[patpending]

I'm in total agreement. I'd add that for me the worst kind of distraction is having a co-worker talking about something interesting on the phone. As focused as I try to be, I find my brain defies me and tries to fill in the half of the conversation that I can't hear.

Also, I'm a native English speaker. I speak very little Spanish, but when my co-workers converse in Spanish my brain gets completely sidetracked trying to understand what they're saying. It's even worse with they're speaking Spanish on the phone.

It's as if when I can only hear or understand part of the conversation my undisciplined brain sucks up loads of CPU cycles trying to fill in the gaps. So I picked up a pair of sound cancelling headphones and block everything out with white-noise or music. But now my ears sweat...