demonstrations along with the spontaneous outbursts of sounds, whistling and general turrets behaviors is my biggest distraction.

As a fellow female, I sympathized with this poor woman.  Then, I laughed.  Boys will be boys, I suppose.

The 2-Minute Rule

As our office has grown and the faces and dynamics have changed, I wondered if I was just being overly sensitive, so I counted. I used a post it note and every time someone made an unnecessary, rude, disturbing noise I made a tick mark. After four hours I tallied them to find that someone had made a random, useless outburst every 2 minutes. At least I had something to bring to management. I told them I didn’t want anyone punished, after all the bahavior had been tolerated by other workers and management alike, but that I needed a slightly more subdued work environment to focus. There were some seating changes and some new rules. The guys can still be social, but now at least I can get my work done.

Dealing with Distractions

I imagine this last one is pretty normal.  Distractions and interruptions are part and parcel to working amongst others.  Even working from home can be distracting.  The bottom line , though, is to be proactive.  Ask management to look into it for possible solutions.  If you’re not comfortable with that or you feel you are ratting out the very people amongst whom you must work every day, then be a self-starter and take action on your own. Here are just a few pointers for being  less distracted (and therefore more focused) at work:

• Draw some boundaries.  Everyone needs a (coffee) break, so do your socializing then and only then.
• De-clutter your desk so you don’t fell overwhelmed every time you look up.
• Try the free white noise generator.  It doesn’t work for everybody, but most people will say the low-level background noise helps cover otherwise distracting sounds/bodily emissions/unnecessary interruptions.
• Have tech-free minutes, even hours, where you devote time to written work or organizational needs.  IBM mandated “quiet time” for some of their engineers.

As a result of proactive techniques such as those listed above, many workers  found they were able to quit working evenings and weekends due to the increased productivity.  That sounds good, doesn’t it?

At sundown today the first annual National Day of Unplugging ended? Did you participate? Did you even know about it?

There has been a lot of buzz around the internet about ‘unplugging’ lately in light of this day and I starting thinking, “What better way to ‘avoid noisy coworkers and other distractions in a loud world’ than by unplugging?”. The group behind the National Day of Unplugging also advocates observing a weekly day of rest, which would include unplugging from technology, getting outside, and reconnecting with loved ones, among other things. Those all sound like things I would like to do more of!

I think one of the best things you can do to avoid distractions is to slow down at least one day and do things where it doesn’t matter if you are distracted. (Or, if there are ‘distractions’, they are good things!) I have heard it called ‘Taking time to just be.” Just exist. You don’t always have to have a plan or a to do list. By removing yourself from the harried pace of the workforce  for just a day (and giving yourself some grace with your home projects!), you can go back to work feeling refreshed and perhaps better able to deal with your annoying co-workers’ loud telephone conversations and all the other irritating habits they have. (Because we all know it is never you annoying them.)

If you work from home, it gives you a definite break in the work week–no feeling guilty for not constantly checking your email and answering your phone when you have scheduled your day of rest. And it also gives you something to look forward to all week–a day to rest and regroup is waiting at the end!

So go ahead. Plan to read a book, go on a hike, spend some time with your significant other and/or your kids, take a nap, or whatever makes you happy. Your mind set (and consequently your work place and coworkers!) will be better for it.

On an average day of work,
My open office shared with me:
Twelve chatters chatting,
Eleven eaters eating,
Ten texters texting,
Nine ladies laughing,
Eight copiers beeping,
Seven cell phones buzzing,
Six doors a-slammin’,
Five high heels clickin’,
Four friends IM-ing,
Three thoughtless comments,
Two chatterboxes,
And a boss with endless deadlines!

It’s crazy how even with all the madness an open office brings, you still have to work.  How do you work and not get sucked in by all the distractions?  If office noise is a problem, it might be time to give white noise a shot.  Your coworkers will still annoy you in the break room,  but at least you can get some work done at your desk without being held captive by office noise.

There are a lot of necessary skills for the work place.

Sadly, this is not one of them.  Even more unfortunate is the fact that many of the skillz your coworkers tout are ones that do not exactly add to your level of productivity.  Star Wars was pretty amazing, but how many Chewbacca impressions do you really need to subjected to?

Seriously, how many times are you distracted at work?  Whether it’s irritating ring tones or bizarre “talent,” doubtless you have found yourself unfocused.  It probably feels like writer’s block…you purse your lips as you stare at your computer screen, thinking about your next key stroke.  A genius idea comes…and goes.  As you attempt to catch it on its next fly-through, your mind wanders.

We’ve all been there.    It’s frustrating to lose a brilliant idea.  It’s even more irritating when it’s a result of not being able to concentrate because of all the racket your coworkers are making.  Whether at home, work, or even traveling,   our free white noise generator can and will help you tune out all those pesky distractions, Wookiees and all.