Relaxing in the noise

Today I followed a link to a blog post by Austin-based designer Trent Walton about doing your best when you’re relaxed, in the form of a quote for the great Bill Murray:

I think the only reason I’ve had the career life that I’ve had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that’s a job I could be proud of. It’s changed my life learning that, and it’s made me better at what I do.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Over the last five weeks I’ve been doing almost nothing but writing code across all parts of Facebook’s codebase, and I’ve felt this acutely. At first I wasn’t comfortable at all—everything was new, and there were so many things that I could break—but as the days have worn on I increasingly feel at ease with what I’m doing, and I’m writing some of the best code of my life. It’s not so much “being in the zone” as just knowing that the zone is out there and that I can dip my toes in it whenever I want.

One of the big things I’ve realized about myself is how addicted to noise that I am. I brought the October issue of the Harvard Business Review with me on this trip, and on the cover is a story about how everyone hates their office. There’s a lot said about how terrible open plan offices are for productivity. I totally believe that is the case for many people; maybe even most people. My wife is certainly one of those people. But I am definitely not one of those people.

I’ve spent a huge amount of time during this trip in Philz, drowning in the noise of dozens of people getting coffee and talking and working. Yesterday, I finished up my winning percentage widget during the first several innings of the Cardinals-Giants game at a sports bar, which is about as noisy of an environment as I can imagine.

So for me it’s not just feeling comfortable with what I’m doing, but feeling comfortable where I am. It’s hard to replicate the sort of white noise that really noisy environments present. And I wonder how much of my love of noise is a result of spending a decade in China, and how much it was that predilection that kept me in China for 10 years.

Thoughts on a sunny, unfortunately quiet Thursday afternoon.