I’m over the hill, and I’ve found I just can’t handle the distractions of music or podcasts most of the time. I need silence when working, cooking, reading, etc. There are few situations where I feel I can listen to things i.e. driving so long as I don’t need to focus on them. I’m not sure what changed or if it’s a good thing. Music used to be a huge part of my life, played at all times. Now I have to deliberately do nothing but listen, which gives me a weird sensation of boredom or fidgety anxiety, so I don’t do it very much anymore. I suspect an attention disorder worsened by years of overstimulation.
> 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.
>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 can't generalize for everyone and maybe some of those people you observe are just listening to music all day long.
In my circle, we have earphones all the time because we're listening to podcasts of news, tech industry commentary, macroeconomics and finance, etc. If one is working in an area where you're professionally rewarded by being curious about the changing world and being "plugged in", having "headphones on all the time" can help with staying up-to-date. Even with all that headphone time, there are still many hours in the day in personal silence. Laying in bed consolidating various thoughts before falling asleep. Standing in the shower. Reading blogs, etc. Before podcasts, we'd have to "waste time" sitting in front of the computer to catch up on the same material. Podcasts help us multitask.
Of course, not everybody needs (or wants) to have headphones on all the time. The mathematician Andrew Wiles pursued Fermat's Last Theorem for 30 years before finally solving it. He doesn't need a random podcast that talks about the Iran war and its downstream economic effects on manufacturing computer chips. That type of "useless" news would probably bore him.
>, 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 just depends on the threshold of mindless activity. If I'm driving in an unknown city with confusing one-way streets, I don't want a podcast voice yapping in my ear while I'm concentrating on reading the traffic signs. On the other hand, driving through 100 files of monotonous corn fields on a highway means I can catch up on a backlog of podcasts.
> 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?
Depends on the location maybe too? I think in big cities I see more people with headphones on when they're out and about (which makes sense, cities tends to be noisy and not in the interesting way like nature is), compared to in the small town I live in now, where most people aren't wearing headphones, except if they exercise.
I guess it also depends on what you listen to. I've found certain types of electronic music to essentially put me in a "trance of focus and clarity" and as long as I keep it going, that can give me enough energy for hours to do all the chores of the day + end it all with a swim, all while listening to liquid drum & bass and forgetting about everything else in the world.
I wear headphones about 80% of my waking day. Super comfy, wireless, noise-cancelling ones. The funny thing is, I rarely play anything through them, and am almost always just listening to silence.
I try and listen to other things, podcasts or music, sadly nothing compares to that golden silence.
I am the same when I am doing deep work that I am interested in. I need absolute silence.
My day-to-day mundane work is a bit different, but I still cannot listen to music with lyrics. I have found to my surprise that the soundtrack of 8-bit games (SNES et al) really helps.
I now have a playlist full of those, with soundtracks from Star Fox to A Link to the Past. Really helps with the mundane stuff.
In open plan offices there is no silence. Working at home there's no silence.
Headphones offer the only escape. They're also a sign that you are trying to concentrate to discourage those "just a quick word" moments which could easily be covered by an instant message.
For you I'd recommend some ear protectors that one might use when operating power tools :-).
I actually think ear protectors with some bluetooth headphones built in might be the ideal solution :-)
> They're also a sign that you are trying to concentrate to discourage those "just a quick word" moments which could easily be covered by an instant message.
This is the reason I wear headphones, I don't even switch them on.
It seems to be less broadly understood than before and my work is often disrupted.
I agree. Most of the time, silence. Sometimes, white noise to block other's people voice. And when I don't need to do something intellectual, just listening to the buzz of life around
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.
> It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored.
I have headphones present constantly for the opposite reason. When doing tasks that fail to provide interest (housework, some work tasks) the external stimulus stops me distractedly finding something else (posting on HN for instance!) to do instead of completing the task. Also when running in town, though I don't need it when out on the trails as the scenery is more than enough to sooth my mind into a pleasant state.
> It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored.
Today as a software developer I think it's easier than ever. We're already past the "the compiler is building" excuse, but now you can just claim "The agent is thinking/working", and sit and do nothing.
You don't have to switch window/tab as the agent is working, you can just sit there and stare at what it is doing, marvel that this stuff works at all, and let your mind wander if it wants, until the terminal bell goes off.
I go for 2-3 walks a day. Might be temperamental but I kind of go insane being in one place all the time.
When I was staying with a friend, he had a big house, and I'd constantly go downstairs to get coffee. I didn't even need the coffee, it was just a little change of scenery.
I don't think you need to find time to be bored, the times have always been there and we didn't search them out before. Just don't mask them with multitasking.
