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I feel like people have a need to “fill the void” with productivity. It’s like they can’t be alone with their thoughts anymore.

I feel like this is becoming a more serious problem than people realize.

I also feel like people can’t do tasks quietly, without having a feed of music or podcasts. I see it with my wife and my kids. None of them are able to carry out activities without some audio being steamed to their brain. Most people can’t even work without headphones on, even in a quiet environment.

Most people will say “what’s wrong with that?”, but I feel this is a symptom of some underlying anxiety, we just don’t realize it.

1 comments

I need the audio streamed in - usually white/brown noise. This blocks out distractions. 30 years ago perhaps people could do 'knowledge work' without these, but most of the people I know who did knowledge work years ago - lawyers, accountants, architects - they all had private offices they could go do heads down work in. 'Open office' plans seem to have ruined this. I spent years in the late 90s in open office plans trying to build web applications, sandwiched in between ad sales and project management people, constantly on the phone. Worked fine for them - they were often on phone calls. But those phone calls bled over in to my ears - unwelcomed - and created constant interruptions and context switching.

The 'underlying anxiety' might be because there's far more noise in our environments - inside and outside - than there was a couple generations ago? More traffic, bigger cars, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, more airplanes. More people in smaller open plan offices... None of these are really under my control. Wearing head phones to block that stuff out is under my control.

Listening to actual music with words or podcasts while trying to work would, in fact, be worse for me, and I think for many folks. Unsure how people do that, but white noise blocking does help many folks.