> 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.

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 :-)

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.

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 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

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.

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.

> 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.

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 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Have you tried brain.fm?

That’s how Von Neumann did his thang, with a tv blaring in the background

I have this thought everytime I'm at the beach...

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.