As soon as I wake up, I would turn on some music to get ready for the day. When having my morning coffee, I would switch that music to a daily news podcast. Then, during the break of a lecture, I used to almost instantly grab my phone. The same goes for when have to wait in line for something or go to the restroom.
I never had this quiet time when my mind could speak to me. A time most of us call: boredom. We always have something to distract us from the present: music, a podcast, a video, or whatever. We hate silence and boredom. We avoid it. I used to avoid it too.
A hidden itch
Whenever I had a tiny gap of time when I was alone with no distraction, an urge forced me to seek some kind of entertainment. As if I was afraid of silence. It was a Pavlovian loop where every time I fell into a boring moment, I reached for a distraction.
It was when I first learned about the neurotransmitter dopamine and its functioning that I understood how many of my seemingly harmless habits were actually very compulsive. I felt happy when I listened to music, but miserable when I was in complete stillness. These habits caused me to have a poor night sleep, and besides that, I developed a fog in my head that led to a scattered concentration and bad communication with people.
The solution was handed to me on a golden plate by productivity gurus on YouTube: I had to stop listening to music for at least a month (cold turkey) and reduce my screen time to under an hour a day. I succeeded… but did not feel any better afterward. How am I meant to live without music? It gives so much color and joy to life. I therefore reintroduced music and YouTube to my daily living and started experimenting several months with listening to music and watching videos at certain times of the day only.
I realized that deciding right away to not listen to music or not watch YouTube anymore was a stupid idea. Instead, being intentional with urges rather than suppressing them is key. We will have urges and desires for the rest of our lives, so we better learn to handle them rather than running away from them.
Music and YouTube (and social media in general) are not necessarily always bad. No. They can be wonderful stuff. It is like a bar: you can go there to meet some new people, have a few drinks, and just have fun. However, many stay too long and have to deal with the consequences. The same applies for social media, where a couple of minutes of scrolling become hours in a blink of an eye. We just have to make sure we don’t get dragged away by them.
When boredom becomes a cure
I promised myself to break the Pavlovian loop of filling up every bit of boredom with distraction. When I write, I do not listen to any music. When I go to the restroom, I don’t always pull out my phone. When I am waiting in line somewhere, I try not to always seek a distraction.
Instead, I just accept the silence.
This utter silence can be incredibly frightening, but the more I practice it, the more I enjoy letting my mind do its thing. In these moments of quietness, we process things that happened, ponder where we are heading, and come up with ideas to solve problems. I have conversations with my mind I never had before.
Now, I also begin to enjoy things I never liked before. I love walking down a trail in the evening, sitting down on a bench, and find peace in watching the sunset and hearing the birds chirping to each other. Nothing more.
The quiet boy
When our mind is always occupied and never quiet, we can never form clear ideas or thoughts, as if our mind is filled with a fog. Stillness is necessary for humans to let our mind speak to us.
Boredom is like a quiet boy in a classroom: if you always avoid speaking to him, you’ll never hear what he has to say. But once you give him his time and full attention, you will get to hear all the great ideas and stories he has to tell. There is a lot to learn from quiet boys, as there is a lot to learn from silence.
Let us all take some little time a day to hear out the quiet boy inside of us.