Waiting for a bus, waiting in line at a post office, waiting for your wife to get ready for bed. Those moments are still there and if you don't pull your phone out the boredom is still there
The way I write my novels is by reviewing a chapter I'm stuck on and its context, then going on a long run, and 20 minutes out, shutting my music off. I have, at that point, at least 20 minutes, if not 60+, where I'm easily thinking about and brainstorming for the chapter. It's wonderful. It sort of "compresses" the ambient sounds in the same way eating pancakes with syrup temporarily destroys your ability to taste slightly less sweet things.
I've found that swimming helps me to do that. When I walk, it's too easy to take my kindle and read but swimming, it's a relaxing and repetitive movement where I can only focus on thinking.
Same! Although nowadays our sea is hitting record temperatures (28C [~82F] in the water today), and the jellyfish seems to be enjoying it a lot, so swimming is now 50% "relaxing and letting my mind wander" and 50% "shit, that's too many fried egg jellyfishes, lets swim this direction oh no another one"
> It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it.
While this is true, I'd word it differently:
It's sort of the opposite of an activity, and we've conditioned our brains to hate it.
Boredom used to be absolutely normal in our society for pretty much ever, and the urge to do something about it when it occurred was a lot weaker than it is now.
I disagree. I remember when I was a kid and didn't have access to smartphones (didn't exist) or other sources of constant entertainment. My days were basically just kindergarten and dicking around with other kids.
But I remember I absolutely dreaded going to the doctor's office, taking a long distance train, or any other kind of "activity" that involved long periods of waiting around. I would find it extremely boring and would try to negotiate with my parents in whatever way I could to avoid going.
I wouldn't necessarily draw any conclusions about our attitudes around this as children. I was exactly the same as you: I hated waiting for anything. Even waiting a few minutes in a grocery store checkout line with one of my parents was absolute torture.
As an adult, it's just not the same. Children's brains are not fully developed, and their desire for stimulus seems very different than an adult's. I think the closest I've come to experiencing this as an adult is in the early '00s. I didn't get my first smartphone until I was nearly 30. I suppose back then I didn't love waiting or being bored, but it wasn't an awful, terrible thing that I just had to fix all the time.
Nowadays I try to avoid filling the quiet times with my phone or some other stimulus. If I'm doing dishes or cleaning up around the house, I let it be quiet, and let my mind wander. If I'm on a train or a bus, I'll do my best to put away my phone and stare out the window, and get lost in my thoughts. If I'm in a waiting room at a doctor's office, I'll people-watch, or just close my eyes and think. It's really nice.
Judging by your name, I presume your Romanian. I think it’s very much ingrained in eastern European culture that sitting around this bad whereas more western cultures do not condemn it so much.
So part of your hating the boring activities might be a cultural thing as well, even as a child. Also, it’s a deeply eastern European thing to have to wait around too much at the doctors office.
However, I have the same experience with hating it, but I don’t think I had the balls to try to negotiate myself out of it.
> Also, it’s a deeply eastern European thing to have to wait around too much at the doctors office.
I remember waiting for an hour or so at the doctor's office in France. The doctor would give appointment times that assumed he'd spend 15 minutes per patients but he was friendly and patient with answering questions so he'd always end up being very late by the time evening came. Had that with multiple doctors so doesn't seem to be unique to Eastern Europe.
> The doctor would give appointment times that assumed he'd spend 15 minutes per patients but he was friendly and patient with answering questions so he'd always end up being very late by the time evening came.
I have a doctor like this, and it's totally worth the wait as she actually listens to people and provides useful information. I do generally try to get a morning appointment with her though, as otherwise it can take a loooooonnnnngggg time.
Yes, the wait is annoying but I do love doctors like this. It's a sign of a great doctor. Just always found it funny that they don't just adjust their appointment time given that the estimate they have is never actually attained in practice.
I typically show up an hour late at the doctors office if my appointment is in the afternoon. It gives the doctor some time to catch up on patients and when I show up I’m the next in line. It benefits both of us.
Clothes shopping with Mom. I remember how torturous it was. How my brain felt like it was on fire with boredom, and how all-consuming the pain of it all was.
I'm not convinced boredom was normal per se - people find stuff to do. It's just that the nature of stuff has changed, as has the availability. 20 years ago it was browsing the internet for hours. Before that it was watching TV. Before that there was Other Stuff, like going exploring with a friend (for me). But the 2000s changed things, people got mp3 players and an infinite library of music, smartphones and an infinite amount of activities to do on them at any point of day, internet on the go instead of going to The Space With The Computer, streaming / binging programs instead of having a fixed moment in the day, looking up what's on tonight in the TV guide, or renting a film as a weekend activity.
It's all more instant and always available. I mean books were too (at some point people were complaining about kids these days always reading), but it's different.
