1) Sony XM3 headphones. They are the 2nd most comfortable after the Bose headphones and have the best NC. So far, nothing you haven't done before.

2) High quality foam earplugs. I have the Mack's Ultra Soft plugs, with 32 decibel noise reduction rating. Anything with 27 decibel reduction or above should be good enough though. You may need to alternate between a few brands and variants before you find one that's comfortable enough to go many hours with.

3) Pink Noise. Play it quite softly so that you can barely even hear it at all with the plugs in. It helps to drown out the remaining external noises that come through without registering in your brain as extra noise itself (which is why I play pink noise instead of other suggestions such as calming music). I like this one: https://youtu.be/8SHf6wmX5MU

I combine all 3 for the nosiest areas like studying in a busy cafe, but you won't usually need the whole stack.

I worked in an office where they put speakers in the ceiling to radiate such noise. It was odd because no notice was given and it just happened. For the first week or two, we all thought it was airflow noise from the HVAC system until we noticed speakers in the ceiling.

It was effective, though. It did reduce the apparent noise, though our 15 person office wasn't terribly loud to begin with. An interesting side effect was that conversations, when they did occur, got louder because the noise made low volume conversations difficult to hear.

If there were an alternative, we'd all run with you. There isn't, though. Something to think about when they say there's supposedly a "talent shortage" and they're having trouble "recruiting top performers".

Or you can take a massive pay cut, tank your career, and go live in the middle of nowhere.

Sounds great.

The other big thing is the lack of job opportunities in smaller cities, solvable via working remotely but still relatively uncommon, particularly for new hires.

It still sucks and I hate working, but it's the least bad path that I could find.

Working remotely is an option here (if you go this route, look for a 100% remote company though).

Considering the ancestor comment and how the situation seems to weight on that person, I would advise to try and find a better situation, because from personal experience, when you start grinding yourself for a job postitve outcomes become very unlikely.

You can easily make 150k in this environment, where a 250k home is 3k sqft in a good neighborhood. I'm making quite a bit more in the management/director track.

Meanwhile, I predict the new fad will be airline offices, because who wouldn't want all the fun and adventure of flying at the office? They'll all be sitting in economy class seats and working off tray tables, while the person in front of them leans their seat back and has loud conversations on speakerphone. And it'll be family friendly, too, with every day being "bring your screaming child to work day."

This would maybe make the headphone issue more bearable (lightweight - much less uncomfortable for long periods), and the goal isn't to block out all sound, but rather to give your mind something else to focus on from an auditory standpoint. I find, personally, that having a musical anchor makes the task of mentally filtering out the noise much easier; I end up subconsciously following the melody and grooving with the rhythm a bit, but because there's no lyrics, it doesn't pull me out of the task at hand.

Everyone's different, so what works for me might not work for you, but maybe give it a shot for a week and see how effective it is. Worth a try at least.

There’s too much light in my eyes, and dark glasses are uncomfortable. Well, have you tried shining another light at your face? Maybe a different color of light would help.

There is an analogy to light that actually applies. Imagine a small green LED in your field of vision that flashes now and then. Might be distracting. But now imagine the room is 100x brighter than that small green LED. You might be unable to perceive the LED anymore. (However, if the problem is, as you state, that there is "too much light", then, yeah, adding more light wouldn't help unless you could somehow create destructive interference.)

Whether all this actually works for a specific person is a different matter. I personally hate listening to white noise, so that wouldn't help me. Perhaps other kinds of noise could work.

Just an FYI, while this is basically true for neurotypical people, for some people (for example those with ADHD or who might be on the autism spectrum), there's difficulty filtering, so this ends up just adding cognitive load rather than accomplishing a filtering effect.

To use a dumb visual analogy, imagine you tried to hide some carpet stains by putting another rug over it. Some people can partially see through rugs, and so now they have to deal with the rug _and_ the carpet stains.

Of course this stuff is still worth trying out, ultimately a lot of these kinds of things are deeply personal, and it's pretty easy to try.

One of the most popular white noise machines is the Marpac Dohm Classic, which many people (including myself) would vouch for.

https://www.amazon.com/Marpac-Classic-White-Noise-Machine/dp...

It's a fan in a box, with a certain shape so that when the fan is spinning it ends up generating a nice sound.

Thanks for the info

What “theory” is this? Because I’ve tried it (not by choice) in practice, many times, over the decades, and never found it to work at all. I’m genuinely curious why people think it could ever work, when empirically it does not.

Theoretically the brain will adapt to working while hanging 100’ in the air, too. I adapt to height fairly quickly and don’t mind working up in the air. Many people apparently do, and no amount of telling them that it’s “theoretically” possible will make them productive workers there.

