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Hello, me. It's been a while
- aselimov3 2mo agoYea 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 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...
- andsoitis 2mo ago> 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.
- NamlchakKhandro 2mo agoPicture yourself in a location where getting eaten is problem. Now intersect those locations with internet coverage. Your statement didn't make much sense anymore
- pprotas 2mo agoNow 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.
- snayan 2mo agoThere in lies the problem. The environment these days is evolving far faster than our species. Just because our biological programming is no longer fit for purpose, doesn't mean we've evolved beyond said programming. Even if we could completely rewrite our programming with each new generation, think about how much the world changes in a single lifetime these days.
- eszed 2mo ago> 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.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoThe other thing is that (speaking as a software developer) most work is not hard.
- blinkbat 2mo agoI find it odd that others need music or talking to focus. most of the time I prefer silence.
- somesoftdev 2mo agoI’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.
- mmcdermott 2mo agoI 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.
- euroderf 2mo agoBut music as instrumentals, yes ? Words are very distracting.
- TacticalCoder 2mo agoYup this. While working I love instrumental-only electronic music: no voices.
- hallgrim 2mo agoFunny. 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.
- mmcdermott 2mo agoThe 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.
- PlunderBunny 2mo agoIf 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!
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoI’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.
- andsoitis 2mo agoHave you tried brain.fm?
- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoThanks! I’ll check it out, but it’s still likely that I won’t listen.
- andsoitis 2mo agoCheers. Let me know.
- kkotak 2mo agoYou'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.
- BeetleB 2mo ago> 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.
- nantangitan 2mo ago
- NewLincoln 2mo agoThis 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.
- vladvasiliu 2mo agoI 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.
- simonw 2mo agoReigniting 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.
- jborichevskiy 2mo agoBackfilling 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
- usef- 2mo agoI 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.
- 0gs 2mo agowow. 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.
- Barrin92 2mo agoThere'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.
- Mulderns 2mo agoI 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.
- vishnugupta 2mo agoCan 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.
- andsoitis 2mo ago> it’s my voice. Nobody else has access to it. And it’s an important part of my life. Beautiful articulation.
- chis 2mo agoIt’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.
- andai 2mo agoI 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.
- Hugsbox 2mo agoThis is me, but for smoke breaks at work. Half the time I don't need the cigarette, I just need the change of scenery to break up the day.
- deinonychus 2mo agoi'm quitting smoking and kind of nervous about what it's going to be like taking breaks without having the excuse of a cigarette to get up and stretch my legs and get fresh air. i bought one of those xteink pocket-sized ereaders and i'm thinking maybe carrying that with me outside and reading for a few minutes will be an ok simulation, along with a nicotine lozenge.
- Eddonarth 2mo agoI quit smoking in February (cold turkey, no lozenge or anything). And I replaced my smoking breaks with walking around the block either at the office or at home. Sometimes I listen to an audiobook, sometimes I just walk with no other stimulus besides a cold bottle of water. I've been really enjoying it, almost as much as smoking a cigarette :)
- hankbond 2mo agoFor 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.
- ideasman42 2mo agoIt'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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_partial_attention
- dr_dshiv 2mo agoThat’s how Von Neumann did his thang, with a tv blaring in the background
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoThe more things change the more they stay the same I suppose
- tayo42 2mo agoI have this thought everytime I'm at the beach...
- inigyou 2mo agoI used to have the MSDN Library installed on my computer, from a CD, and it was reasonable to program offline. We should bring that model back. (Not for Windows - Windows sucks now. But for whatever we're doing)
- hatthew 2mo agoI 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.
- serial_dev 2mo agoSimilar 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.
- KPGv2 2mo agoThis is how I write my novels. It works incredibly.
- SchemaLoad 2mo agoBeing 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.
- annzabelle 2mo agoI'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.
- digitallogic 2mo agoITT: a lot of undiagnosed ADHD
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoNot 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.
- chanux 2mo ago> 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!!