Am I worried? A little, because at the same time I keep reminding myself that every generation was worried about what people are up to this time. In 20 years people will probably be nostalgic for today in some way.
You're very right, back in the day a lot of people would complain about people reading newspapers on trains/buses and why these people "just can't let their mind wander" or whatever the argument was. Today you'll instead see people telling others they should put down their phone and read something "physical" instead, I don't think a single person today would complain about others reading books/newspapers on public transport.
In the future some people will surely feel the same about "Device X" and smartphones, and ask themselves "Why can't they be old school and just sit with their smartphone instead?"
The journaling seems like the right direction, but it's still too passive.
If there are three mental modes, two out of three are passive. Let's call this third mode "creative mode". Instead of consuming or meditating, do something else offline that requires developing a skill with your undivided attention.
Even when you're inspired, the interpretation is still your own. There's no way it could ever feel like wasted time because the intrinsic value of experience is so much higher than the other two states.
With enough experience, your own unique ideas will dominate your mind. That's when you finally feel in control.
> 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
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...
> constantly intaking information will ruin this synthesization.
I don't find that it does, for me. If I'm chewing on a hard technical problem, then I actually need the surface-level distraction of a podcast or a news article or a ballgame to keep it from dominating my conscious thoughts and let my subconscious get to work.
Where I agree with the author, and you, is that I can't do creative work - mainly writing, now, but back when I did this sort of thing professionally: coming up with approaches to a text, or ideas for sets and costumes, or exercises to get my actors where I wanted them to be - without time spent in "silence".
N=1, and all that, but I'm always intrigued by how different people's brains work, well, differently.
> for some reason our brain loves filling the silence with junk
Natural selection might pick for this trait because if you can gather and evaluate and otherwise process a large volume of information you might be able to better find food, avoid getting eaten, and finding a mate to mate with.
executive function and intuition filter, but you need a bunch of data to feed on.
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.
Similar for me but I actually like podcasts in the car for this reason. Listening to podcasts sometimes triggers me thinking about issues I care about. When I realize that I’m no longer following the podcast, I just turn it off and let my thoughts go wild.
Being bored is kind of the point though. You should let yourself be bored sometimes. It's a relatively new phenomenon where we have completely avoided any minute of boredom.
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.
I prefer to work in silence. But by that I mean actual silence. However, I live in a city where there's construction going on I can hear through my window. If I have to work from the office, there'll be colleagues yapping around (helps with creativity or whatever the sugarcoating is for the open office). Bonus points for one of the offices being next to a different construction site.
In these situations, I tend to prefer having some kind of "ambient" music on, instrumental only, so I can be isolated from the distracting environment. Noise cancelling doesn't work well enough against voices, although I do enjoy the reduction of random ambient noise (A/C hum and the like).
I'm similar except idk about silence, My preference would be natural local sounds, wind,bugs, birds (not mockingbirds lol) but have to settle for music pretty often.
You're not unusual. Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.
> Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.
Convenient narrative, but not at all a new phenomenon. I had friends like this in the 90's. And I'm not seeing more people like this than in those days.
I know we're kind of used to rapid societal change at this point, but I'd still consider the 90s or even the 80s recent enough that I could call things that arose in those times as "new phenomena"... from a broader societal standpoint at least.
Not even just the 90s. This is self-stimming behaviour. People have been doing this for as long as there’ve been entertainment. This is just normal human behaviour. People using technology to aid them in this is just the modern day version of it. It’s normal. And it’s frankly quite ridiculous to see adults thinking this is ye old “people are soooooo into tech nowadays, them junkies!!!111!!!11!1!”. C’mon now.
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.
I have a habit of going for a daily walk of about one hour and intentionally avoid bringing headphones to just be with my thoughts.
But I've noticed that if I have something on my mind, I just tend to ruminate and spin in circles. Not sure how constructive or useful at all that is. At least listening to a podcast or similar can provide new things to think about.
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
why?
because if you had been meditating, you would start to notice your own thought.
They run automatically, you cannot control them. Almost all the time. And the part that you control usually does not even notice them, just succumbs.
so...maybe you just don't see your inner dialogue, or the "monkey mind" ? and are unaware of this, yet a slave to it.
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.
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.
I have a lot of dead blogs in my RSS reader I don't remove for this reason. Maybe they'll start writing again. They've survived many opml exports/imports between different readers over the years.
Backfilling it with content from other sites is such a good idea, I'm stealing that for when friends say it's been a bunch of time since they published
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.
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.
But silence is a luxury; right now I have the window open to try and cool the house down a bit so car noises, there's people doing stuff downstairs, etc.
But I also get restless when it's too quiet. Everyone has their own preferences, but ultimately I think the key point is whether you have control. Like, I hate chaotic spaces, but love chaotic music sometimes.