It seems patently unfair that modern offices picked the one type of distracting sensory input that happens to be my kryptonite.

I sleep to brown noise (have done so for the past 8 years -- so this is not a fad thing for me), and I use a different brown noise with headphones at work to help me concentrate in a noisy office environment.

I use Noisli profiles to generate these noises, but any number of apps will do the job.

I won't claim it works for everyone, but this combination works very well for me.

p.s. Ear plugs at work also work amazingly well. Low tech and effective.

I damaged my hearing trying to have enough sound to drown out the triggering sounds around me. (misophonia got a lot worse during working in open office too)

What kills productivity in an office environment is actually signals that cut through that noise. Phones ringing, conversations between coworkers, printers whirling to life, someone opening a cellophane wrapper and chewing on a candy, etc. Most of these things aren't useful, but they're distracting, because your brain is tuned to constantly be on the lookout for new audio signals to shift your focus to. This is probably a survival instinct, as becoming aware of an approaching predator is important to avoid becoming lunch. In an office, the goal isn't thus to add more noise, but to mask the noise, so that it is less distracting.

Music is not "more noise," but more like a big, obvious beacon of focus. You might think of it like a controlled, intentional distraction. It's juuuust enough of an audio signal that your mind can keep its focus in one place, and just barely loud enough that when your coworkers phone rings, it isn't quite so jarring. That tiny, tiny little adjustment in the relative weight of the signals can make all the difference in the world, preventing you from unnecessary context switches throughout your day and helping you to maintain flow while working on a complex task.

It's not perfect, no. Obviously the perfect environment would be 100% in the control of the worker, who could dictate the noise level and comfortable temperature and everything else on a personal level. But, well, the real world isn't perfect, and it can be good to have options. :)

Noise cancelling AirPods and gentle background sounds may provide a smooth enough waveform to be ignored, while stopping the increase in audio sensitivity, and smooth out “spikes” of surrounding noise.

Perception of sound is not just some cumulative scalar, that view is far too simplistic

Ive got in-ear noise cancelling headphones and they're amazing. I often come up for air to hear a debate going on not far from me. Because they're noise cancelling I can set the volume lower than I would otherwise.

Edit: I play music I know well so it doesn't distract. My wife uses rain/wave sounds. White noise would work for others.

They probably believe it because it works for them. Because it works for me.

Thank you for that.

This may be a reasonable view for a large company, but they're talking about their experience at a three-person startup. At that scale if there's something that needs to be different you have to step up and change it yourself, and set the culture for the company you're building.

An employee cannot change this, only suggest.

Therefore you must also adapt.

Therefore it falls to yourself to improve your environment.

There is a fair chance that your core annoyance is something else.

That is, if you somehow got a perfectly sounds proofed workroom of your own, you would after a while realize that you're still irritable, find it difficult to concentrate etc.

Often, we don't want to face our real problems and assign discomfort to some external thing we have no power over. "If only X was gone, I'd be happy". But when X disappears little changes.

Since he's also permanently annoyed outside work, non work factors fit the data.

I commend you on the achievement of reaching a state of mental nirvana that allows you to concentrate equally in chaotic and quiet environments - very impressive. I would venture to say that the vast majority of the population will never reach this state.

Long story short, a workspace has to cater to multiple different people - shocking, I know.

People desiring quiet places or isolation to think isn't a particularly new phenomenon, so there's a good chance that this is the core problem.

That said there's a lot of things that can add stress and in isolation this one particular one might not be too bad. But then it becomes an optimization problem, there are many sources of stress that are hard or difficult to solve but the work environment is low hanging fruit and easy to solve so we focus on that.

This is why touring the office is an important part of a job interview, the places with a good environment will be happy to show you around. Fortunately some companies are so clueless they'll even advertise their modern open plan office, you don't even need to apply to those.

On the opposite note, I can perform extremely well in noisey environments if I am enjoying what I am doing - like I am able to just tune it out.

Circumstance and other stressors may be a main factor, or it could just be the noise. I imagine it really depends on the person.

NC headphones aren't designed to block all noise, only repetitive noise, basically white noise. Other noises, like ringtones, actually are louder or easier to hear on many models of NC headphones, as is speech around you. Noise-cancellation's purpose is to attenuate white noise, such as the drone of your office A/C, or your airplane's engines. It's not meant to block anything else, and if your headphones do, it's because they're also acoustically isolating (e.g., they have bin "cans" over your ears physically blocking noise, but that has nothing to do with NC).

I wear the WorkTunes, plus ear plugs, plus I play cafe or brown noise through the headphones, plus I sometimes put on music. If that hadn't worked, I was going to go insane from the sound of the keyboard next to me.