- andai 2mo agoI like this poster. https://xcancel.com/pinkerhero/status/1877163466168922473 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.
- Leftium 2mo agoWhen this was posted to HN, a lot of people could relate: https://sive.rs/slow https://sive.rs/slow For me, I'm not sure if "slow" is the right word. I think "delayed" or "sporadic" is more accurate. Thoughts for me are like when a word is on the tip of your tongue, but you can't think of it right away. Often you'll think of the word later: you weren't actively thinking about it, but the thought was simmering in your mind and just randomly pops up.
- chanux 2mo agoWow Sivers a decade ago! Thanks for bringing it up.
- stronglikedan 2mo agoThank goodness for asynchronous communication! I would have hated to work back when phones were the primary method of communication. I still get phone anxiety whenever I have to make a call.
- anonymous344 2mo agoContet 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
- vasco 2mo agoI believe anyone that can listen through affirmations with a straight face is either a psychopath or wants to be one.
- anonymous344 2mo agowhy? 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.
- vasco 2mo agoMan, between noticing your own thoughts and listening to affirmations there's a gap that would fit the world.
- xandrius 2mo agoReplaced sounds, not with silence but with a different type of sound?
- vektormemory 2mo agoYour post doesn't even have any info or make sense? Jfc I hate the internet... Lol
- isakmarr 2mo agoHow does it not make sense?
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- harrouet 2mo agoIs it an AI self-realizing its own existence?
- doiskoh 2mo agoUmmm... 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?
- lcyy3 2mo agoI 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.
- lrvick 2mo agoMy 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.
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoIn 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.
- inigyou 2mo agoso we have to buy land? We're fucked.
- CrzyLngPwd 2mo agoMy path isn't your path, you'll find your own path like I did, eventually.
- DavidPiper 2mo agoAt 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.
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- HeadlessChild 2mo ago> So, time to deal with that I guess. So, time to deal with that.
- deinonychus 2mo agoi've also been mindful of this for a few years but it's not something i've thought to talk to others about - imagine telling your friends you're addicted to podcasts. i still walk around at home with my airpods in like a zombie, but i've found some opportunities to free my brain, like when i'm walking outside in the city for short walks i try to go airpod-free. or when i have a short drive, i listen to the radio (NTS) instead of a podcast and it reeeeallly feels great to feel unplugged and listen to my thoughts and feelings for a bit. i guess the stimulation from those activities (seeing the city, having to drive, etc) helps make it easier to unplug a bit. other things that are obvious in hindsight: i think it's also easier for me to exist at home without ear heroin when i've slept really well, when i'm not feeling pressured or nervous, and when i'm not amped up on coffee or stims.
- keybored 2mo agoheadphones block nature take off and take in the stream living room and screens
- t43562 2mo agoI 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.
- isodude 2mo agoSometimes I put my headphones on, just to forget to also put music on. Hours later I realize that it helped me focus anyhow.
- bambax 2mo ago> 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.
- t43562 2mo agoIn 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 :-)
- nkapias 2mo ago> 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.
- bambax 2mo agoEarplugs work very well for me. I can't hear anything with them on.
- embedding-shape 2mo ago> 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.
- damienmeur 2mo agoGreat 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 https://devpost.com/software/bananaduck
- isakmarr 2mo agoThis has absolutely nothing to do with the article.
- damienmeur 2mo agoyup sorry indeed, I had two hacker news tab opened and wrote this at wrong place
- unsungNovelty 2mo agoBeen 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-summaries-tldr-or-to-be-on-top-of-things/#quality-less-consumption-re-consumption-mind-wandering-and-focus https://www.unsungnovelty.org/posts/04/2025/you-dont-need-ai...
- moribvndvs 2mo agoI’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.
