Are you a student? Do you have flatmates? Do you live in a student dorm? If you answered yes to all of my questions, then you will most likely relate to most of the struggles I am about to describe.
When I was a student I had to work regularly in the library. Unfortunately, I often had problems concentrating, because it was often not quiet enough. Many different noises accumulated: a neighbour was typing on his laptop, another one was leafing through books, two were whispering nearby, someone was constantly walking up and down the stairs, etc. So I asked myself what I could do about it and noticed that many people in the library used earplugs.