> Recently, as I reached for the play button out of habit, I stopped. I thought: what if I just do this chore in silence today?

It seems most people today have headphones on all the time. I don't understand it. I'm not sure, but it would seem people hate their own voice?

I just love silence.

I can't work in anything but complete silence. In open spaces I wear earplugs. (If I'm not wearing earplugs it means I'm not doing much of anything ;-) That's one of the main benefits of remote work: at my home there is complete silence most of the time.

I need silence for many other activities too. Cooking, reading (of course), even driving.

In fact, I think my problem is the opposite: I just can't do two things at once. If I'm listening to something, then I can't be doing anything else.

It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored. It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it. One passable option is to take a 20 minute walk with no stimulus beyond the scenery. Journaling regularly. Meditation provides a similar experience but feels like a different lane.

For me I do find a similar experience to the OP. It’s easy to feel yourself going a little crazy getting sucked along the current of modern life. Flowing from one activity to the next, looking at one’s phone in the between, never any chance for an extended thought except when laying down for bed. If you don’t break out of this mode it’s easy to let weeks go by without noticing or taking much conscious impulse to shape your day.

> I’m a slow thinker, like really slow. It takes a few minutes just to get my thoughts moving in a direction. But once they pick up momentum, I can easily spend fifteen or thirty minutes exploring an idea, weighing different options

Here's to the slow thinking! Cheers!!

At the start of this year I wrote down "Get rid of your Airpods" as a New Years Resolution. This was basically my proxy for "stop filling every spare moment with audiobooks and podcasts".

I still haven't done it, and my reflex for listening to something - even after my listening backlogs emptied a few months back - suggests I'm essentially addicted. Especially considering how much better I feel when I don't take my airpods out with me.

So, time to deal with that I guess. Thanks for the push.

Yea this is a good one but it can be so hard. Seems obvious that constant information streaming outside of silencing your own thoughts also makes the moments where you do have to sit in silence lower quality.

I recently listened to the Hammock Driven Development talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc) and it raises the very interesting point that it's not really the concious mind that makes big breakthroughs on hard problems, it's mainly the subconcious mind synthesizing information. It seems obvious to me that constantly intaking information will ruin this synthesization.

Sadly for some reason our brain loves filling the silence with junk...

I've done several solo multi day hikes in the last 6 months, mostly ones where I stayed in a hut or campground at night and socialized around dinner, but hiked solo during the day. No podcast or music, no cell service. It's amazing how quickly I get used to having no input once it's the only thing to do, yet also how quickly I go back to always having a podcast on in the car and for my runs.

I find that if I'm driving or doing a chore or something, listening to nothing can sometimes be boring, but if I listen to a podcast I'll sometimes get distracted by my own thoughts and miss 5 minutes of it. Music tends to be the sweet spot in the middle where if my mind wants to wander then I'm not missing anything important, but if my mind doesn't want to wander then I still have something for it to focus on.

I need media to cope with stressful situations - office politics and other difficult situations at work that seem more than I can manage. Audiobooks help me to get my mind off the things that gnaw at me and make it difficult to sleep.

They also make boring work bearable. Terry Pratchett is a huge favorite :-)

I was unemployed for about half a year recently and I got a much less stressful job after that. It's strange because I felt and still feel humiliated about it all and yet actual life has become much better. My behavior at home improved - as noted by my wife. I've got some DIY projects done at home which were pointless (could have paid for them) but very satisfying.

My kid is delightful and although nothing has changed I realised that I am living through one of the golden periods in life - where one doesn't think too much about it but the important things are really good. Stressful work wasn't allowing me to see it and I was numbing life out to try to cope. There have been some very very un-golden times in the past and it is unfortunate not to be able to enjoy the good when it is there.

In the past, whenever doing something that didn't require concentration, I would always listen to an audiobook, and sometimes music.

The moment I bought land it stopped. I wanted to be present, to hear the sounds, appreciate the changing seasons. Music and audio books got in the way.

