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Hello, me. It's been a while

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Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#161

Post by elAhmo »

bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

Silence during driving is not really a good thing, you should be aware of the surroundings and other participants, hear your car for weird noises, etc.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#162

Post by slumberlust »

dspillett wrote: post #107
bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

> 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.

Alia?

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#163

Post by mangoman »

I’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.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#164

Post by D-Machine »

sublinear wrote: post #48
chis wrote: post #24

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 a…

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 t…

There is still IMO a way that "creative mode" can be wasted time, and that is when it is being used as a distraction from proper reflection / introspection. The pursuit of creativity / learning can be its own unhealthy obsession too.

Your ending paragraph: "With enough experience, your own unique ideas will dominate your mind. That's when you finally feel in control." also reads as something that could probably also be seen as potentially bad / delusion, in spiritual contexts as well (real control is mostly illusion, you actually do often want other people's ideas to dominate the mind, lest you fall into solipsism / narcissism, etc). Not to pick at your short comment here or presume that though, but it definitely sets off a red flag of some kind.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#165

Post by D-Machine »

embedding-shape wrote: post #82
bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

> 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 peop…

I see a lot of people walking around in the city with headphones, and I always find it concerning. These people have huge issues with situational awareness: they can't hear faster walkers approaching from behind, often don't notice suspicious or erratic behaviour from the local flavour until far too late, and IMO are simply incapable of properly anticipating things like increased engine roars as a driver guns it trying to make it by on a yellow.

As long as people realize they are making this tradeoff, fine, I guess. But I wouldn't.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#166

Post by D-Machine »

elAhmo wrote: post #161
bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

Silence during driving is not really a good thing, you should be aware of the surroundings and other participants, hear your car for weird noises, etc.

Same with walking in the city IMO.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#167

Post by ipsod »

conception wrote: post #159
jasode wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>multitasking for a long time is not a free lunch The multitasking I was talking about was combining a mindless repetitive task that has low cognitive demands such as walking on a treadmill, yardwork raking leaves, driving on non-descript boring roads ... with listening to a podcast about whatever topics are interesting. The mind is engaged while the hands and feet doing the work are on autopilot. In those cases, it…

It’s also under appreciated that its good to have the brain be bored and doing nothing. While you are being curious you aren’t thinking or contemplating or creating or imagining, just consuming that dopamine sink.

I was a professional glass artist and auctioned all of my work. When you've done it for years, molten glass keeps the hands busy, but seems to leave the mind free - very easy to listen to a podcast or music while working.

But... if I didn't... I made substantially more money per hour. Partially by being faster, but mostly by being better.

On the surface, it felt like nothing was going on, simple as driving to work, but just having that headspace for intuition to happen made a big difference. Also, probably worth mentioning that I never did production work, only explorative, so perception/intuition was maybe overweighted.

I half suspect that it's true for all of life, though. It's just a lot harder to tell when you don't have the market telling you the value of how you spent your hours each week.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#168

Post by medbar »

bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

> In open spaces I wear earplugs.

Noise canceling headphones do the trick for me, I just don’t play anything through them. I don’t like the feeling of something in my ears.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#169

Post by dimitrios1 »

bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

Two reflections from me:

- Starting my career during the beginning of and through the peak of the open floor plan office trained me to use headphones as a signal to others that I wanted to be left alone / needed to focus on my task. Now I catch myself doing it in other contexts subconsciously, like the gym, and have to stop myself sometimes to make sure I am doing it intentionally. I am at the age now where like you, I either prefer silence, or reminisce about the bygone days where people struck up conversations, past the usual pleasantries - just deep conversation with a total stranger that you may or may not ever see again, which wearing headphones takes away that possibility.

- silence is generally, in my opinion, for content people and/or people not struggling with a mental illness. I'd venture a guess that our field skews towards people who have negative internal voices. Having something playing as a distraction can take you away from those destructive thoughts. I had to do a lot of cognitive behavioral therapy and soul searching to be content with silence.

Re: Hello, me. It's been a while

#170

Post by stronglikedan »

medbar wrote: post #168
bambax wrote: post #80

> 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 do…

> In open spaces I wear earplugs. Noise canceling headphones do the trick for me, I just don’t play anything through them. I don’t like the feeling of something in my ears.

I haven't found noise cancelling headphones that don't cause pressure. And with Bose it's like some weird negative something sensation - like disturbingly quiet. I presume it's what those sound proof rooms feel like from what I've heard described.
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