People have forgotten that attention is transitive: you pay attention to something. If you're paying attention to the environment, what is your attention being diverted from?

I'm in the middle of reading Thinking, Fast And Slow and at least some of the research that he talks about in there suggests that this isn't always how the brain actually works. By forcing people to concentrate on one thing, it can (at least in some circumstances) increase how much they concentrate on other things.

The example he used was the sort of problem where there's a obvious, but wrong, answer to a problem (e.g. "If a bat and ball cost £1.10, and the bat is £1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost", to which a lot of people instinctively answer 10p - using what he refers to as "System 1 thinking"). These sorts of question were presented to two groups of people, one with the questions clearly printed and one with the questions badly printed in very light colours, requiring the readers to concentrate to be able to even read the questions.

The surprising result was that people in the latter group did significantly better on average than those in the former, suggesting that because they are forced to start using the more conscious, and more conscientious, "System 2 thinking" to be able to read the questions, they are primed to use that sort of thinking on actually answering the question.

This isn't always true though - if you're already concentrating heavily on something, then introducing another problem that requires a lot of concentration, you will stop concentrating on the first issue.

So, introducing something that forces your brain into a low-level System 2 mindset (such as slightly wonky offices) might be a good way of reducing the number of "obvious but wrong" decisions being made, but wouldn't be a good way of improving problem solving for tasks where people are already concentrating on the problem.

My point exactly.

For those unaware, I recommend reading up on "inattentional blindness". Attention is a very valuable resource.

Anecdotally, I have found that my focus welcomes slight distraction, in various forms - tv show I already know by heart, stupid silly shows, instrumental repetitive music, music I'm extremely familiar already...

Basically, when I'm at risk to lose focus from task at hand, this steals it, and it's rather boring compared to what would most likely be highly abstract contemplations, totally new ideas and so on, so your focus returns to original task since immediate alternative provided is dull affair.

It somehow "eats up" part of my nature that nudges me to lose focus. It's maybe analogous to how rain noise gobbles up various distracting sounds.

Taking breaks is clearly a good thing, but being externally distracted is not. If you're thinking about where you're going, you're not thinking about how you're going to present your work at the meeting.

I suppose that's why I'm on HN while waiting for builds.

I wonder if it's equivalent to the distraction of an open office?

Maybe they should add some tigers roaming around the office to keep the workers extra alert?

Our CI server monitor has 3 modes: Red, Green, and Tiger Cage Released.

Future iterations will involve individual angry badgers in climbing harnesses located above each developer's desk. `git blame' will identify the build-breaking commit and react accordingly.

I think the point is more to train employees to be effective operating in a more "unexpected" or "uncomfortable" environment similar to the way boot camp is supposed to train recruits to be more effective operating in a stressful environment. Performing skilled labor in close proximity to heavy machinery or some other dangerous environment is another example. People in those environments don't do the greatest work on day 1, but after they've become accustomed to performing their trade in a loud/busy/distracting environment that ability to focus on a detail intensive task while not tuning out the background (e.g. that skid steer driving behind you with a poorly loaded pallet balancing on the bucket forks). I believe the often used idiom is "eyes in the back of one's head."

Back in the white collar world, if there's a business problem that makes the "uncomfortableness" or increases the number of moving parts in the environment increase by 10 the people who operate daily at 5 are better prepared than those that operate at 2 (200% increase vs 500% increase).

I think it would be interesting to apply a practice like this to IT (and other support service) operations. If day to day operations can be made to have a similar work flow as a crisis, people will be better prepared to deal with a crisis when things like remembering that "X casually mentioned configuring something oddly in Y manner because of Z at lunch" and deciding "we need to ask X about Y before we do something to Z" while trying to resolve the crisis because those little domino can have a huge effect if you don't prevent them from cascading.

I'll venture a guess that the odd floor plan keeps people on their toes, increasing alertness and the overall overlaps with what would result from increased attentiveness. The question is whether or not the overhead and inefficiency will pay off and how it affects people in the long run. I suspect this model doesn't scale well.