> I find it odd that others need music or talking to focus. most of the time I prefer silence.
I need music otherwise my brain starts playing music instead of ruminating on thoughts. I also need to keep my body occupied. At least doing the dishes or something, going for a run or walk even better.
Background talking is fine but it has to be from strangers. If there's a tiny little chance someone might say something where I can contribute (like in an office), that ruins any and all ability to think. Brain goes on high alert listening for cues
I’m the same, I think better in silence. It’s the only way I can really hear my own thoughts and let them run without being interrupted by music or conversation. That’s also one of the reasons I prefer working from home to working in an office.
The deeper the concentration, the fewer words I want - or at least words I understand. Classical music with words I don't understand can also work quite well. There also seems to be a vague point where I have heard the lyrics so many times they stop being distracting.
Funny. For me, instrumental music is just as distracting. If I don’t know the music I listen to well enough, my attention will go there and make any coding or reading impossible.
It's probably a function of how your brain works whether or not you prefer music or silence. For me, a middle-aged man with ADHD, my brain is constantly wandering off to some other thought that isn't what's in front of me. That's not wholly under my control (though stimulant medication does help reduce the effect). BUT... if I have headphones on and am listening to something (wordless music usually works best, but music with words in a language I don't speak is often just as good), then that gives me some partial control over my brain wandering off. Because when my brain wanders off in the middle of a coding session, it usually will wander off into suddenly paying a bit closer attention to the music I was listening to. And then, since that's not something that requires the verbal-processing part of my brain which is the primary part I use for programming, that part of the brain "gets bored" and looks for something to do, sees the code on my screen, and goes "ooh, that's something interesting" and my attention is back where I wanted it to be in the first place.
ADHD, I've often said, is mis-named. It's not attention deficit, it's uncontrollable attention. Although there are many factors that go into the thing labeled ADHD, a large part of it is usually that the "control center" of the brain (the part that controls "executive function", deciding what to do next and so on) is underpowered compared to most people. (Which, I'm told, is why stimulant medication often has the seemingly-paradoxical effect of "calming down" hyperactive kids: because it helps stimulate the executive-function part of the brain, thereby giving them more control over their own thought processes. Certainly that's how it works for me, though as a middle-aged man I'm no longer hyperactive the way I was when I was a boy). So I manage my ADHD brain in two ways: one, I take medication that gives me more ability to control my attention (though not as much as a non-ADHD person usually has), and two, I play tricks on myself. I know that when my attention wanders, it'll usually wander off to something within the range of my immediate senses: my line of sight, or something I'm hearing. So I give myself things that will catch my attention but not hold it for very long... and wordless music is one of the ones that works best for me.
So really, it all depends on how your particular brain functions.
I work in psychometric testing, and it really isn't that strange. Just as many people need that music or communication as those who cannot have it. It's quite fascinating how different brains are on these ostensibly random traits.
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.
I recently bumped into default mode network as a concept and started noticing the constant aversion I have for "doing nothing". Now I try to take more of my breaks without constant barrage of external stimuli.
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?
Not necessarily, everyone's got their own preferences and sensitivities, it's just how brains work and how it works differently for everyone.
It's too simplistic to just apply a label like ADHD to people. Preferring distraction or silence is only a small part of the diagnostic criteria, and modern diagnostics are more about "how well do you function / how much / what help do you need" than applying a label.
I’m over the hill, and I’ve found I just can’t handle the distractions of music or podcasts most of the time. I need silence when working, cooking, reading, etc. There are few situations where I feel I can listen to things i.e. driving so long as I don’t need to focus on them. I’m not sure what changed or if it’s a good thing. Music used to be a huge part of my life, played at all times. Now I have to deliberately do nothing but listen, which gives me a weird sensation of boredom or fidgety anxiety, so I don’t do it very much anymore. I suspect an attention disorder worsened by years of overstimulation.
> 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.
>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 can't generalize for everyone and maybe some of those people you observe are just listening to music all day long.
In my circle, we have earphones all the time because we're listening to podcasts of news, tech industry commentary, macroeconomics and finance, etc. If one is working in an area where you're professionally rewarded by being curious about the changing world and being "plugged in", having "headphones on all the time" can help with staying up-to-date. Even with all that headphone time, there are still many hours in the day in personal silence. Laying in bed consolidating various thoughts before falling asleep. Standing in the shower. Reading blogs, etc. Before podcasts, we'd have to "waste time" sitting in front of the computer to catch up on the same material. Podcasts help us multitask.
Of course, not everybody needs (or wants) to have headphones on all the time. The mathematician Andrew Wiles pursued Fermat's Last Theorem for 30 years before finally solving it. He doesn't need a random podcast that talks about the Iran war and its downstream economic effects on manufacturing computer chips. That type of "useless" news would probably bore him.
