Why Open Plan Offices Don't Work for Neurodivergent Brains

It started with snapping at Matthias.

Not a big snap or a row, just that sharp, disproportionate thing that comes out when you are completely and utterly done for the day, and someone lovely and well-meaning says something perfectly reasonable, and your nervous system just... bites.

I caught myself and apologised, explaining I was out of spoons for the day.

If you're not familiar with spoon theory, the idea is you start the day with a set amount of energy currency, each task costs a different number of spoons, and the aim is to not arrive at the end running on empty.

I had zero spoons. I was, in fact, in spoon debt.

So, Matthias gave me a hug, and the crisis was averted.

But the next day, reading a post on LinkedIn about open plan offices and the toll they take on neurodivergent people, something clicked.

Because I suddenly had a very vivid flashback to my past self, and all the evenings my long-suffering family had to deal with a version of me that had absolutely no idea why she kept losing it.

And so this week's question is this...

How do we make open plan offices actually workable for every body and every brain?

Because the more I think about it, the more I think we've been asking the wrong question.

We've been asking how people can cope with open plan offices, when maybe we should be asking whether they should have to.

But before I get into that, let me take you back...

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The open plan office experience nobody talks about

I spent years working in open-plan offices, not knowing I was AuDHD.

I just knew I didn't like it.

I knew that some days the levity I'd built on my walk in, a bit of sunshine, a good podcast, the specific pleasure of a coffee that was still hot, would be completely snuffed out the moment I walked through the door.

The din, the fluorescent lighting, the smell of someone's lunch and the low hum of twelve different conversations happening at once, none of them mine, all of them somehow loud.

Some days, I cried on the way in and plastered the mask on as I walked through the door.

Some days, I made it through the door and then couldn't stop crying, and my lovey line manager would sit with me until I could breathe again and then send me home (her children were autistic, I understand now why she was the only one who always seemed to get it).

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What was actually happening (that nobody told me)

What I didn't have then was any language for what was happening. I just thought I was bad at my job, an overthinker, oversensitive and of course, dramatic (like I've never been told that before).

The kind of person who couldn't hold it together like everyone else seemed to.

What was actually happening was that my brain was doing something exhausting without me even knowing it.

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🧠 Science Snack

Many neurodivergent people, whether autistic, ADHD, or both, struggle to filter background noise the way neurotypical brains do.

It's called auditory filtering, and the difference is significant.

A neurotypical brain can largely tune out the ambient noise of an open-plan office and focus on the conversation or task in front of them.

Neurodivergent brains are often taking in all of it, consciously or not.

Autistic brains tend to take in all the sensory input at once because the filtering works differently, while ADHD brains struggle to direct attention away from it.

Same same but different, your brain is just trying to process the whole room.

So you can imagine what a bemuddling time that is for AuDHD brains.

In an open plan office, that means your brain is essentially running a full sensory audit of the room all day long, whether you asked it to or not.

And then you wonder why you're exhausted by 3pm.

Add in the fluorescent lighting, the unpredictable social demands, the smells, the visual clutter, the interruptions, and you've got an environment that is, for a lot of neurodivergent people, genuinely depleting in a way that has nothing to do with how much they care about their job.

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When hormones make everything louder

But it wasn't just the neurodivergence.

Looking back, the days I managed in open-plan offices, and the days I absolutely didn't, seemed to follow a pattern.

I thought it was PMS at the time, and I wasn't entirely wrong.

The luteal phase, the second half of your cycle in the run-up to your period, is when progesterone rises and then drops, and for neurodivergent people, that hormonal shift can make any existing sensitivities feel like they're screaming at you.

The auditory filtering gets worse, the emotional regulation gets wobblier, and the capacity to mask, to hold it together and to process the room gets thinner.

I remember one evening, already depleted from a day of processing everything, walking through the front door to find my lovely Mum cooking dinner.

Something had caught under the grill. Burnt food is (I know now) firmly on my olfactory sensitivity no-no list.

I did not know that then.

What I do remember was that I screamed about smelling of burnt food and stormed upstairs in a disproportionate flurry of rage and tears.

How on earth nobody called out my autism sooner, I will never know (I do know, but that's a whole other newsletter).

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Perimenopause: treading the same footprints

And now, heading into perimenopause, I find myself treading in the same footprints.

Except this time, I have all the knowledge I never had before.

Emotional regulation has tipped again, executive functioning has got a bit shaky, and sensitivity to everything has crept back up.

Thanks, hormones, it's been peachy.

If you've been reading recent newsletters, you'll know I've been navigating this in real time.

But the difference is I caught it in months, not decades.

I had the language, I could join the dots, and I could advocate for myself and get the HRT I needed in the time frame I needed it.

That knowledge changes everything.

Not because it stops it happening, but because when Matthias says something perfectly reasonable at the end of a depleted day and my nervous system bites, I know what it is.

I can name it, explain it, and move through it without spending three days wondering what is fundamentally wrong with me.

And of course, even without neurodivergence being part of the picture, executive functioning can get shaky for anyone during this transition.

We just tend to call it brain fog and leave it at that.

The instigator might differ, but the load can feel the same.

That slow, disorienting sense of the person you knew yourself to be quietly slipping.

It's not just neurodivergence that makes open-plan offices hard.

It's perimenopause and the 52 symptoms that come with it.

It's endometriosis, adenomyosis, PCOS and PMDD and the fatigue that comes from months of broken sleep and managed pain.

It's the luteal phase making everything louder every single month.

It's fluctuating capacity, and it affects far more people than we tend to acknowledge.

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So what can actually be done?

So back to the question...

How do we make open plan offices workable for every body and every brain?

The honest answer is that, sadly, in some cases, they won't ever be fully workable.

Buuuuut there is a lot of ground between workable and 'tear it all down,' and most of it is surprisingly low-effort.

So, whether you're an individual trying to survive your office or a people lead with some actual power to change things, here are a few things to mull over...

Noise

Good quality noise-cancelling headphones are not antisocial. They are a reasonable adjustment. And we need to normalise them. Any workplace culture that treats headphones as a signal that someone isn't a team player needs to take a look at its culture.

Quiet spaces

Not every office can be redesigned (bonus points if you can), but most have meeting rooms sitting empty for chunks of the day. Make them available for focused work without anyone having to justify their need.

Communication preferences

Being shouted across the office at is, for a lot of neurodivergent people, a genuinely jarring experience (as is being hovered over). Asking your team how they prefer to be contacted and actually respecting their answer can make a HUGE shift in someone's day.

Flexibility

If someone does their best work from home on the days their sensory load is highest, and their best collaborative work in the office on the days they can manage it, let them.

Working with your fluctuating capacity shouldn't be a privilege. It's just working with how bodies and brains actually function, and that is strategic.

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The information changes everything

And if you're an individual without much power to change your environment, the most useful thing I can offer is this... knowing why it's hard is not a small thing.

It doesn't fix the fluorescent lighting or turn down the noise, but it does mean you stop asking what's wrong with you, and it gives you the information to advocate for what you need.

Most people aren't intentionally trying to make things harder. They're just working in spaces built to mirror testosterone cycles and neurotypical brains, and nobody taught them any different.

The information changes that.

Having the language means you can start a different conversation, and the words to say, "this is why I work better this way."

Being able to state that and actually be heard is, in my opinion, the workplace equivalent of Matthias's excellent hugs at the end of a depleted day.