I'm going to give the advice here that saved my sanity in an open office: use headphones with "passive" noise canceling. I bought a pair of 3M WorkTunes with Bluetooth. They're just passive, sound deadening, hearing protection ear muffs like you would wear on a factory floor or in a construction workplace, with Bluetooth built. It blocks out all noise, not just white noise, and they're much cheaper than ANC head phones.

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.

You're generally right (in my experience) regarding ANC but I've found that Sony's WH-1000XM3 over-ear headphones do an excellent job with higher frequencies and "one off" sounds. I'm also a big fan of Mubert, an iOS app that generates non-distracting instrumental sound tracks.

Thanks for the Mubert recommendation. I'm going to give it a go. I've generally found "elevator music" to be quite pleasant. No words or unique instrumentals that distract.

The ironic thing is "noise cancelling" headphone turn down the volume on the things easiest to tune out, and turns up the volume on things that are the most jarring.

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.

I disagree, I have the Sony's commented above (WH-1000XM3) and everything is muted, while background noise is gone. I regularly have coworkers calling from behind me and I can't hear them.

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

You can have both in the same headphones. Personally I rather enjoy putting on my headphones and entering my soundless world.

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

Probably not a particularly PC comment, but occasionally I am jealous of people who need hearing aids to hear that they can turn off if they need quiet

Considering the link between hearing and cognition I wouldn't be. Hearing loss is linked to cognitive decline and mental health issues.

I use 3M PELTOR X5A Over-The-Head Ear Muffs with 3M Peltor HY80A Gel Ear Cushions. They are comfortable for long periods of time and block all types of noise. They won't make your work environment completely silent, but I am pretty sensitive to noise and they all me to work in an open floor plan office.

>> The Peltor X5A Ear Muff offers the best 37 dB attenuation for use against extremely high noise environments where double protection is required

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

Not true anymore for modern NC headphones. They will suppress speech significantly when active.