
The Joy of Quiet - neel980
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
======
pasbesoin
This is a bad comment, in that I can't bring myself to complete reading the
article.

What _steams_ me about the recent "quiet", um, "discovery" and advocacy, is
that many of those proclaiming it are the same fools who, last decade, were
proclaiming the value of "collaboration" and cramming me into smaller cubes
that eventually started to lose their walls (sort of a notched "ueber-
bullpen", without naming it such).

I've known all along that I need peace and quiet to be productive. Not a
monastary, but my own quiet room and the ability to use it, and to leave it,
as I please.

Even on the shop floor, the relentless, day-long blaring of a radio becomes a
significant distraction. There is, for me, a greater satisfaction and
productivity in being _present_ , even in the midst of what some dismissively
consider to be "menial" tasks. (But which seldom really are; and if you pay
attention, you notice the difference in execution, and how this affects things
both downstream and up the hierarchy.)

I'm done with the words. I look for actions, now. If you give me a good
workplace, a good neighborhood, etc. I'll respect this. If you talk and
bloviate about it, no matter the particular words and sentiment of the moment,
I'm going to start viewing you as part of the problem.

An attitude I think we should all consider.

~~~
fzzzy
Agreed completely, I have always hated the bullpen and complain at every
company I work for that thinks it's a good idea. So far the trend in tech
companies still seems to be "more bullpen" though.

I tend to work at home as much as I can, so that I can actually get some work
done. I'm starting to see going into the office as more of a social thing than
a work thing.

I like what you had to say about being done with words and looking for actions
now. It seems like an intelligent way to live.

~~~
wpietri
I agree with one caveat. I love quiet, but I also love collaboration.

The solution for me is in purpose-fit team spaces. If everybody in a room is
working on the same thing, and all the conversation is team-specific, it can
be a joy. It is tricky to get both the space and the cultural discipline, but
I really love it when it works.

Which means I thoroughly hate the way "collaboration" has been used to
thoughtlessly bully people into cheap-ass, disruptive working spaces.

~~~
fzzzy
What about online collaboration? In my experience, that is the only place
collaboration has actually happened. There's something about asynchronous
collaboration that seems to make it more effective than synchronous
collaboration, at least sometimes.

~~~
wpietri
Collaboration happens all the time in the physical world. For many sorts of
collaboration, I like it better, in that you can get much shorter feedback
loops. Depends on what you're up to, though.

------
lifeisstillgood

      recalling that it’s only by stepping briefly away from my 
      wife and bosses and friends that I’ll have anything useful
      to bring to them.
    

That is deeply true. I picked my 3 year old son up from school two weeks ago,
and sat on a bench in a churchyard near the school. Normally we rush through
there hurrying to a playdate or just giddy on scooters with friends.

But this time we sat, ate a sandwich and stopped. I pointed out the bird song
and it was like a different world for him - the church had become something
new, an extra layer to the world.

I won't try to hold him back from the giddy rush of three wheeled scooters and
playground running. But I must try to just show him some stillness - perhaps a
little more often too.

~~~
chris_mahan
Did the same three weeks ago with the 7 year old. We watched a blue jay go
from tree to tree, coming back to the same one several times. We walked around
looking for him, waiting for him to sing. In the church ground where normally
my son races about. It only lasted about 15 minutes, but it was very nice.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
It's the 15 mins you will remember.

He, on the other hand, remembers Dad going all funny because of a bird.
Parents !

:-)

------
enraged_camel
The more I disconnect from various information sources, the more I realize how
utterly unnecessary they were to begin with.

It started with quitting Facebook back in February. After going through a
short withdrawal, I deeply appreciated the "silence" that came from not
knowing every single thing about every single "friend" I had on there. These
days, not having Facebook is just a minor inconvenience: sometimes I don't
find out about upcoming events until the last minute. But even that seems to
happen less and less often, as my friends find out I don't have FB and the
ones who are my _real_ friends make sure to invite me via email or SMS.

Then I implemented GTD for work email. I use Outlook (sad face) so I disabled
the utterly annoying desktop notifications, then went from checking email
every few minutes (out of habit) and responding to every email then and there,
to checking email twice a day and responding to emails en masse. At first I
thought people would be annoyed by not receiving email responses right away,
but then realized that's what instant messages are for. With personal email I
was more brutal: I disabled push notifications on my iPhone, and started
checking it once every other day.

With iOS 6, I've been experimenting with keeping my phone on DND mode most of
the day. I changed my voice-mail message to say that I only answer calls
between 6pm and 9pm, and tell them that if it's urgent, they can call me again
within 3 minutes to override DND mode. I've found that most people don't in
fact have anything urgent (maybe they realize it wasn't urgent after hearing
my VM message) so that seems to be going pretty well also.

It's difficult to overstate the benefits I've seen from limiting my
information consumption. For the longest time I had felt like my life was
controlling me, and I was simply reacting to stuff happening. But once I
started voluntarily restricting my exposure to stuff that demanded my
attention (usually overblown in importance), I realized that it was all
bullshit. I have become calmer, more productive, and happier. Feels good, man!

