[TeMPOraL]

Same here, and also my productivity gets divided by 4 whenever I'm aware of people walking or standing behind me. I've been like this since childhood - when I'm doing stuff on computers, I get distracted by the very presence of other people; doubly so, if they're able to see my screen.

[wruza]

When I worked at "analytics", i.e. solving issues right at client's place, we noticed that the people who can write code there are special. They have skill of resolving issues quickly under pressure, but have less skill of implementing hard things even at our noiseless office. I think it is a waste of resources to put hard-skilled group in uncomfortable conditions and vice-versa. We let some of them away from that because we had both hard tasks and quick tasks.

[jrs235]

I feel I'm similar to you. In high school in many classes, like AP Government, I rarely took notes. I often would put my head down (facing down) on my desk and just listen to my teacher usually just repeating in my head what they said. I would do this to help eliminate [visual] distractions. My teacher called on me with random questions a few times and after I had rattled off the correct answer, often faster than others, he stopped "checking" on me. I scored a 4 on the AP test, higher than most others in my class. My teacher even told me he was surprised that I did that well.