Poll: By How Much Does Tinnitus Affect Your Ability to Work?

[Poseidon65]

I'm curious to hear how significantly tinnitus has affected all of your work. I made a poll to get an idea of this. Please also share some anecdotes below if you are willing.

In my case, I have a desk job which requires a lot of concentration and thinking to perform well. My tinnitus, while moderate rather than severe, makes it very difficult to concentrate the way I used to.

In addition, tinnitus has affected my motivation to work. This is because, even if I work hard and get great things done at the office, at the end of the day it doesn't actually solve the central problem in my life (which is the tinnitus). As a result, kicking tail at the office just doesn't seem as important to me as it used to.

 

[Brian Newman]

Lucky, I wish I had an office job. I'm a manager at my parents' bike shop. The tire explosions really screw up my ears. I started wearing earplugs but then I got in a car accident which completely debilitated me. My hyperacusis got really bad and I now have tinnitus in both ears.

 

[Diesel]

"Office worker" here...

I'd say my productivity and overall job focus fluctuates between 10% - 25% when compared my subjective pre-tinnitus work-level. There are times when it doesn't bother me too much, and then other times during high-stress situations, or where deep thought might be required where I definitely find the tinnitus is distracting / not helpful.

I think interest level is important for me, when the tasks at hand is highly interesting where I am motivated, I am not bothered as much. However, work that is more administrative or requires high levels of thought with what I presume as a low level of value have become more challenging.

 

[Brian Newman]

"Office worker" here...

I'd say my productivity and overall job focus fluctuates between 10% - 25% when compared my subjective pre-tinnitus work-level. There are times when it doesn't bother me too much, and then other times during high-stress situations, or where deep thought might be required where I definitely find the tinnitus is distracting / not helpful.

I think interest level is important for me, when the tasks at hand is highly interesting where I am motivated, I am not bothered as much. However, work that is more administrative or requires high levels of thought with what I presume as a low level of value have become more challenging.

Wanna get me a job Diesel lol?

 

[Matchbox]

Tinnitus absolutely makes working worse.

I used to use music to concentrate and bash out work hard.

Now not so much. The addition of noises that can get worse out of the blue makes it difficult.

A new loud intrusive noise can make me jacked with anxiety, and meetings can be difficult at that point if not impossible.

Tinnitus totally affects my work ability/ethic. It's like I'm a different person.

Keep in mind, given that Tinnitus Talk sees the most traffic from chronic tinnitus sufferers, these polls are probably biased as hell, when they should be skewed toward 10 to 0%.

 

[linearb]

It's like, 25% on the occaisional bad day lately, 10% a lot of the time, 0-5% sometimes.

However, I moved to the woods and became a full time remote computer toucher about 4 years ago. Tinnitus was not the only reason I did this -- it was on my list of life goals before the tinnitus got bad. However, tinnitus getting bad put a ton of pressure on me that made living in a loud city seem especially awful, and may certainly have motivated me to get my wife on board with relocating us to the woods sooner than later.

I am also medicated now, and was not before we moved. But even before resorting to daily meds I had seen clear improvements in my ability to work and think just as a result of being in a calmer place with, one suspects, vastly lower overall noise exposure. I actually, personally, do louder stuff here than when I lived in the city, by necessity: we have some acres to maintain, I have a small chainsaw, etc. However, when I lived in the city I was getting blasted with 80-90 dB noise on every walk to and from work, every day (though I did wear earplugs when things were bad), loud restaurants and bars, loud streets, etc. So, maybe today I go run a chainsaw at 100 dB for a half hour on lunch -- but I do it wearing earplugs under muffs, and then that's basically the only noise exposure I get all day. And, if my ears are "cranky", I can say fuck it, I will do it tomorrow.

Keep in mind, given that Tinnitus Talk sees the most traffic from chronic tinnitus sufferers, these polls are probably biased as hell, when they should be skewed toward 10 to 0%.

I have a small private discord of about 20 users. There are about 5-6 of us with moderate to bad tinnitus, just by happenstance and a bunch of my friends being rockers or motorcycle people or whatever.

I'm the only person who would ever rate myself higher than 10% out of that group, so, suspect you are correct. At least one of my friends who barely seems to notice his tinnitus, seems to have very similar tinnitus to me, in terms of sound and volume -- we have played around with tone generators to try to simulate what we hear, and have come to the conclusion it's very similar (12-15 kHz range) and his seems just as blaringly loud as mine.

Mine drives me f'ing nuts sometimes; he seems to not think about it unless I mention it, in which case he says "yea, of course it's still there, thanks a lot for pointing that out, buddy"... but then forgets all about it again in 20 seconds.

 

[Damocles]

If there were a 90% option, I would have voted...

 

[Brittany95]

I would say it impacts 25% of my day. I work in the communications office of a 55+ community, and unfortunately we're (3 of us) stuck with the biggest, loudest printer in the world in a tiny office. It's basically the kind of printer you would have a bunch of in an actual print shop. When that thing gets going, I scramble to put on my earmuffs that look absolutely ridiculous (they're bright orange and are designed for gun ranges) because my ears are still pretty reactive/sensitive. Also, our residents come in often to shoot the shit (it's the communications office after all!) so the noise level can go up and I can't go anywhere.

