Author’s Note: I don’t pretend to generalize my experience and tendencies to everyone else’s. Additionally, this is not a rigorously substantiated post, only pieced together from recollections of things I had researched previously. Treat claims I make and scientific langauge I use with a grain of salt.
01 Ever-Expanding Attention Economy
Since I was a kid, the attention economy has expanded dramatically. I know it’s a cliche, but every moment of my life now can be filled with some kind of stimulus — podcasts, videos, music, emails, messages, school, work tasks, etc. Hours of genuine boredom, once common in my childhood, have become rare. There’s always something to consume, and quiet moments have become endangered. This isn’t just adulthood’s doing, but the modern age’s relentless drive toward 24/7 productivity.
02 Overstimulation: A Day in the Life
The first thing I do each morning is pop in my earbuds for the day’s podcast lineup. I brush teeth, make breakfast, and down coffee while simultaneously catching up on messages, checking my todo list, and riding to class — all while absorbing the latest in politics, law, business, AI tech, psychology, philosophy, or history.
In classes, I’m half-listening while responding to Slack messages, checking emails, and collecting five-minute productivity wins without absorbing much actual content. Between classes? Back to my audio stream. After classes, I’ll have lunch, more coffee, and do homework with politics streams in the background, task-hopping relentlessly while missing responses I should have sent. Only when deadlines loom do I shut off the noise and focus. I ride home, prepare for bed, and handle everything while still consuming podcasts, audiobooks, or videos. Often feeling I haven’t done enough, I’ll work on “me time” activities (videos and coding projects) until crashing at 3AM. ADHD folks call this “Revenge Bedtime Procrastination.” Rinse and repeat 7 days a week for two years.
03 The Burnout Cycle
My earbuds likely spend more time in my ears than out. This constant digital and caffeine stimulation is exhausting and undermines my health and productivity. The absence of silence creates perpetual burnout. While I can’t definitively blame all my exhaustion on this lifestlye — too many variables at play — I’m compelled to experiment with deliberate stimulus starvation.
I embarrassingly fit the stereotype of the overstimulated young workaholic who never feels they’re doing enough. Yet acknowledging the cliché doesn’t eliminate it. Doing so requires introspection on your values and emotional reality.
04 The Productivity Trap
04.00 Using Every Moment to its Fullest
What causes me to act like this? This compulsion may primarily stem from wanting to maximize every moment. Why just clean or commute when I could simultaneously educate myself about my field or human experience? When bored or fully understanding a lecture, the temptation to divert 20% of my attention to emails so that I may experience a drop of freetime afterwards feels irresistible. I constantly ask myself, “Am I doing the most possible right now?” — with the answer invariably being “no.”
This stems partly from genuine growth ambitions — wanting to understand the world better — and partly from the constant battle to stay ahead of mounting responsibilities. It can feel deeply irresponsible to ignore messages or responsibilities I have when the ability to address them immediately.
05 What We Lose in the Absence of Quiet
05.00 The Unmeasurable Value of Silence
By quiet, I mean not just “moments of actual silence” and instead I mean moments where you are under 100% mental load. A boring but easy to follow lecture would count as “quiet” in the sense I ended up using it.
Quiet’s benefits are hard to articulate precisely because silent moments lack predefined, measurable goals. We envision achievement as focused effort on concrete problems.
05.01 Creativity and Connection
Creative thoughts and surprising connections flourish in quiet. Silence enables deeper self-reflection aiding personal relationships, wellbeing, and life decisions. While there may be diminishing marginal returns on quiet, I think some amount is inarguably helpful (recall ideas you may have gotten during walks or, on the other end, try making important decisions while videos play in the background and your phone rings non-stop). Quiet makes you captain of your thought-ship and consequently actions you make when your executive functioning side kicks in. The constant noise stream impedes both focused work and diffuse thinking (the Default Mode Network (DMN) activity — typically characterized by loose, big-picture, subconscious processing). Excessive focus without breaks leads to burnout (something something Executive Control Network (ECN)). Diffuse thinking helps overcome the Einstellung effect, where rigid problem-solving blocks simpler solutions. By flooding your brain with podcasts or diverting attention to emails during lectures, you’re sabotaging your ability to solidify knowledge through background processing. (Take this with a grain of salt, not rigorously researched!)
Barbara Oakley’s pinball analogy
05.02 Deeper Learning and Insight
Creative tasks improve dramatically when spread across multiple sessions. Writing a report in blocks totaling 40 hours over a month yields vastly different results than a single 40-hour marathon. The intervening time allows for reflection and processing. Similarly, learning sticks better when interspersed with diffuse thinking and sleep. (Again, grain of salt)
05.03 Presence and Wellbeing
Multitasking with podcasts or emails predictably reduces effectiveness (duh). This constant distraction functions as anti-mindfulness. Through exploring literature on mindfulness, I’ve discovered it extends beyond brief meditation sessions — presence can infuse and benefit every moment. Far from being a luxury for “squishy” pretentious types, this mindful presence substantially enhances life quality and wellbeing.
06 Actions
Anyways, all this reasoning is to say that I’m going to try making more room for quiet and less stimulus. This won’t be the total irradication of podcasts, videos, or multitasking,but instead I intend to at least do so sparingly. I won’t listen to episodes or videos that don’t sound particularly appealing and try my best to avoid multitasking, particularly in classes. I have been trying to use Cold Turkey for this, but it has been difficult to keep enabled since I sometimes need access to certain resources during class.