Britt's Blog

I concluded my noise fast on Friday with a 3.5 hour drive, alone, without the radio. At first I thought I’d just get past Madison, then I’ll turn on the radio, but when I got to that point, I thought I was doing fine, and I could probably make it to the Dells, and once I go that far, then I figured I could pretty much go all the way.

That was probably the most interesting part of the whole experiment. I think it finally achieved some of the calm and stillness that I was hoping to get at. So it would seem that quiet is most effective in large doses.

In the end, I’ve found:

Radio while brushing teeth: good.
Podcasts while walking and running: good.
Some amount of informational websurfing: good.
Constantly checking RSS feeds all day: bad.
Driving alone for three hours at night in silence: strangely, not all that bad.

It turns out to have been a strange week to start my noise fast. I’ve just been so stressed and busy and behind on everything that I haven’t been tempted to surf the web…

… much …

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Mornings are probably the hardest. I’m in the habit of lying in bed and listening to the clock radio for a while, so now that I wake up to the buzzer (ugh, how unpleasant), I’ve found it pretty much impossible to get up right away. I have to spend a little time convincing myself that my dreams were just dreams, and worrying about all the work I have to do for the day, and psyching myself up to get out from under the covers.

Monday morning, it pretty much sucked brushing my teeth without the radio and running without my iPod.

Tuesday morning felt a little better, for some reason, not as onerous, possibly because I didn’t have to run.

Both days I’ve pretty much been so crazed with emerging crises at work that I don’t think I’d have taken the time to surf the web even if it were “allowed.” I did miss being able to put on some music while I worked.

It’s also bumming me out that I can’t just turn on a podcast while walking to and from work. This has turned into a rather stressful time for me, unfortunately, as I find myself fretting about whatever I need to do as soon as I get to my destination, or thinking other gloomy thoughts.

Spending the Monday evening watching TV and knitting was niiiice, though. I maybe should have been grading, but I worked very hard Monday, and since I have to teach Tuesday and Thursday evenings, I rationalize that it’s really important for me to take Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings off. Sadly, tonight I’m off to teach class. There will be just a little time to unwind after class before bed, and then I await the buzzer in the morning, and another un-podcast-y run. At least it’s not going to rain like it did Monday!

I wonder which is the more precious commodity for me: time or energy. Some days it really does seem like there are not enough hours to do what I need to do. Other days it seems like I waste a lot of time surfing the web, fixing things that I have screwed up, or running around in a dither failing to accomplish anything. These are problems I attribute to a lack of energy, motivation, or focus, or something like that.

For one week I am going to cut out as much extraneous information out of my life as possible. I want to thin out my constant, self-imposed demands to focus on non-essential data.

I originally titled this post “The Radical Single-Tasking Experiment,” but it’s not so much a scientific experiment designed to test a crisply-stated hypothesis as a touchy-feely new-agey get-in-touch-with-your-inner-whatever sort of a thing, so I’m calling it a Noise Fast.

For a week, I’m ditching my iPod, turning off the radio, ignoring my RSS feeds, and not surfing the web except for work.

I am not swearing them off forever. For one thing, I don’t think that’s a sustainable choice. For another, I don’t think that these media are actually bad in general. I am going to turn them off for a week because I am curious about what I will do with the time and attention that I have been expending on them.

How dependent am I on the radio, web-surfing, my iPod, iTunes? Which of these will I miss the most? I’m hoping to identify the things I’m addicted to (unhealthily), the things that enrich my life (as noted by the deleterious effects of their absence), and the things I don’t miss at all (i.e. things I can easily cut out to get more time to do other things).

Will I feel more peaceful if I spend more time alone with my thoughts? Will I become more mindful in my everyday activities? Will I feel more relaxed if I remove some distractions that may be interfering with my work? Will I feel like I have more energy? Will I enjoy spending my time on things that I don’t currently seem to have enough time to do?

Or will I merely be bored, uninformed, and cranky?

Another interesting question is whether I’ll be able to do it for a whole week.

I hope to make this an intentional, mindful, reflective process, so I think that writing about it regularly is important. I am also hoping to boost my motivation by making myself accountable to my millions and millions half-dozen readers, so I will be blogging about my observations, frustrations and elations.

The fun starts Monday. Let me know if you have any tips, or whether you think it’s a cockamamie scheme that will only end in tears.