We're also getting our live shows and entertainment started up again, with a tribute concert coming up in July. I used to go to the majority of the concerts to take photos, but now I'm scared to. Like, it's never TOO loud because these are seniors they're playing for, but it's still pretty loud. I'm going to wear my earplugs/muffs now, but worry it won't be effective enough? I just don't want to go to our concerts anymore, which sucks because they were one of my favorite parts of my job.

For the rest of my day, the noise is just there in the background, annoying as ever, but I can still work on my normal day-to-day stuff. The printer has just really become my arch nemesis lol.

 

[Psych]

"Office worker" here...

I'd say my productivity and overall job focus fluctuates between 10% - 25% when compared my subjective pre-tinnitus work-level. There are times when it doesn't bother me too much, and then other times during high-stress situations, or where deep thought might be required where I definitely find the tinnitus is distracting / not helpful.

I think interest level is important for me, when the tasks at hand is highly interesting where I am motivated, I am not bothered as much. However, work that is more administrative or requires high levels of thought with what I presume as a low level of value have become more challenging.

Yes, I have to think about what kinds of work I will be able to do, given the tinnitus, etc. Right now I'm volunteering, to test the waters. I find that lots of physical activity is helpful, as well as being around friendly people!

 

[nocticolor]

At work, not much at all. I work with kids between the ages of one and three so the only challenge is having earplugs at the ready in case it gets too loud.

For the theoretical stuff, my biggest issue is not being able to use headphones any longer. I live in a relatively noisy household and outside noise makes it hard for me to focus. Since I can't use headphones, my only alternative is using earplugs and hearing my now amplified tinnitus.

 

[buttercake]

At the moment my work is research — thus coding and a lot of pen and paper. So, essentially thinking. When my tinnitus began, it impaired me 100% for a couple of months; nowadays I am in the 0-10% range, depending on whether I have the chirps or not (they come and go periodically). Usually a very low level of binaural beats is enough to plunge me into a problem. I recently completed a technical course with full marks, so my cognitive abilities seem, thank god, to be untouched.

 

[cruise]

My work is mostly office. Whenever I concentrate, my tinnitus — or perception of tinnitus — goes down. So working has always been a welcome distraction.

 

[AfroSnowman]

"Office worker" here...

I'd say my productivity and overall job focus fluctuates between 10% - 25% when compared my subjective pre-tinnitus work-level. There are times when it doesn't bother me too much, and then other times during high-stress situations, or where deep thought might be required where I definitely find the tinnitus is distracting / not helpful.

I think interest level is important for me, when the tasks at hand is highly interesting where I am motivated, I am not bothered as much. However, work that is more administrative or requires high levels of thought with what I presume as a low level of value have become more challenging.

Pretty much the same experience for me. Plus it impacts my motivation a bit.

 

[Tex]

Tinnitus absolutely makes working worse.

I used to use music to concentrate and bash out work hard.

Now not so much. The addition of noises that can get worse out of the blue makes it difficult.

A new loud intrusive noise can make me jacked with anxiety, and meetings can be difficult at that point if not impossible.

Tinnitus totally affects my work ability/ethic. It's like I'm a different person.

Keep in mind, given that Tinnitus Talk sees the most traffic from chronic tinnitus sufferers, these polls are probably biased as hell, when they should be skewed toward 10 to 0%.

Yes, you are correct that Tinnitus Talk seems to have more chronic sufferers. A poll will be lopsided.

Tinnitus ruined the type of work I was in and made me change lines of work. I have always been self-employed and more or less made a lateral movement withing my line of work that got me away from loud noise.

I'm semi-retired anyway, but love what I do when I'm doing it. My line of work has me outside a lot. I don't live in a loud city, so life is good. As bad as tinnitus is, life is good!

 

[Mentos]

Full time office worker here, tinnitus for over 6 years. I was on medium managerial level at a big corporation when tinnitus struck me, at first it incapacitated me completely, I lost my managerial position and became an analyst. I slowly recovered being an analyst and after 3 years I'm now back to managing projects position, for almost a year already. I would rate my current performance at 75% of what I used to be prior to tinnitus, so I rated the impact as 25%.

 

[Derek26]

I can't work anymore.

 

[TinaRuns]

I haven't been interested enough to work since my tinnitus onset about 1 year ago. I am self-employed, work from home, and my work is always optional. I do think being able to relax is, very very slowly, helping me get better (either volume decreasing or I'm habituating, probably a little of both). I still can't reliably sleep. But, when I sleep all night lately, I'm starting to get just a little more motivated to work. It's like someone above said. I really don't care about earning money when no amount of money will make me happy with tinnitus. Thankfully my husband and I have enough money (not wealthy but enough to live and mortgage paid off). Of course more money would be great but only if I can start sleeping every night again.

If anyone has the option, I recommend not working and just taking care of yourself, eating well, exercising, and, for me, sitting on the patio for hours every day. Relaxing and self care seems to be ever so gradually helping. I'm still miserable too many days though, due to ongoing insomnia (but I've graduated from averaging 2-3 hours of sleep to averaging 5-6 and some days even 7-8 but fractured, like 3 hours, Melatonin, 3 more hours, Melatonin + eat early breakfast, 2 more hours. Lately I've been trying variations of CBD oil, too.