Hey, Dummy. Your ears don't regenerate yet.

I can't hear you. I have my airpods in.

Well, that's actually a good start! While not as effective as passive noise-cancelling headphones, active noise-cancelling headphones still provide some hearing protection. Plus, Airpods owners can access their Health app and see listening level trends. It's a simple way to check your hearing levels and your phone will tell you automatically whether or not your listening volume is damaging.

Watch your hearing!

If you have AirPods, there's a chance you have an Apple Watch to complete the ensemble. The Noise app on your Apple Watch is constantly listening to environmental noise and will chart trends for you. This is a good way to be more aware of how loud your surroundings are.
For example, I just got a circular saw and used it this morning. I was wearing hearing protection, but it was interesting to open up the Health app and see that my watch picked up damaging levels of hearing at 119 dB. Looking at the table below, OSHA does not advise sounds that loud to be listened to for more than 4 minutes in a given day. I'm spending more than 4 minutes cutting wood, so my hearing will be severely damaged at the end if I don't do anything about it.

OSHA table source

Wear hearing protection.

You can get 4 pairs of silicone, reusable ear plugs for $10 on Amazon that attenuate noise by 32 decibels. That allows someone like me to use a saw for 8 hours straight while still following OSHA guidelines. With at least one of these devices you can easily check to see how you are taking care of your ears. And if you have both and you're not taking advantage of these features, pardon my French, but that makes you a big dummy. Yeah, I said it.
You were likely born with a pair of functioning ears, so you need to take care of them. Hearing loss, for the time being, is permanent. That means if you are being a dummy now, you may face these consequences for the rest of your life. Turn on noise canceling, buy yourself some ear plugs, and reap the rewards..