I think this is not inherently true for all humans though. Not all noise prevents me from doing "insightful" tasks. Passing cars, birds, heavy winds or unintell

I think this is not inherently true for all humans though. Not all noise prevents me from doing "insightful" tasks. Passing cars, birds, heavy winds or unintelligible conversation don't seem to bother me. Conversations I can actually understand or singing - I've had a colleague who sung at his job - does seem to kill any reasonable thinking process in my case. In fact, I think absolute silence is detrimental to the thought process - I find it very hard to concentrate on hard problems without some degree of environmental noise.