Office Open floor plans and ADHD, Disastrous

Office Open Floor Plans and ADHD, a disastrous cautionary tale.

I think office open floor plans are disastrous for ADHD. Yet, these plans seem to be applauded by their suggested increase in discussion, collaboration, and idea generation. I do mean suggestion because I don’t think I’ve seen any of these benefits materialize in actual implementation.

Even though the idea of office open floor plans may seem appealing to non-ADHD coworkers, I’m reasonably sure the distractions and decreased chances for concentration are not limited to only the ADHD coworkers. For obvious reasons, office open floor plans create focus difficulties for us with ADHD. However, I’ll bet the potential for loss of focus impacts everyone to some extent.

At some point, even the best coworkers with multi-tasking skills can become too distracted. It’s easily related to the law of diminishing returns. Sure, some increases in communication can be beneficial, but each ill-times interruption must have limits. How many interruptions can anyone handle without beginning to lose focus and eventually reducing productivity?

Take emails and instant messaging as parallel examples. Has anyone tried to answer every email, instant message, and text message immediately? Generally, unless one message is critical, we batch them and answer several at a later time. I can’t imagine that responding to all digital communication immediately upon receiving them, without exception, could have no impact on productivity.

The last company I worked for began this process of creating office open floor plans. First, they lowered the cubicle walls until they were the same height as our desks. Next, they rearranged the cubicle desks so that we all faced each other. Then, eventually, we lost our cubicles. This included the executives. In the end, we all had desks on wheels that could be moved anywhere in the office.