>, 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 just depends on the threshold of mindless activity. If I'm driving in an unknown city with confusing one-way streets, I don't want a podcast voice yapping in my ear while I'm concentrating on reading the traffic signs. On the other hand, driving through 100 files of monotonous corn fields on a highway means I can catch up on a backlog of podcasts.
My non expert and personal opinion is that multitasking for a long time is not a free lunch and could lead to burnout for most people
> 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?
Depends on the location maybe too? I think in big cities I see more people with headphones on when they're out and about (which makes sense, cities tends to be noisy and not in the interesting way like nature is), compared to in the small town I live in now, where most people aren't wearing headphones, except if they exercise.
I guess it also depends on what you listen to. I've found certain types of electronic music to essentially put me in a "trance of focus and clarity" and as long as I keep it going, that can give me enough energy for hours to do all the chores of the day + end it all with a swim, all while listening to liquid drum & bass and forgetting about everything else in the world.
> but it would seem people hate their own voice?
Hell yes. And the other bits of me hate me and each other. Being alone with my own thoughts can be a dangerous situation.
I wear headphones about 80% of my waking day. Super comfy, wireless, noise-cancelling ones. The funny thing is, I rarely play anything through them, and am almost always just listening to silence.
I try and listen to other things, podcasts or music, sadly nothing compares to that golden silence.
I am the same when I am doing deep work that I am interested in. I need absolute silence.
My day-to-day mundane work is a bit different, but I still cannot listen to music with lyrics. I have found to my surprise that the soundtrack of 8-bit games (SNES et al) really helps.
I now have a playlist full of those, with soundtracks from Star Fox to A Link to the Past. Really helps with the mundane stuff.
In open plan offices there is no silence. Working at home there's no silence.
Headphones offer the only escape. They're also a sign that you are trying to concentrate to discourage those "just a quick word" moments which could easily be covered by an instant message.
For you I'd recommend some ear protectors that one might use when operating power tools :-).
I actually think ear protectors with some bluetooth headphones built in might be the ideal solution :-)
> They're also a sign that you are trying to concentrate to discourage those "just a quick word" moments which could easily be covered by an instant message.
This is the reason I wear headphones, I don't even switch them on.
It seems to be less broadly understood than before and my work is often disrupted.
Earplugs work very well for me. I can't hear anything with them on.
I agree. Most of the time, silence. Sometimes, white noise to block other's people voice. And when I don't need to do something intellectual, just listening to the buzz of life around
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.
> It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored.
I have headphones present constantly for the opposite reason. When doing tasks that fail to provide interest (housework, some work tasks) the external stimulus stops me distractedly finding something else (posting on HN for instance!) to do instead of completing the task. Also when running in town, though I don't need it when out on the trails as the scenery is more than enough to sooth my mind into a pleasant state.
> It’s very difficult to intentionally find time to be bored.
Today as a software developer I think it's easier than ever. We're already past the "the compiler is building" excuse, but now you can just claim "The agent is thinking/working", and sit and do nothing.
You don't have to switch window/tab as the agent is working, you can just sit there and stare at what it is doing, marvel that this stuff works at all, and let your mind wander if it wants, until the terminal bell goes off.
I go for 2-3 walks a day. Might be temperamental but I kind of go insane being in one place all the time.
When I was staying with a friend, he had a big house, and I'd constantly go downstairs to get coffee. I didn't even need the coffee, it was just a little change of scenery.
I don't think you need to find time to be bored, the times have always been there and we didn't search them out before. Just don't mask them with multitasking.
Waiting for a bus, waiting in line at a post office, waiting for your wife to get ready for bed. Those moments are still there and if you don't pull your phone out the boredom is still there
The way I write my novels is by reviewing a chapter I'm stuck on and its context, then going on a long run, and 20 minutes out, shutting my music off. I have, at that point, at least 20 minutes, if not 60+, where I'm easily thinking about and brainstorming for the chapter. It's wonderful. It sort of "compresses" the ambient sounds in the same way eating pancakes with syrup temporarily destroys your ability to taste slightly less sweet things.
I've found that swimming helps me to do that. When I walk, it's too easy to take my kindle and read but swimming, it's a relaxing and repetitive movement where I can only focus on thinking.
Same! Although nowadays our sea is hitting record temperatures (28C [~82F] in the water today), and the jellyfish seems to be enjoying it a lot, so swimming is now 50% "relaxing and letting my mind wander" and 50% "shit, that's too many fried egg jellyfishes, lets swim this direction oh no another one"
> It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it.
