>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 can't generalize for everyone and maybe some of those people you observe are just listening to music all day long.
In my circle, we have earphones all the time because we're listening to podcasts of news, tech industry commentary, macroeconomics and finance, etc. If one is working in an area where you're professionally rewarded by being curious about the changing world and being "plugged in", having "headphones on all the time" can help with staying up-to-date. Even with all that headphone time, there are still many hours in the day in personal silence. Laying in bed consolidating various thoughts before falling asleep. Standing in the shower. Reading blogs, etc. Before podcasts, we'd have to "waste time" sitting in front of the computer to catch up on the same material. Podcasts help us multitask.
Of course, not everybody needs (or wants) to have headphones on all the time. The mathematician Andrew Wiles pursued Fermat's Last Theorem for 30 years before finally solving it. He doesn't need a random podcast that talks about the Iran war and its downstream economic effects on manufacturing computer chips. That type of "useless" news would probably bore him.
>, 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.
It just depends on the threshold of mindless activity. If I'm driving in an unknown city with confusing one-way streets, I don't want a podcast voice yapping in my ear while I'm concentrating on reading the traffic signs. On the other hand, driving through 100 miles of monotonous corn fields on a highway means I can catch up on a backlog of podcasts.
My non expert and personal opinion is that multitasking for a long time is not a free lunch and could lead to burnout for most people
>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 can be a "free lunch" in the sense that the curiosity-seeking mind got fed while whatever physical task that needed to get done also got done with less procrastination and dread.
I wasn't talking about trying to edit a Excel spreadsheet while listening and concentrating on a podcast about the politics and protests of datacenter buildouts.
> In those cases, it can be a "free lunch" in the sense that the curiosity-seeking mind got fed while whatever physical task that needed to get done also got done with less procrastination and dread.
The interesting thing is, exercise is more effective and beneficial when brain is focused on what body is doing, i.e. doing mindful exercise is more beneficial than giving brain a pacifier while body is doing something else.
On the "procrastination & dread": The brain has a daily limit on hard concentration. From my personal experience (during my Ph.D.) it tops around four hours most. I also find staying put very useful and beneficial, because after stuffing too much information into it, your brain needs to sift through and filter it. Also I find myself refining my previous ideas while staying put and doing nothing maybe except writing down what I'm refining or journaling.
You can create brain fatigue, fog or plain burnout by trying to make it run flat our all day long. Let it rest, reset and restore. You'll have much more happier.
I had not heard that about mindful exercise before. Do you have a source with more information?
I do not remember the exact study, but the one I read was pretty eye opening:
A big hotel chain takes a group of housekeepers and told them that their work also doubles as exercise. When compared to the control group, I believe after 8 weeks, the group which told that their work also doubles as exercise lost some weight collectively. Looks like the paper is at [0].
I have also done some further research into this, and found a couple of related studies.
One is [1]. Which simply states that focusing on the muscle group you're working on increases its activity and doubles the build-up. More references are present in the article.
Another study [2], tells that having an external focus point (music, podcasts or something) allows brain to make actions automatic and improve movement efficiency and economy, meaning the energy used is decreased IIUC. Hence, focusing internally makes body to burn more energy.
This study [3] states that listening to well selected music can improve efficiency and work output while reducing perceived strain. Improved efficiency again reduces the burnt calories per fixed time period, hence somewhat reducing the effectiveness of the exercise itself.
Hence, if you want to go far, some music or podcast can be beneficial, but for burning maximum calories in a limited time slot, looks like it reduces the effectiveness of the exercise somewhat.
Hope this helps.
[0]: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01...
[1]: https://larsonsportsortho.com/mind-muscle-connection-can-bui...
[2]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7739707/
[3]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3339578/
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.
There is indeed quite a rich literature on the importance of boredom too. Basic links can be found on Wikipedia, Buddhism generally confronts it as well, and even research in psychology generally sees it as an important cognitive or emotional process. Sadly I feel we are losing sight of this.
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.
Yeah. We have limited capacity to use every day. So I try just keep the brain away from stimulation as much as I can and use it only on useful stuff.
>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.
Those 2 sentences are based on 2 misconceptions/assumptions that need to be clarified.
