Get more work done with noise cancelling headphones

I spend a lot of time in a room where there are two tvs going and my son noisely playing with his toys. Normally I wouldn't be too bothered. However, recently I've been getting a lot of headaches, which are commonly at the same time of the day.

I also spend a lot of time with my laptop, not being able to get much done and getting really frustrated.

I don't seem to be able to work at my desktop pc at all these days again, due to noise and not being able to concentrate.

Its kind of a vicious circle, get less done, get frustrated and then get a headache.

I tried using some normal headphones, but this didn't drown out the noise.

So I discovered you could get noise cancelling headphones, mine have a battery in them and an on/off switch. It causes a hissing sound. Apparently there supposed to be a microphone near the ear which interacts and produces the hissing noise.

When I'm listening to music, it just seems louder, but the hiss, seems to block out some background noise. Not all noise, so I can hear if my son trips over or something, but enough to allow me to concentrate.

Over the weekend, I was sat doing some coding, in a couple of short sessions, where normally I'd have to spend ages trying to concentrate then struggle to do a few lines of code.

Anyways, my life has been transformed :)