While this is true, I'd word it differently:
It's sort of the opposite of an activity, and we've conditioned our brains to hate it.
Boredom used to be absolutely normal in our society for pretty much ever, and the urge to do something about it when it occurred was a lot weaker than it is now.
I disagree. I remember when I was a kid and didn't have access to smartphones (didn't exist) or other sources of constant entertainment. My days were basically just kindergarten and dicking around with other kids.
But I remember I absolutely dreaded going to the doctor's office, taking a long distance train, or any other kind of "activity" that involved long periods of waiting around. I would find it extremely boring and would try to negotiate with my parents in whatever way I could to avoid going.
I wouldn't necessarily draw any conclusions about our attitudes around this as children. I was exactly the same as you: I hated waiting for anything. Even waiting a few minutes in a grocery store checkout line with one of my parents was absolute torture.
As an adult, it's just not the same. Children's brains are not fully developed, and their desire for stimulus seems very different than an adult's. I think the closest I've come to experiencing this as an adult is in the early '00s. I didn't get my first smartphone until I was nearly 30. I suppose back then I didn't love waiting or being bored, but it wasn't an awful, terrible thing that I just had to fix all the time.
Nowadays I try to avoid filling the quiet times with my phone or some other stimulus. If I'm doing dishes or cleaning up around the house, I let it be quiet, and let my mind wander. If I'm on a train or a bus, I'll do my best to put away my phone and stare out the window, and get lost in my thoughts. If I'm in a waiting room at a doctor's office, I'll people-watch, or just close my eyes and think. It's really nice.
Judging by your name, I presume your Romanian. I think it’s very much ingrained in eastern European culture that sitting around this bad whereas more western cultures do not condemn it so much. So part of your hating the boring activities might be a cultural thing as well, even as a child. Also, it’s a deeply eastern European thing to have to wait around too much at the doctors office. However, I have the same experience with hating it, but I don’t think I had the balls to try to negotiate myself out of it.
> Also, it’s a deeply eastern European thing to have to wait around too much at the doctors office. I remember waiting for an hour or so at the doctor's office in France. The doctor would give appointment times that assumed he'd spend 15 minutes per patients but he was friendly and patient with answering questions so he'd always end up being very late by the time evening came. Had that with multiple doctors so doesn't seem to be unique to Eastern Europe.
> The doctor would give appointment times that assumed he'd spend 15 minutes per patients but he was friendly and patient with answering questions so he'd always end up being very late by the time evening came.
I have a doctor like this, and it's totally worth the wait as she actually listens to people and provides useful information. I do generally try to get a morning appointment with her though, as otherwise it can take a loooooonnnnngggg time.
Yes, the wait is annoying but I do love doctors like this. It's a sign of a great doctor. Just always found it funny that they don't just adjust their appointment time given that the estimate they have is never actually attained in practice.
I typically show up an hour late at the doctors office if my appointment is in the afternoon. It gives the doctor some time to catch up on patients and when I show up I’m the next in line. It benefits both of us.
If you did that in the USA, you would lose your appointment and possibly be billed for a no-show.
I stand corrected
Clothes shopping with Mom. I remember how torturous it was. How my brain felt like it was on fire with boredom, and how all-consuming the pain of it all was.
I'm not convinced boredom was normal per se - people find stuff to do. It's just that the nature of stuff has changed, as has the availability. 20 years ago it was browsing the internet for hours. Before that it was watching TV. Before that there was Other Stuff, like going exploring with a friend (for me). But the 2000s changed things, people got mp3 players and an infinite library of music, smartphones and an infinite amount of activities to do on them at any point of day, internet on the go instead of going to The Space With The Computer, streaming / binging programs instead of having a fixed moment in the day, looking up what's on tonight in the TV guide, or renting a film as a weekend activity.
It's all more instant and always available. I mean books were too (at some point people were complaining about kids these days always reading), but it's different.
Am I worried? A little, because at the same time I keep reminding myself that every generation was worried about what people are up to this time. In 20 years people will probably be nostalgic for today in some way.
You're very right, back in the day a lot of people would complain about people reading newspapers on trains/buses and why these people "just can't let their mind wander" or whatever the argument was. Today you'll instead see people telling others they should put down their phone and read something "physical" instead, I don't think a single person today would complain about others reading books/newspapers on public transport.
In the future some people will surely feel the same about "Device X" and smartphones, and ask themselves "Why can't they be old school and just sit with their smartphone instead?"
The journaling seems like the right direction, but it's still too passive.
If there are three mental modes, two out of three are passive. Let's call this third mode "creative mode". Instead of consuming or meditating, do something else offline that requires developing a skill with your undivided attention.
Even when you're inspired, the interpretation is still your own. There's no way it could ever feel like wasted time because the intrinsic value of experience is so much higher than the other two states.
