> If I have my headphones in, I'm busy. If I don't, I can answer questions or talk to my colleagues about something.
This comes up every time people discuss open floor plans. Inevitably someone says that the solution is headphones. Except that a lot of people don't want to wear headphones all the time. I find it uncomfortable, and I also find that music significantly reduces my productivity (unless I'm doing something that doesn't require any meaningful amount of thought). A number of studies have shown the same thing. Listening to music while working decreases mental power.
The article also covered this:
But the most problematic aspect of the open office may be physical rather
than psychological: simple noise. In laboratory settings, noise has been
repeatedly tied to reduced cognitive performance. The psychologist Nick
Perham, who studies the effect of sound on how we think, has found that
office commotion impairs workers’ ability to recall information, and even
to do basic arithmetic. Listening to music to block out the office
intrusion doesn’t help: even that, Perham found, impairs our mental acuity.
I don't think you're as much different as you imagine. Young people don't work in drastically different ways than older people.