Last week Graham and I visited Tumblr’s headquarters in New York. As I walked through the double-glass doors, the first thing I noticed was how quiet it was. With 30+ very creative people in the NYC office and an open space floor plan, I expected there to be a lot of noise. But there wasn’t. You could literally hear a pin drop.

We had to wait a few minutes for the person we were meeting and it remained quiet. Now maybe everyone was out to lunch, but we did see some people (including the one and only topherchris) get up from their desks. I also noticed that a few people stepped out of their desk area into the conference space to make phone calls.

As a consultant, I’ve visited and worked at a lot of different workplaces and typically there are many distractions. They might be purposeful, such as a ping-pong table or a candy bowl, but many times they are not. How often do you have to listen to another co-worker’s phone call on speaker from the nearby cube? From what I could tell, Tumblr’s staff disciplines itself rather well when it comes to distractions. They were respectful of each other’s space and work during the time we were there. This type of behavior in the workspace leads to a highly productive and efficient team, which usually means less time spent at the office. We think that’s something worth striving for each and every day.

Posted by Todd Wickersty, founder of Business Bullpen. You can follow Todd on Tumblr or Twitter.