With enough experience, your own unique ideas will dominate your mind. That's when you finally feel in control.
> 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!!
I like this poster.
https://xcancel.com/pinkerhero/status/1877163466168922473
>Good morning
>I'm moving a bit slow today but... I plan on having a good day anyway!
With age, this is becoming my default setting.
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...
> constantly intaking information will ruin this synthesization.
I don't find that it does, for me. If I'm chewing on a hard technical problem, then I actually need the surface-level distraction of a podcast or a news article or a ballgame to keep it from dominating my conscious thoughts and let my subconscious get to work.
Where I agree with the author, and you, is that I can't do creative work - mainly writing, now, but back when I did this sort of thing professionally: coming up with approaches to a text, or ideas for sets and costumes, or exercises to get my actors where I wanted them to be - without time spent in "silence".
N=1, and all that, but I'm always intrigued by how different people's brains work, well, differently.
The other thing is that (speaking as a software developer) most work is not hard.
> for some reason our brain loves filling the silence with junk
Natural selection might pick for this trait because if you can gather and evaluate and otherwise process a large volume of information you might be able to better find food, avoid getting eaten, and finding a mate to mate with.
executive function and intuition filter, but you need a bunch of data to feed on.
Picture yourself in a location where getting eaten is problem.
Now intersect those locations with internet coverage.
Your statement didn't make much sense anymore
Now picture yourself being just a smart monkey, shaped by evolutionary traits that focused on reproduction and survival.
Now give this monkey tiktok and sensory overload.
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.
Similar for me but I actually like podcasts in the car for this reason. Listening to podcasts sometimes triggers me thinking about issues I care about. When I realize that I’m no longer following the podcast, I just turn it off and let my thoughts go wild.
Being bored is kind of the point though. You should let yourself be bored sometimes. It's a relatively new phenomenon where we have completely avoided any minute of boredom.
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.
Been talking about it for a while now. U need to let ur brain absorb all of the things you are consuming. Let it marinate.
https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/04/2025/you-dont-need-ai...
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.
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.
I prefer to work in silence. But by that I mean actual silence. However, I live in a city where there's construction going on I can hear through my window. If I have to work from the office, there'll be colleagues yapping around (helps with creativity or whatever the sugarcoating is for the open office). Bonus points for one of the offices being next to a different construction site.
In these situations, I tend to prefer having some kind of "ambient" music on, instrumental only, so I can be isolated from the distracting environment. Noise cancelling doesn't work well enough against voices, although I do enjoy the reduction of random ambient noise (A/C hum and the like).
I'm similar except idk about silence, My preference would be natural local sounds, wind,bugs, birds (not mockingbirds lol) but have to settle for music pretty often.
You're not unusual. Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.
> Constant need for something in your ear is a very new phenomena and for some reason a lot of people have gotten in the habit of isolating themselves from the world around them and stopped being in presence of the reality. Sad.
Convenient narrative, but not at all a new phenomenon. I had friends like this in the 90's. And I'm not seeing more people like this than in those days.
I know we're kind of used to rapid societal change at this point, but I'd still consider the 90s or even the 80s recent enough that I could call things that arose in those times as "new phenomena"... from a broader societal standpoint at least.
I can agree with that. Cable TV, Walkmans, and well, even just TVs in general are to blame.
Not even just the 90s. This is self-stimming behaviour. People have been doing this for as long as there’ve been entertainment. This is just normal human behaviour. People using technology to aid them in this is just the modern day version of it. It’s normal. And it’s frankly quite ridiculous to see adults thinking this is ye old “people are soooooo into tech nowadays, them junkies!!!111!!!11!1!”. C’mon now.
Isn't this like self-stimming or self-regulatory behavior?
Have you tried brain.fm?
Thanks!
I’ll check it out, but it’s still likely that I won’t listen.
Cheers. Let me know.
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.
I have a habit of going for a daily walk of about one hour and intentionally avoid bringing headphones to just be with my thoughts.
But I've noticed that if I have something on my mind, I just tend to ruminate and spin in circles. Not sure how constructive or useful at all that is. At least listening to a podcast or similar can provide new things to think about.
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
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
That’s how Von Neumann did his thang, with a tv blaring in the background
The more things change the more they stay the same I suppose
I have this thought everytime I'm at the beach...
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
Replaced sounds, not with silence but with a different type of sound?
I believe anyone that can listen through affirmations with a straight face is either a psychopath or wants to be one.
why? because if you had been meditating, you would start to notice your own thought. They run automatically, you cannot control them. Almost all the time. And the part that you control usually does not even notice them, just succumbs.
so...maybe you just don't see your inner dialogue, or the "monkey mind" ? and are unaware of this, yet a slave to it.