Which is why I don't use noise cancelling headphones, instead you need passive blocking of noise, ie: material to dampen the sound from the office.

Sure sucks though.

If you actually have something that jarring out of your control, I would say you have a bigger problem then just "noise".

Of course there’s still distractions every 30 minutes, but at least they’re not noise related.

This seems like a drastic measure - do you require complete silence or is your workplace that noisey?

Also, as other users have pointed out, noise-canceling just counteracts constant noise like machine hums, and the like. It won't do anything about human speech because it 1.v aries constantly and 2. takes place across a large spectrum of sound. Noise-canceling headphones can adapt but it's always going to lag behind speech or other non-constant sounds like ringtones.

The only recourse there is to use noise-canceling + blast music/pink noise/rain sounds, whatever.

The only minor issues is that moist starts to accumulate in the ear after a while, which I guess isn't a big deal.

Excessive by most standards but I (almost) have to have this when working in an open office.

Consider alternatives. Libraries can be excellent work environments, if quiet. And talk to staff about getting a quiet area -- many libraries are tending increasingly to "conversations allowed", which can be annoying.

I'd find lack of access to my own frequently used materials, notes, papers, etc., to be frustrating, though.

Many academic libraries (ranging from community college, to public or some private colleges and universities) have quiet spaces.

Off-hours / off-season spaces may be findable, though that can get creative.

I'm rarely out without a few pair of high-efficiency earplugs myself. These can block much (though not all) noise quite effectively. You'll want the ones which block speech specifically, not just high-frequency sounds.

There is also the additional side effect that I have a reasonably large house for the same price that I would have paid for a small room in London.

There’s no right or wrong answer here though. Some people might prefer a shorter commute and I can’t blame them for that. For me, I’d rather have a longer commute but live in a larger house in nicer neighbourhood; somewhere quiet to bring my family up.

The added bonus is most IT jobs these days offer remote working so I don’t have to travel into London five days a week if I didn’t want to. Though sometimes the commute itself can be enjoyable because it’s a good chance to catch up on reading or personal programming projects (etc) since it’s 90 minutes of uninterrupted time away from the family.

This is far better than the whole totally enclosed ear-muffs + disposable ear buds approach (which does work but creates an uncomfortable pressure on your ears):

https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/he...

> Scenario 2: You find yourself at a popular new restaurant, where loud music and reverberant acoustics make it difficult to hold conversations (even if you don’t have hearing loss). Your hearables are monitoring your mental effort, again by tracking your brain waves, determining when you are struggling to hear. They then appropriately adjust the signal-to-noise ratio and directionality of their built-in mics to make it easier for you to understand what people nearby are saying. These hearables can distinguish your friends from the patrons you wish to ignore, based on audio fingerprints that the device previously collected.

Some of these are still in development or super expensive.

In terms of some practical solutions today, there's a brand called IQbuds ($300-$500) which use a similar strategy and can be custom-molded to fit your ears (just like a hearing aid) so they can be worn over a full workday:

https://www.nuheara.com/iqbuds-boost/

so, uh, my own solution? requires money, but is probably cheaper than giving up the big city wages (depending on your situation and remote-work opportunities.)

1. giant yellow passive hearing protectors at work with soft music.

Personally, I still kinda suspect that active noise canceling is just placebo. (I'm joking a little here, but passive noise dampening is a thousand times better than active, if you ask me.) Give me passive muffs. You still need some soft music, or your ears will adjust, but getting hearing protection earmuffs with bluetooth means the music can be soft. The other advantage is that nothing says "Don't bother me, I'm working" like giant yellow industrial earmuffs. (I like the '3m worktunes connect' - not exactly audiophile grade, but even with really soft music, it makes the office silent )

MMm. you say you find headphones 'heavy and constricting' - perhaps I should take back my advice. the passive earmuffs are both heavy and constricting. I find it kind of comforting? but if pressure is a problem, you probably won't like them.

2. at home: my own room with a solid door with weather stripping and walls with offset studs and triple pane windows. (weather stripping is super cheap and helps a lot with interior noise. A solid door is rather more expensive, and probably helps more, but as for relief per dollar, weather stripping is hard to beat)

Key here, I think, is that construction is more important than location.

3. I show up and leave work late. I get mornings (well, afternoons) for talking with people, and lots of evening time mostly by myself for actual work.

#2. is obviously pricey, but without it, I'd go insane. Personally, I find newer, well-built apartments to have less noise than older single-pane suburban housing. (but then, I think I have a lower tolerance for traffic noise than most; the neighbor warming up his junker in the morning always super bothered me when I was living in an older SFH. some people are okay with that.)

