Open Office Is Giving You Secondhand ADHD

Summary

Your Open Office is Giving You Secondhand ADHDI tracked every second of my coding for 4 weeks. The data revealed something shocking: I'm 3x more creative at home than in the office. Here's why.10:47am - Slack notification. Lost 30 seconds.10:52am - Coworker laughs at a meme. Lost 30 seconds.10:58am - Someone starts their standup behind you. Lost 30 seconds.11:03am - Phone buzzes on nearby desk. Lost 30 seconds.By lunch, you've lost 47 minutes to interruptions you don't even remember happening.The Number That Changed Everything: 18% vs 56%I've been tracking my coding for a month using FlouState. In the office, I create new code 18% of the time. At home? 56%.Same projects, same deadlines, same me. Three times more creative output at home.Creative Output by Location3x more creative output at homeThis isn't about being “less productive” in the office. The data reveals something far more disturbing: I literally become a different developer.The Data That Made Me Question EverythingAfter 4 weeks of automatic tracking (since July 15th):187 hours logged automatically1,248 work sessions categorized42,000 lines of code analyzedSplit between office (3 days) and home (2 days)The pattern emerged within the first week and held steady.The Discovery That Changed How I See MyselfAfter my last post about the debugging perception gap went viral (turns out we only debug 2% of the time, not 40%), I kept tracking with FlouState to understand my other patterns. Within the first week, I noticed something even more disturbing in my daily summaries.Every Monday/Wednesday/Friday - my office days - showed massive “exploring” time. Just clicking around files, reading the same code repeatedly, losing the thread. Tuesday/Thursday looked like a completely different developer's profile.Work Type Distribution: Office vs Home49% of office time spent “exploring” (re-reading the same code)At first I thought it was coincidence. Bad week at the office. So week two, I deliberately moved my complex feature ...