Enjoy the quiet.
I use to fill up my day with listening to podcasts during all non-work time (e.g. driving in the car, exercising, even showering).
It overloads your brain if it's having to process info during every waking moment.
You brain just needs quiet time to think, relax and explore.
I'm way more relaxed, creative and find unique solutions to problems now, than before.
It's bonkers to me. I resolve so many of my own issues just... staring out the window, or staring at the ceiling.
I get that people are different, and we all have our different ways of going about things, but I just cannot imagine it is healthy to not let your brain "breathe" a bit sometimes.
I mostly sit with my noise cancelling headphones on, with no sound. And lately, I'm just moving towards not having them on at all when I'm not in meetings.
It's wonderful. There's a reason "silence is golden" after all. I actually still find classical music a bit distracting a lot of times even. A lot of the newer composers especially are particularly discordant.
But a motorcycle ride or a nice drive? Even doing the dishes? Now we’re talking! The mind and body are occupied in a mostly autonomus task so the rest of your brain can process and digest. It’s great.
Dare I say I almost enjoy doing chores now.
Another great option for me is boxing. For those 3 minutes in the ring, you are _not_ thinking about anything else. Whether you like it or not, your mind clears and focuses and only the sparring partner exists. It’s great.
You can get that level of focus on a motorcycle, but that gets a little dangerous for my taste. Maybe I should try going to a track.
I find it very difficult to sit in complete silence. It's as if the silence exerts some pressure on me. But I've recently discovered brown noise and it works wonderfully well for me.
It has become my go to sound/noise whenever I'm doing something that requires thinking. This is my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P48QELwruQs
- When I was doing the dishes, I would immediately put a podcast on
- When I was waiting for my kid's music lesson, I would immediately grab a book to read
- When I was eating, I would always turn the TV on
- When I was sitting on the couch, to supposedly rest, I would put a music record on and I would also reach for my mobile phone to "catch up" or text a friend
- When I lie to bed, I immediately would grab my phone to browse HN
I realized that these were harmful habits that I subconsciously formed as a way to distract my mind from other thoughts that were causing stress and anxiety.
These days I'm more mindful about this and I try to just sit there by myself and just be. Kinda like meditation.
- Doing the dishes - podcast
- Walking in the lunch break - audiobook
- Cycling in the park - audiobook
After a couple of months I felt my brain is completely fried from that information overflow.
Now I don't even put my earbuds, unless I'm in a very noisy area and I need to focus on a work task.
I'd say what you describe is an active form of meditation. I do that now when swimming, walking, or simply having a coffee in the morning and looking at the ocean.
Finally, there is a fairly new book that suggests to stop listening to things at all waking hours, "STFU: The Power of Keeping Your Mouth Shut in an Endlessly Noisy World".
However I feel like this question falls into the "optimise every second of the day" thought pattern which kinda goes against the point.
Corporatism is not a random emergent thing. Occupational psychology goes back 100 years, and behavioral economics almost as long.
It’s all melodrama over the end of literal reality if we don’t burn ourselves out though.
it's really underdiscussed how averse people seem to just contemplation.
Another observation I've made is that the more time people spend consuming information, the more they feel compelled to talk. It's as if humans are programmed to share the information they've gathered. I'm certain that in the past, people eagerly listened if you had new information, but these days, everyone is constantly collecting new information. It seems like everyone wants to share/talk, yet no one wants to listen.
"If they don't stop exercising their mouths, their brains start working."
-- Douglas Adams
So many brilliant men in history are known for having walking routines. I'm not going so far as to say walking made them brilliant, but I do think it's likely it contributed to them being able to maintain the physical and mental health needed to be able to think deeply and communicate their thoughts to others.
Now I just enjoy the sound of silence. Sometimes I may put on some music quietly to drown out another background noise but always something I know well so that my brain knows it and doesn't spend time or energy processing it for the 1000th time. I've found it can be any music providing I know it well enough.
I actually listen to fewer podcasts now because of it but I am much happier about that as I seriously began to worry about how my brain needed constant stimulation.
I was unable to just be still in silence.
I worry a lot of us are just overloading our brains with constant stimulation leading to faster burnout and mental health issues but that is a conversation for another day!
If you're always jamming new media into your brain, it's like you're constantly writing to a hard drive without ever giving it time to defragment.
For me, this translates directly to “close this very tab.“ “Now.“ And I’ll do that, but I’ll hit reply first ;-).
And many times, it's overloaded with BS by the host. Suprisingly a lot of misinformation comes from many of HN's favorite influencers.
It's used not just for time-sensitive tasks but also not to over-engineer stuff during hyperfocus.
nagme () {
[ "$#" -ne 2 ] && printf "usage: $0 [in_minutes] [text]\n" && return 1
printf "sleeping $1 min before telling you to $2\n"
sleep $(echo $1\*60|bc)
espeak "$2" > /dev/null 2>&1
while :
do
sleep 30
echo -n '.'
espeak "I'm nagging you to $2" > /dev/null 2>&1
done
}It prints out pretty charts :)
I was hoping to open-source it this month, but I'm swamped with work. Maybe next month haha
Also early ones were much more failure prone and harder to work on (though manufacturers have pretty much abandoned that metric for consumer machines these days anyways unless you're spending lots extra for it).
#!/bin/bash
[ "$#" -ne 2 ] && echo "Usage: nag when msg\n" && exit -1
when=$1; shift
sleep $when; swaynag -m "$@"edit: thanks for the answers
Looks pretty similar to me, and being a monospaced font makes sense as it's being used by a dev.
> I do this by using the same number of characters with a monospace font.
Thanks!
>I tried whatthefont
Has that website ever worked for anyone?
The author uses awesomewm (window manager), and loads the default font[2]. Default font is noto sans[3].
edit: add missing 'h' to start of ref 1.
[1]: https://github.com/madprops/awesome-setup/blob/f8557150941ce...
[2]: https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/blob/b13ac3e34d7702778a...
[3]: https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/blob/b13ac3e34d7702778a...
The ability to label your "posts" seems pretty powerful too. Then your blog can be navigated by your tagging system, which means it can also start to act as a personal wiki...
I love how simple markdown is and how covers most of my writing use cases.
There is something really nice about having the timer disconnected from all other usability as a separate device and at the same time not having to care if it is lost or damaged.
I was actually thinking on using org pomodoro for implementing this.
This is for a similar reason given in the github explanation -- even when I think I'm done, I almost always find one more cup or utensil that I missed.
Sometimes an unexpected snack makes its way into my belly, leaving behind an annoying dirty plate that needs some cleaning.
I have solved far more tricky problems on a chair lift at a ski area than I have in an office chair.
wm? window manager?
It looks like part of a shell window on Linux maybe? Does anyone know a good resource on how to customize your shell like this?
Their code[1] references "wibox", a concept from the `awesome` WM[2]
[1]: https://github.com/madprops/awesome-setup/blob/master/madwid... [2]: https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/wibox.html
I pretend that information cannot be transmitted across time except by machines, living things are mind-reset by Cthulhu at random intervals in a manner only studied at Miskatonic University.
"The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr, I found it an interesting read, "As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer"
Tap button once: +1 minute.
Tap twice: +5 minute.
Tap three times: +20 minutes.
Tap secondary button: Reset timer.
And this app was always in foreground.
[1]:orgmode.org/manual/Timers.html [2]:youtube.com/shorts/JbHE819kVGQ
The only time I find it hard to do things in silence is while exercising... mainly the treadmill.
Still cool.