[jwdunne]

In an open-plan office, which is shared with sales and support staff, this is almost impossible to experience, except on the weekends (I am, however, way more productive over the weekend).

For weekdays, I've tried the following alternatives with varied amounts of success:

Rain track - this is like a 4 hour rain sound loop and worked really well. I think the noise from rain effectively blocks a wide range of frequencies, but I could be mistaken.

Baroque music - I had a range of results with this. It seemed pieces with harsh sounding instruments, ones with a sharp attack, tended to do more harm than good, where as pieces using mostly just softer sounding instruments.

Dance music - this works best for me, but I must vary the playlist and dub tracks, ones without vocals, work better than ones with vocals. The sub-genres range from trance to dubstep.

During hectic times, I also ask a colleague to take my calls and I'll get back to them later. This works tremendously well.