- fenestella 2mo ago[flagged]
- snayan 2mo agoYeah, I'm convinced humanity is hitting a wall of sorts. For most of my life, the voices in my head were very, very unpleasant, and downright mean and evil a lot of the time. I was never enough, everything I did was wrong, unworthy, disgusting, etc, etc. I know I was not alone in being wired that way, obviously not a conversation you have with random strangers, but in conversation with people I know well, it would appear it's fairly common in the world we live in. Or perhaps I've just got a uniquely disfunctional group of friends hah. But, work on the Meaning Crisis as John Vervaeke calls it, increases in mental health issues, and declining birth rates, lead me to believe this is endemic. I've been fortunate to have been able to spend the past 15 months fucking off and looking inside to wrestle with this and I'm fairly convinced our HumanOS or whatever you want to call it, the ego, is no longer fit for purpose for a lot of people in modernity. Before I go further, I'll acknowledge that our ego has served us well for most of human history, it's driven progress to this point that has, for a large swath of the population, eliminated hunger, and we're much more secure than we've ever been generally. But, I'd argue it's become increasingly problematic since somewhere around The Enlightenment / Scientific Revolution, very problematic in the past 100 years or so, and quite frankly, supercharged since the advent of the internet, smart phones, and social media. Our ancient ancestors were influenced by people in their immediate orbit, and it was a symbiotic relationship of sorts, everyone had a vested interest in the success of those around them and vice versa. As our society has evolved, this alignment has dwindled, and with the advent of the internet, we're constantly being blasted by attempts to influence us, that no longer have our best interest at heart, but our programming hasn't caught up. So now, this programming that once provided a stable sense of self, is now constantly being blasted with conflicting ideas of the self, it's increasingly difficult to keep the inner and outer world in alignment, and well, the ego is an engine that is burning up. For a lot of us, this manifests with the negative self talk that we'll all do anything we can to avoid, and one of the most effective ways to do so, is to avoid being idle, anything we can do to keep the mind focused outward rather than inward. Those of us that are alive today don't have the luxury of waiting for evolutionary pressures to 'solve' this problem for future generations. In my personal experience, the solution seems to be waking up to these machinations of ego. Don't fully understand how it works, but it seems that awareness of said machinations can act as a recursive loop to silence them.
- thebiblelover7 2mo agoI've had a similar experience but more specifically with music. I decided a couple years ago to take a break from listening to music for 3 months. The first afternoon of this experiment showed to me that I was addicted to music and that I hated silence. I now realize that taking moments to walk, eat, clean the house with nothing to listen to can be really productive and beneficial. This article also reminds me of a recent video by Simple Lucas: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NZD5IFpyDcE https://youtube.com/watch?v=NZD5IFpyDcE
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- theF00l 2mo agoI too try to practice stillness, through silence and meditation. I agree that it is challenging. In stillness, uncomfortable feelings will come up, before they can leave. Imo, better than the alternative of avoidance. Yet somehow, it is marketed as relaxing. The relaxing part comes after one deals with the unrelaxing part.
- yunbiao 2mo agoIt's hard for me to think > 5mins if I'm in front of my laptop after the the age the ai now. I used to close my eyes and let things run in my head trying to find a solution. but now i will ask the ai if I can figure it out myself in 5 mins.
- D-Machine 2mo agoA bit surprised at the focus on auditory stimuli here. There is a deeper point about our need for distraction in contemporary society which I think is with thinking about a bit. You can scroll Twitter / read Hacker News or other sources of comments online, scroll TikTok / YouTube shorts slop-spam, read books, or constantly pipe in music / podcasts in any free moment (and these are very different and all can be good and bad in different ways), but if you are constantly fleeing boredom by grasping for whatever distraction is immediately available (even if this activity is typically seen as good, like "learning" or "reading books", or benign, like listening to music), this constant distraction has negative long-term consequences for personal growth. There is a reason boredom comes up as crucial and important in spiritual practices (most meditation practices broadly involve forcing you to confront and learn to be comfortable with boredom, to some degree) and existential philosophy, and it is because boredom (especially existential boredom) is one way the mind tells you might not be being properly challenged, or that certain aspects of your life might not be truly fulfilling at the moment. And sure, sometimes it isn't clear how to fix these issues, so distraction isn't inherently bad. But if all you do is distract, you'll flounder. So be wary IMO of habitually reaching for distraction (even if mild, like music / podcasts).
