pollage!

[lagilman]

I've been up since 4am and been rather disgustingly productive. This is not a trend I would like to encourage overmuch. The first part of it, anyway. The productivity is nice.

While working, I noted that I was most productive during two periods -- in the early morning, working in silence, and now, working with a dvd playing in the background [a Jeff Foxworthy comedy concert I've watched a few times before]. I can work with the news on, or a television show, but my word count slows down. And music tends to make me want to get up and move, which is good for my circulation but not so much good for wordage...

So, that makes me wonder where I am along the work-norm...

[Poll #901544]

Comments

[lavenderbard.livejournal.com]

I'm a work-at-home mom. I work in silence until one of the kids comes in and interrupts me, at which point I work while answering deep and important questions, or while simultaneously talking about the life and affairs of someone's stuffed animals. :)

As for preferences...
It really doesn't matter what sounds are going on, if I'm writing, I'm not noticing them. The kids are the only thing I've taught myself to pull out of the inward focus to respond to, and, as they will be happy to whine about if given an opportunity, it sometimes takes them two or three tries before I respond to them either.

[quarkwiz.livejournal.com]

Well, the stuff I work on is rather different from what you do... when I'm at the office, I have to have music rather than talk, or I get distracted trying to keep everything organized. However, when I'm at home doing freelance, it's mostly one kind of task (page layouts and finicky typography) and then I can have talky stuff going on. Right now, ferinstance, it's Weekend Morning Edition. Then it'll be all the other great stuff WNYC has on weekend mornings. If I listened to WNYC at the office, I'd never get anything done--so I put up with WQXR's commercials and the umptyzillionth repetition of Capriccio Italienne. It's programming that does not hijack my brain.

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

When I'm really working, as opposed to surfing and pretending to work, I must have either silence or some white noise kind of music. I used to keep the classical music station on all the time, but now they have become rather talky, so I have to shut the radio off when I'm working on a particularly tough piece of drivel.

[allaboutm-e.livejournal.com]

I work best with music, with or without lyrics, on in the background... otherwise I tend to get stuck with a mental earworm, sometimes just a line or two, which gets more than a little repetitious... :P

[girasole.livejournal.com]

When I worked in an office or a cubicle, I kept a radio on a classical station all day at a fairly low sound level. It cut out the background noise of the office, and relaxed me.

Now that I work at home, I tend to work in silence, or rather, the silence of an old house that settles itself, birds and wind and urban noises. I prefer to work with some instrumental music in the background -- Paul O'Dette's lute is wonderful for this -- but sometimes I find even that breaks my concentration.

I cannot listen to anything with talk or words when I am working, and the TV? No never never.

[hilleviw.livejournal.com]

When I first started working from home it felt lonely, so I would put the TV on. Discovered that daytime tv creates clinical depression for me, and that it behooves me not to turn the telly on until later in the day. So I got a dog, a 9lb poodle named Emma. Who was joined after about 18 months by another dog (now adult, Ci is 7lbs). I talk to them a lot. I've never been a morning person - it just doesn't track right for me. I tend to start the day in silence, add music after a couple of hours, and put the telly on later in the day, never before 2pm. However, cannot work with the tv on if it's a dog show or features a dog, because my puplets go insane barking.

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

I also talk to the dogs. Because, unlike the cat, who stares disinterestedly and makes me feel stupid, they wag their tails and their tongues loll out and they make me feel brilliant.

It's a situational thing.

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

I talk to myself all the time. I believe that if you're a writer who doesn't talk to yourself, you're probably lying. *g*

I do prefer to work alone, but I've been known to write on the train with someone looking over my shoulder (it's okay because nobody can read my scrawl) so the noise is fine.

I might play music, but I don't do talky stuff. It becomes background music after all, so what's the point?

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I speak only when I am cursing my tools. I tell my browser or word processor "Oh, SHUT UP!" quite often when they pop up notifications about things I know perfectly well. (No matter how many places you tell Word to SHUT UP I KNOW MORE ABOUT SPELLING THAN YOU DO, there are still a few ways to trigger its spelling/grammar checkers.)

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

I like to work in coffee shops and with someone else there who is also working.

It's noce to have someone to bitch to, like a workout partner.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

It depends on what kind of work I'm doing.
When doing art or design work I like having the television on, preferably to some movie, or DVD.
When I'm doing housework I like to sing to myself, or have music on.
When I'm writing I like the kind of silence in which there are other people around but not talking to me in particular, or music.

[iamrazorwing.livejournal.com]

When I'm really working, as opposed to surfing and pretending to work, I must have either silence or some white noise kind of music.

Ditto, save the music. I do prefer some kind of white noise, but something rhythmic and easy to ignore, like a box fan or the dryer. It provides just enough to drown out small sounds that would otherwise break my concentration.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

I don't have cats. But I talk to the fish and plants.

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

You don'thave cats? *dropped jaw* How do you live? *VBG*

[girasole.livejournal.com]

Many of us do not have cats. Some of us are dangerously allergic to cats.

[autojim.livejournal.com]

And some of us just dislike cats intensely.

[fakefrenchie.livejournal.com]

*tongue sticking out icon*

[autojim.livejournal.com]

Hey, you can like cats all you want to. Everyone's different.

Give me a medium-to-large dog instead. Brittany, or yellow Labrador.

Meanwhile, I'll stick with the cockatiel.

[chicating.livejournal.com]

I wonder how Olbermann writes the Special Comments...I picture him armed with the mute button and Bartlett's Quotations."Oh, yeah...we don't need no stinking badges."
for myself I talk to the dog and kitty...having something on also drowns out that voice in my head that tells me I'm a freak with nothing to say, just marking time till I die alone and eaten by alsatians(my inner critic loved "Bridget Jones", apparently.)

[chibiaingeal.livejournal.com]

I probably could have answered other to the first one because I do also sing to myself...

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

I prefer to work quietly, with the TV turned on---volume down and radio on---volume up.

[autojim.livejournal.com]

I work quieter at the office than I do when I'm by myself, because the office is Cubeopolis. Although my part of it is a small area upstairs and removed from the main office.

But I need music or something. I can't stand silence except under certain, specific circumstances when it's necessary. If it's too quiet and I can't correct that in realspace, I tend to run music in my head. Otherwise, Jim goes loopy. Very, very loopy.