~~~
sillysaurus
A phone has a "DND" mode? Genius! Can you do a write-up on how to get that set
up?

I have an iPhone and sometimes just keep it on airplane mode all day to get
research done. This is a bad solution for people who really need to contact me
though.

~~~
alanfalcon
It's fairly straightforward:

[http://m.cnet.com/news/how-to-set-up-do-not-disturb-on-
ios-6...](http://m.cnet.com/news/how-to-set-up-do-not-disturb-on-
ios-6/57507504)

------
omegant
For those looking for ideas to break away, just try the St. James way in
northern Spain(or any similar walking experience). You only walk, eat, rest.
There is nothing else to do for a month(if you start from the Pyrenees). You
sleep mostly in pilgrim hostels, or cheap hotels. You can start alone but
surely will finish with at least 10-15 new friends (if you want to of course).
Every day you´ll walk for 5 to 8 hours, get to the hostel relax, talk to
people from around the world, have an amazing dinner in some cheap small town
restaurant drink some wine. Just awesomely simple, but really enjoyable. I
really recommend it. It makes you think how we are somehow a nomad species.

~~~
intractable
I agree 100%. I too walked the Camino de Santiago, in 2009.

Probably the best thing I've ever done. I came back centred, happy, relaxed
and motivated. I met great people, had great times (and trying times - like
walking 40km, into a town with no spare beds, and then walking another 10km to
the next town, to again find no beds) and really challenged myself.

Walking alone through those fields is something I'll never forget. Hours of
walking brings about a meditative state, and inner quiet which is rare to
find.

Start by yourself, this will bring you out of your comfort zone and you'll
meet more new people.

It's a great metaphor for life - you meet people, you lose people, you say
goodbye, you learn to rely on yourself.

I recommend it to anyone.

------
maw
Iyer conflates a number of things here.

Quiet is generally good, but how important it is depends a lot on one's
personality, needs at a given moment, and so on.

Not being constantly interrupted is also a good thing, but, again, it depends
a lot on one's personality type, work being undertaken, and so forth.

Being disconnected from other people (I suspect but can't prove that Starck is
basically full of shit, but there do exist people who could credibly claim
such isolation) is something else entirely. Maybe it is good and maybe it
isn't: I've never had the chance to try over an extended period. I'll submit
that you can have isolation without quiet or lack of interruptions, by the
way.

Get those mixed up and there's nowhere you can go, precisely where Iyer takes
us.

------
ryandvm
My own personal version of this happens during my work day commute. No radio,
no podcasts, no phone calls.

I've found that unless I have about 30 minutes/day or so of thinking time, I
tend to lose focus on my longer term projects.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This was one of the most surprising things about commuting 25 minutes on the
train for me, the break between 'home' and 'work' and the ability to just sit
and think are really useful.

------
smugengineer69
Robot apologist here, but for some reason neo-Luddism has become fashionable
again and it bothers me. Is this really a war over little pings from email
inboxes? Are we truly that oppressed by the ability to find out anything about
anything? Do we need a virtual Moses to part the red sea of push
notifications? I find it really difficult to sympathize with this line of
argument. This is either a case of misconfigured notifications or of honest
Amish-like fear of technology, and neither of these make sense to me.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
I envy you; you haven't had your "this is all bullshit" moment yet. It will
happen. It's not questioning the value of the technology (as you believe),
it's questioning the _place_ in your life.