- mangoman 2mo agoI’ve been trying to start this “I don’t need any distraction for this task” challenge, but honestly it’s been REALLY tough for me. I’ve even noticed apprehension to start a particular chore like folding laundry if I don’t have something to distract me. Its like… because folding laundry takes so long, without a distraction it feels like I’m wasting my time, or just running out of time in the day? Doing dishes, mowing the lawn, even just waiting for agents to finish, this need for distraction has really taken a hold of me, and it’s even getting in the way of me wanting to do things that I feel would motivate me again. I can’t help but wonder if agentic development has exacerbated this problem for me. There are so many more times where I just have to wait for things now. Sometimes I can multitask, and work on two things at once, but often that ends with me doing both things with less craft. So I end up consuming content more, which feels addictive too… and I’m not even talking about TikTok or Instagram or Youtube Shorts (and i don’t judge those who do consume there). I mainly consume longer form Youtube, Podcasts or honestly, TV shows that I’ve seen multiple times before. It’s like the agentic tools incentivize NOT thinking very hard, and so I do it less, making it more intimidating to start thinking hard about a problem because it feels like a waste of time. Which, paradoxically, is why I think I am consuming much more content than I used to, filling up space with intellectual junk food.
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- luddeman 2mo agoInteresting, I started to actually do this for about two weeks ago. Calling it "doing one thing at the time" If I eat, I eat. If I walk somewhere, I'm walking. If I'm listening to music, I'm just listening to the music. As far it's been good to me. More energy throughout the days and less things left half done or procrastinated. Though I have noticed I feel bored a lot more often.
- LiteUser 2mo agoThis hits home so hard (did I write this?). I'm curious how many are afflicted with this. I don't hear enough people talk about the powerful addiction of "podcasts + headphones". There is an endless amount of content, so if you're not careful, the majority of the voices in your head will not be your own. This happened to me. I justified it because "I was learning", and "it's like listening to the radio, but better", or "this content is good for me", but when every moment alone is filled with someone else's words and thoughts, you stop having any of your own.
- mattrighetti 2mo ago> I don't hear enough people talk about the powerful addiction of "podcasts + headphones" I have headphones on everywhere I go. If I’m outside I have them on, while I’m doing work in the office I have them on, when I’m doing sport I have them on. When I don’t have them on, I’m usually at home and I’m playing stuff via speakers. I’m not playing stuff only when I’m out with friends, of course. To be honest I think it’s one of the reasons why I feel very good and comfortable being on my own alone. But I definitely agree that there might be some kind of addiction in all of this. > but when every moment alone is filled with someone else's words and thoughts, you stop having any of your own I don’t necessarily agree with this, especially because I think about the thing that is being discussed and agree/disagree for different reasons. I might argue that podcast give you a reason to think about “unusual” things sometimes?
- testing22321 2mo ago> I have headphones on everywhere I go. If I’m outside I have them on, while I’m doing work in the office I have them on, when I’m doing sport I have them on Back in about 2007 I realized I was doing this. At the gym, snowboarding, walking to work, at the supermarket. I realized it closed me off from meeting new people and living in the now. Music encouraged me to drift away and think about some other time in my life when I saw that band, or was at a great party or something. So I put the iPod away and have never done it since. I don’t own headphones now, have not done for 20 years. Really happy I made the correction not to get sucked in.
- murzynalbinos 2mo agoReclaiming silence is often the only way to hear one's own voice again after years of default distraction.
- noobermin 2mo agoI will say 50% of HN is responsible for the state of things today with attention. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
- simonebrunozzi 1mo agoWent to see the "about" page - almost sweet and innocent to see some spam comments in there. Clearly the author didn't check it recently.