It's time for a new ecology in the workplace.
It took me 30 years to admit I had ADHD.
Growing up, it didn’t seem like an issue. I just thought I was bad at managing the same challenges everyone else had. I’d shrug off the anxiety and push through.
Looking back now, it’s obvious how much it held me back.
Staying focused on my homework. Talking too much. Being interested and overwhelmed by everything on the planet. As an adult, I’d lose my wallet weekly. I could throw out dozens of ideas but couldn’t finish one. I forgot names, repeated things people already said, and had panic attacks in presentations because I lost my train of thought. The worst thing I ever did was forget to tell my wife when her uncle passed away!
People thought I was careless, distracted, and arrogant. I felt unaccepted and lonely. But, my wake-up didn’t come until my late forties as I was driving to a meeting.
With a dozen conversations in my head, I turned the wrong way down a one-way street, and slammed on the brakes just in time. Two weeks later, I did it again. This time, I almost hit a person. When I got home, I told my wife I needed to get tested for ADHD.
Her response? “No shit.”
I finally accepted that the distractions consuming me every day, were not normal.
So, I went down a research rabbit hole absorbing decades of neuroscience, physiology, and psychology research. Interestingly, it all pointed me to a much bigger truth:
The distractions that consume us every day at work are not normal.
Why? Because the modern workplace is fundamentally at odds with the biology of the human brain. Offices have only been around for two hundred years. But our DNA evolved over 200,000 from environments rich with plants, scents, textures, natural light, and living things. This is where we historically worked and created together.
We spend so much money trying to create better places for work. (The U.S. commercial remodeling market alone earned $34B in 2024.) But a lot of it is wasted, because it doesn’t address the deeper issue: The un-natural nature of the workplace.
Inadvertently, they strip away what our brains need in service of functionality, corporate identity and productivity. Part practicality and part a subconscious separation of “church and state,” we regularly choose to keep buildings as buildings, and nature as nature. The result is modern glass rooms, flat screens, bright light, and on-trend furniture. Or, converted warehouses that smell of old paper, with dust falling from the ceilings onto furniture ripped from the set of “The Office.”
In the office, though, your brain is engaging with every surface, sound, scent, and situation. And like it or not, these things impact not just your ability to think, but the type of thinking you need to do.
The key to keeping our working brains happy and productive relies on designing a Workspace Ecology — a hierarchy of environmental influences that shape how we think, feel, and perform at work.
Lost Office Collaborative’s Workspace Ecology Model
Consider just a tiny bit of the science:
A 2009 sensory study in Japan revealed that daily exposure to Hinoki Cypress essential oil reduced stress-inducing cortisol levels in our bodies.
A 2018 Harvard study determined that open office designs didn’t enable collaboration, but instead decreased face-to-face interaction by 70%.
Spaces with high ceilings improve abstract thinking, and low ceilings help us focus.
In 1978, ING Banks pioneering biophilic corporate offices lowered absenteeism by 15%
The simple truth is that our brains are under constant attack: noise, distraction, poor air, lack of privacy, lack of nutrients. And over time, that daily stress chips away at our memory, focus, creativity, and emotional regulation.
So, if you’re feeling foggy, irritable, or disconnected at work, consider that it might not be you.
It might be your environment.
Right now, I'm writing at a work table surrounded by plants. It’s a meeting room with low ceilings and a wall of natural light with the window slightly cracked open. The task lighting in the corner is a slightly warmer temperature than the ceiling light. My favorite ambient music app is playing rhythmically in my ears, and there’s a subtle scent of Hinoki cypress in the air. My water bottle is near empty, my brain feels calm, and I’ve written non-stop for the past two hours.
This is what my ADHD brain needs: rhythm, light, oxygen, sound, and space.
This is what EVERY brain needs to be productive.
No matter if you're a white- or blue-collar worker, or front-line employee.
Healthy, high-performing brains aren’t built on “pushing through the work.”
They’re built on the right environment.