This isn't "neo-Luddism," this is people questioning whether all of those
things are actually important enough to us to warrant a context switch. As I
get older, the context switches hurt more and more, and I desire a higher SNR
throughout my life. That means less Facebook, less Twitter, and a lot less HN.
All push notifications are off on my phone. I wouldn't recommend my system to
everyone, but I do derive a tangible benefit from being less connected. (There
is also something to be said for keeping the constant, mostly inane chatter of
random Internet denizens out of your mind, but it's too early to draw any
conclusions there).

Generally, if it happens on the Internet, it probably doesn't matter very
much. I'll see it when I need to see it.

~~~
moheeb
Perhaps some of us were wise enough to not fall for the "bullshit"? " _It will
happen_ " seems a bit condescending.

Your envy reminds me of an old man wishing he were younger.

~~~
enraged_camel
It's not that you were wise enough to not fall for the bullshit, but that you
have not yet realized that it is bullshit.

The real wisdom comes from the realization that the only reason people are
consuming so much information today is because it's a habit that feels like a
necessity.

~~~
nollidge
> It's not that you were wise enough to not fall for the bullshit, but that
> you have not yet realized that it is bullshit.

Are you a mind reader, that you can see what this person does or does not
know?

I am disinclined to accept "wisdom" alongside such presumptions.

------
moystard
Having moved in London two years ago, I struggle to find a moment of intense
quiet. The reason is mainly the planes that are authorized to fly above the
city (a stupidity in my opinion) and even in the middle of a park, you can
still hear them, flying just above your head.

At night, cars, ambulances, you name it, will take the relay.. Frustrating.

~~~
breckenedge
Yep, same experience. Horses on cobblestones at 4am.

~~~
dredmorbius
#19thcenturyworldproblems

------
personlurking
If you travel, you may enjoy Iyer's Why We Travel story.

"If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism),
a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And
the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how
provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal."

[http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-stories/why-we-
trave...](http://www.worldhum.com/features/travel-stories/why-we-
travel-20081213/)

~~~
vdm
Nice share, thank you.

------
ek
This was wonderful. Pico Iyer is an amazing writer from a family of
intellectuals. The University of California obit for his father, Raghavan,
notes that Raghavan was "an inspired and inspiring scholar and teacher on the
Santa Barbara campus from 1965 to 1986". I have personally had teachers
inspired by the works of both Raghavan and his son.

His point, too, is one that I have found increasingly important for myself.
Joel Gascoigne's post "6 things I do to be consistently happy"
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4405127>) in some sense echoes similar
thoughts. Like Joel, I exercise most mornings, and like Joel, I stop all
electronics at 11 most nights and read (fiction) for an hour. While it is
often difficult to step away from computers and smartphones and the Internet,
I find that exercise and books satisfy me deeply in a way the Internet is
frequently unable to.

A friend pointed out to me that books possess a pretty much optimal SNR, which
may have something to do with this.

------
tedmiston
This weekend I lost myself in the mountains of West Virginia on a whitewater
rafting trip. The great thing about bouncing around class 5 rapids is that you
have no time to think about anything but the present. The phrase "laser-like
focus" is tossed around amongst the tech community, GTD folks, minimalists,
etc., but I never knew what it actually felt like until I was on the water.
Getting away from the computer for long periods of contemplative thinking is
one of the best activities I've done for my mind in a lifetime.

If Iyer's ideas or my own experience resonate with you, I recommend checking
out a copy of Hamlet's Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age [1]
from your local library.

1: [http://www.amazon.com/Hamlets-BlackBerry-Building-Good-
Digit...](http://www.amazon.com/Hamlets-BlackBerry-Building-Good-
Digital/dp/0061687170)

------
neel980
This is the first piece I have read by Pico and it reminded me of a quote by
Gandhi I had noticed on the London Underground "There is more to life than
increasing its speed".

------
chrishenn
If you enjoyed this piece, you might like the book "The Information Diet" [1].
It's not particularly compelling writing, but the author has good ideas that
are very much inline with this post. Boredom is essential.

[1] <http://www.informationdiet.com/>

------
vdm
To those who liked this article, I recommend Net Smart[0]. It eschews doing
away with digital media altogether, acknowledging their unprecedented power,
talks about the need for intention and focus when using the web and social
media, and explains using basic literacies and mindfulness techniques to that
end.

0\. <http://rheingold.com/netsmart/>