1) That being bored is better than ingesting information. There seems to be a bias that self-dialogue and introspection is "superior" to external information. That depends on the person and so it's not always true. For some, when left to their own thoughts, they get into negative loops replaying past mistakes, or anguish about upcoming dilemmas ("Should I quit my job?", "Should I put mom in a nursing home?" etc) to which they don't have answers for. This is what some call "getting stuck in a rut" or "beating yourself up". It's inflicting self-harm. You can try to tell people "just don't think of negative thoughts and just sit there thinking of nothing". That doesn't work because it's like the joke of instructing people, "Don't think of an elephant!" -- which causes people to immediately think of an elephant. Instead of destructive loops, maybe a steady diet of external voices can help reframe things or just give the mind other ideas that are more productive and healthier to think about. To improve the quality of introspection, maybe look for quality external ideas.
2) My comment gave the impression I do nothing else but listen to podcasts and have no silent contemplative time. That's not what happens. For the first ~8 hours after I wake up, that's when my mind is most alert and mentally sharp. I do not "waste" this energy on listening to podcasts at all. That's when I do my contemplations, coding, etc. However, after the morning when my mind starts to drag... that's when it's ok to listen to audiobooks. Since I have to go outside to spread several cubic yards of mulch (mindless unpleasant housework), I queue up several podcasts to feed the mind while the work gets done. At that later point in the day, the brain is too fried to have deep introspection but it can still handle a lightweight podcast talking about trends in AI. Hopefully pick up some new ideas to bounce around the next morning's contemplative session. It's optimizing the schedule of activities to match the ups and downs in mental energy throughout the day. For neighbors who observe me, they just see that "he has headphones on all the time". Yes, because they don't shadow me at my desk in the morning when I don't.
I think there are some in this thread that assume the audiobooks/podcasts are "junk food" and the silent introspection is the "good and pure nourishment". That's not necessarily true. The opposite may be the case.
Yes, or the question is how much of both are you really engaged with and will remember at all. And then if you do, maybe the information was crap and not worthy of your attention anyway. I think anything really worth doing is worth doing at your 100%.
I love listening to audiobooks and such because it’s hard to find time to read. I mostly pick “fun” light to medium grade stuff like the stormlight archives, things that don’t demand my constant attention but aren’t as surface level as 90% of podcasts.
With the right kind of music, it's not multitasking. A soothing repetitive beat with no lyrics (lofi or trance for me) is perfect for me to work with, without getting an overwhelming sensation.
> maybe some of those people you observe are just listening to music all day long.
Is that supposed to be better? Modern humans can't stand listening to their own thoughts
What does not being able to stand listening to your own thoughts mean, to you? This feels like a very 'kids these days' comment but I don't feel like I actually understand what people are talking about when they say this.
For me music helps me concentrate with some tasks (especially in a more noisy environment where there are more distracting sounds), distracts for others, and for some just makes it a little less boring. I don't really find that I want it for the sake of displacing my own thoughts, if I'm bored doing something it's because there aren't any particularly interesting thoughts involved (and full disclosure, I have ADHD so my mind doesn't really need any encouragement at all to wander).
Introspection is the act of looking inward to examine your own thoughts, feelings, and motives. It is a personal process of self-reflection that helps you understand why you act and feel the way you do.
Pretty much everyone can benefit with some time for introspection. This is considerably easier to do if you have silence and boredom. Music, podcasts, television all hinder the practice of introspection. It takes practice though and that means being okay with silence and constantly keeping your mind on the task of examining your thoughts and feelings.
I think the poster was perhaps expressing that it doesn't look like enough people are comfortable with this process and seem to do anything they can to avoid it.
> Music, podcasts, television all hinder the practice of introspection.
For you. It hinders the process for you. Some people think better when not in complete silence.
Anyone that tries to speak broadly and paint everyone with the same brush when talking about neurological phenomena is clearly completely out of touch with the subject. The mind is a wonderfully complex and wholly unique thing. What works for one might not work for another.
This is a pretty well studied and researched area. It is in the research almost universally accepted that silence or white-noise is the most conducive environmental soundscape for introspective thought across all groups.
Can a person who spent their entire life in a low sensory environment have a lot of worthwhile introspection? I think even the low sensory cave children have a form of council.
People go to therapy, group therapy, read, etc in order to have thoughts of others that seem rather important to introspective thought to me. I don't think all audio media and forms of listening would fit, but I don't think all wouldn't fit as those important inputs.
Ah, fair. I do often listen to music but I don't find myself short of time for introspection, in fact I probably spend too much time on it overall.
> What does not being able to stand listening to your own thoughts mean, to you?
Just being yourself with no external stimuli. A lot of people go through the whole day listening to podcasts, books and music, from morning commute to falling asleep
What?