I cancelled spotify and audible and haven't looked back.

Nowadays, I find I am getting back into sitting still and doing nothing, and I have zero desire to give my attention to music of audio books.

Great article, I wondered wether there is an existing tool on the market to solve this (generate quizz to make sure devs understand their code).

Apparently some guys made a nice POC during a hackathon: https://devpost.com/software/bananaduck

I’m not able to do my work with music, or even noise-canceling headphones. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work.

I know that I’m unusual, in that sense, but there you have it.

I do listen to music, on my morning walks, though. That’s the only time, during the day, when I do.

This hits home for me. If I have spare time without other peopled my headphones are in. If I'm walking the dog, doing the dishes, mowing my tiny lawn, driving home after dropping kids off I have a podcast or audiobook in my ears.

I read an interview from a musician I'm a fan of where they were responding to "what do you listen to when you are driving?" and they responded along the lines of "I like to listen to the engine and my thoughts". I winced a bit thinking how little time I allow my brain to just do its thing.

It's always seemed strange to me that it's so common for people to feel the need to have continuous ... radio/podcasts/tv.

It turns out there is a fair amount of research done on this, look into:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_partial_attention

Contet is created like 1000h every day. You can't consume it all. and it does not change your life. really. I stopped listening all the podcasts, yt-videos and also most times music. I have started my days with an old ipad in the kitchen playing affirmations with subtle background music. Oh boy, it is different momentum! instead of crazy in my head, i get positive thinking loop right from the start of each day. I think the app was manifestyourdreams.app or something like that

Sometimes I put my headphones on, just to forget to also put music on. Hours later I realize that it helped me focus anyhow.

My version of this was getting rid of my smartphone 6 years ago. Creates a forcing function to be in my own head a lot more often, and I feel like this has given me thinking and attention span superpowers.

I always tell myself to stop listening to media and give myself space, but it's like an automatic process that I turn on some music because it lowers my stress level when initiating a task. But I should probably try this at least when I journal to fully digest any intakes throughout the day and put them into words.

> it’s my voice. Nobody else has access to it. And it’s an important part of my life.

Beautiful articulation.

Reigniting a blog after 14 years should be more common!

A trick I used when I restarted my blog in 2017 after stopping publishing in 2010 was to backfill it with a bunch of content imported from other places - mostly my answers to questions on Quora and Ask MetaFilter.

That's the great thing about having a self-hosted blog: it's your site, you make the rules.

For things that don't require that much focus like housework I really enjoy this. For things that do require focus (but not necessarily internal monologue) I prefer external stimuli to prevent my mind from wandering.

But I certainly agree that not giving myself the space to explore is detrimental.

If I listen to music and then do something else, I no longer hear the music. So I hardly ever listen to music because I’m always doing something else!

Can relate. Though I was never that big into podcast/earphones etc., I had gotten into the habit of instinctively reaching out to play something while driving. However, I stopped doing that and it's so fun to be with myself again, me and my own voice in my head.

Is it an AI self-realizing its own existence?

I find it odd that others need music or talking to focus. most of the time I prefer silence.

There's a researcher at Harvard, Arthur C. Brooks, who wrote a book on this, the importance of the default mode network of the brain that is engaged when you do nothing or are bored.

People who drown out boredom or silence tend to eliminate wandering thoughts, introspection, autobiographical thinking, pondering of relations, effectively the kind of internal reflection that's necessary from time to time. It's pretty common now to hear people say that they're uncomfortable with silence exactly for that reason.

wow. yeah, can confirm. for me, no podcasts really, no videos on phone, no audiobooks except to fall asleep.

and being forced to be alone with my thoughts is awesome because i am optimized to seize the opportunity.

Ummm... even with the podcast, video, or audiobook running. Don't you just zone out sometimes because you're busy thinking about something else? Isn't that just the same thing?

headphones block nature

take off and take in the stream

living room and screens

ITT: a lot of undiagnosed ADHD

Your post doesn't even have any info or make sense? Jfc I hate the internet... Lol