I've talked about building a sleeping box with noise dampening, but... eh, just paying the money for an apartment with proper noise dampening is doable to me.

Hearing protection always talks about attenuation in terms of dB(A) (A-weighting being a sensible thing to do when measuring perceived sound levels). 30dB(A) is a significant attenuation (logarithmic scale, don't forget). 35dB(A) is quite an improvement over 30dB(A).

For long-term use, ear plugs aren't great. But ear defenders can be had cheaply which will work well; I know of some people who use ear defenders atop in-ear active-noise-cancelling headphones as a double-whammy.

The correct answer is to work/sleep in quiet places, though, but I realise this is fast becoming a luxury.

Note that there is a considerable amount of technique in using earplugs correctly. You don't just shove them toward your ear and hope for the best. Normally, they are rolled tightly, and then inserted fairly deeply into the ear canal, where they then expand. Have someone demonstrate, watch a video on it, or read the instructions very closely.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/3M-1100-Foam-Plugs-200-Pair/dp/B008MV... [1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BYAP7I

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/All...

There are less connection drops, no voice announcements like "noise cancellation activated" just a discrete blip, the transition between modes is quite smooth, and the "pass through mode" aka transparency mode feels like you're not wearing anything. And I do find the ANC quite excellent, there's a much less reduced "ringing" you get from other NC gear (could be due to better algorithms, chip, or the mic on the inside that processes noise inside your ear canal). Overall one of the best purchases I've made.

It's still better than the incessant jabbering of phone meetings and other office noise.

Some days, the noise puts me on the verge of another breakdown. And no one in management cares.

I suggest listening to one of the following:

1. Music you don't already know because you can't hum along to them and won't get distracted by the lyrics (Spotify radios can be great, though they get repetitive if you listen to them a lot)

2. Classical music is great if not too tired otherwise it puts you to sleep

3. Deep / underground house like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz26ohrCNIY&t=2s great if you're cranking at a quantitative problem or coding

4. Instrumental jazz to me is the midpoint between the intensity of listening to house and the absolute serenity of classical music, but ymmv

(of course it helps if one likes this kind of thing, which I do)

Here's my solution: I listen to relaxing hip-hop in a language I don't understand, through a normal pair of Airpods or other non-noise-cancelling headphones. In my case, this is usually MC Solaar - nice calm delivery, rhythms, and music, and in French, which I barely understand. I think this music is better for me than more regular sounds (or noise cancelling) as the variety means that any noises that do make it through, don't really register. Really helps me zone out and concentrate.

I know this sounds really weird (I almost never tell anyone about this IRL!) but it works for me. YMM(definitely)V :)

(Can I also make another observation? Reading about your irritability with flat-mates and colleagues sounds like you're an introvert, who's just not getting any/enough solitary time. If so, this is a bigger fundamental problem that you need to address - headphones and French hip-hop won't help :) Maybe you should focus on finding a way to build regular quiet and solitude into your schedule, for the sake of your relationships, mental state, and well-being?)

Personally I use my trusty Bose over ear noise cancelling headphones when i’m with a customer that has loud open plan offices. I’ve had my Bose headphones for almost a decade now. Today I use them even when I’m at my office which is quiet But because its open plan I still get distracted and we are working on acoustics however most of us are deep thinking engineers and we have a liberal work from home policy so our work environment is good enough to get stuff done.

I would talk to someone you have value to the startup and people don’t even think about this till its too late.

I'm in an open-office now and use light over-ear headphones (I found the Bose Bluetooth ones good) and listen to white noise (by playing with the frequencies you can usually drown out what's bothering you). Of course my preference would be a quiet space, but this white-noise strategy has worked well for several years now.

Is this one of those "we work" type of environments where everything is rented piece meal?

I really want one of those egg shaped sound-blocking chairs for work. I read in a wing-back chair and it's amazing how much sound deadening it provides.

I work in a coworking space. They’re not quite comfortable enough to wear continuously all day. If you take periodic breaks, and remove them when you go to the bathroom, get coffee, take a walk, that’s enough make it so you can keep them in while working at your desk.

Breaks are good so I don’t really count this as a negative.

They even perform well in super noisy coffee shops.

I know in some countries there are dedicated study spaces which you can pay to access. That would indeed be nice. Co-working spaces could have served this role except many play up the social aspects and have open office configurations. They do have private office spaces but they are expensive.

That might mean a small town, or it might mean a $3000/mo+ studio apartment. How do you get to having enough cash flow to afford that space? Can you nix the hotdesking membership? Worst case, can you bail on the startup and join a megacorp?

How will that help with the noise problem?

Recently.

Like...in the last two hours recently.

looks longingly out the window...terminal makes a noise, snaps back to reality, sighs heavily, continues patching