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Headphones don’t make things quiet. You are just replacing noises.

Think of a library.

I have not even brought up the visual or olfactory distractions, either.

Does it need to be completely quiet? I find I work best with low-level relaxing ambient background noise. Find it much easier to work in e.g. a coffee shop than a library

A coffee shop is fine, working remotely as an individual, but I would argue an open office should not sound like a coffee shop, at least.

And if you need the ambient noise in a quiet environment, headphones with an ambient coffee shop track should work.

Personally, I would choose the library environment every single time for software design and dev -- if the option were available to me.

I know that my productivity is much, much closer to optimum when I work under these conditions. Sadly they are almost impossible to find or arrange.

olfactory - we had a guy once with a food odor problem. HR had to step in.

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