Working in a cube farm, my ears perked up to an NPR story about how other people are distracting. “In general, if a sound is coming from another person, it’s much more disturbing than when it’s coming from a machine,” Alan Hedge at Cornell says, because, as social beings, humans are attuned to man-made sounds. He…

Listening to C.G.P.Grey talk about too much stuff in a room making it difficult due to the visual noise. I agree. But I also have an issue with chatter. Lots and lots of people talking over each other bothers me. The inability to follow all of them is part of what I dislike about them. One-on-one…