Man, between noticing your own thoughts and listening to affirmations there's a gap that would fit the world.
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.
> it’s my voice. Nobody else has access to it. And it’s an important part of my life.
Beautiful articulation.
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.
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.
I have a lot of dead blogs in my RSS reader I don't remove for this reason. Maybe they'll start writing again. They've survived many opml exports/imports between different readers over the years.
Backfilling it with content from other sites is such a good idea, I'm stealing that for when friends say it's been a bunch of time since they published
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.
I find it odd that others need music or talking to focus. most of the time I prefer silence.
But silence is a luxury; right now I have the window open to try and cool the house down a bit so car noises, there's people doing stuff downstairs, etc.
But I also get restless when it's too quiet. Everyone has their own preferences, but ultimately I think the key point is whether you have control. Like, I hate chaotic spaces, but love chaotic music sometimes.
> I find it odd that others need music or talking to focus. most of the time I prefer silence.
I need music otherwise my brain starts playing music instead of ruminating on thoughts. I also need to keep my body occupied. At least doing the dishes or something, going for a run or walk even better.
Background talking is fine but it has to be from strangers. If there's a tiny little chance someone might say something where I can contribute (like in an office), that ruins any and all ability to think. Brain goes on high alert listening for cues
I’m the same, I think better in silence. It’s the only way I can really hear my own thoughts and let them run without being interrupted by music or conversation. That’s also one of the reasons I prefer working from home to working in an office.
I prefer silence but generally use music to focus. My choices aren't usually music or silence in practice, but music or office background noise.
Since my ordered ranking is Silence, then Music, with Office Noise last, music it is.
But music as instrumentals, yes ? Words are very distracting.
The deeper the concentration, the fewer words I want - or at least words I understand. Classical music with words I don't understand can also work quite well. There also seems to be a vague point where I have heard the lyrics so many times they stop being distracting.
Funny. For me, instrumental music is just as distracting. If I don’t know the music I listen to well enough, my attention will go there and make any coding or reading impossible.
Yup this. While working I love instrumental-only electronic music: no voices.
It's probably a function of how your brain works whether or not you prefer music or silence. For me, a middle-aged man with ADHD, my brain is constantly wandering off to some other thought that isn't what's in front of me. That's not wholly under my control (though stimulant medication does help reduce the effect). BUT... if I have headphones on and am listening to something (wordless music usually works best, but music with words in a language I don't speak is often just as good), then that gives me some partial control over my brain wandering off. Because when my brain wanders off in the middle of a coding session, it usually will wander off into suddenly paying a bit closer attention to the music I was listening to. And then, since that's not something that requires the verbal-processing part of my brain which is the primary part I use for programming, that part of the brain "gets bored" and looks for something to do, sees the code on my screen, and goes "ooh, that's something interesting" and my attention is back where I wanted it to be in the first place.
ADHD, I've often said, is mis-named. It's not attention deficit, it's uncontrollable attention. Although there are many factors that go into the thing labeled ADHD, a large part of it is usually that the "control center" of the brain (the part that controls "executive function", deciding what to do next and so on) is underpowered compared to most people. (Which, I'm told, is why stimulant medication often has the seemingly-paradoxical effect of "calming down" hyperactive kids: because it helps stimulate the executive-function part of the brain, thereby giving them more control over their own thought processes. Certainly that's how it works for me, though as a middle-aged man I'm no longer hyperactive the way I was when I was a boy). So I manage my ADHD brain in two ways: one, I take medication that gives me more ability to control my attention (though not as much as a non-ADHD person usually has), and two, I play tricks on myself. I know that when my attention wanders, it'll usually wander off to something within the range of my immediate senses: my line of sight, or something I'm hearing. So I give myself things that will catch my attention but not hold it for very long... and wordless music is one of the ones that works best for me.
So really, it all depends on how your particular brain functions.
I work in psychometric testing, and it really isn't that strange. Just as many people need that music or communication as those who cannot have it. It's quite fascinating how different brains are on these ostensibly random traits.
I had to make my own focus music. What most other people call focus music puts me to sleep.
Is it an AI self-realizing its own existence?
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.
I recently bumped into default mode network as a concept and started noticing the constant aversion I have for "doing nothing". Now I try to take more of my breaks without constant barrage of external stimuli.
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
Not necessarily, everyone's got their own preferences and sensitivities, it's just how brains work and how it works differently for everyone.
It's too simplistic to just apply a label like ADHD to people. Preferring distraction or silence is only a small part of the diagnostic criteria, and modern diagnostics are more about "how well do you function / how much / what help do you need" than applying a label.
Your post doesn't even have any info or make sense? Jfc I hate the internet... Lol