Same here. Nobody believes me when I tell them I can feel others' presence in a visceral way.
I have lesser but still significant problems in cube environments. Would love to get out of the cube farm...and I believe I'd produce a lot more value if I weren't stuck in an uncomfortable place.
This is a very frustrating aspect of the experience.
After being coaxed/coerced for years to "be like everyone else", I finally learned to take this as a sign -- as a mandate -- to GTFO.
Such an environment will wear you down and eventually destroy you. The sooner you leave it, the better.
(And, if we are indeed that good, leaving may be the best way of counter-acting such attitudes, as the institutions we leave struggle to make do with what is left. If this is not the case, you've nonetheless extracted yourself from what, in my experience, is a personally self-destructive position.)
Yeah, I also think that I'd produce a lot more value if allowed to work in different conditions...
Also, I often find myself in a free conference room with a whiteboard, or in a park outside with paper and pencil, and do my thinking there. I'm having a hard time thinking near computers, and it's three orders of magnitude more difficult if there are co-workers nearby.
I have lesser but still significant problems in cube environments. Would love to get out of the cube farm...and I believe I'd produce a lot more value if I weren't stuck in an uncomfortable place.