Someone's on a call two desks over, the neighbors are drilling into a wall, a car horn goes off outside. Your brain has to process all of it at once, and that's exactly what wears you down. White noise steps in and changes the equation.
Why your ear reacts to sudden sounds
Your hearing evolved to flag sudden changes, not steady ones. You tune out a constant hum of traffic, but someone laughing out of nowhere grabs your attention instantly. What breaks focus usually isn't volume, it's the sounds you can't predict.
What white noise actually does
White noise contains every frequency at roughly equal intensity. That flattens the sudden shifts in a room into one steady floor of sound. A door slam or a cough is still audible, but it no longer creates a sharp enough contrast to pull your attention away. Your brain stops asking "what was that" every few minutes.
It doesn't work the same for everyone
Some people find white noise grating, others do better with pink noise or something softer like rain. There's no single right answer here, it's trial and error. That's part of why we built Moodera around switching between textures easily. Most people figure out what their ear actually likes within a few days.
When it won't help
If your room is already quiet, adding white noise can backfire and become its own distraction. It helps most when the environment is already noisy and you want to make that noise predictable instead of trying to eliminate it.