This reminds me of an anecdote from Feynman about what sorts of mental things he could and could not do while counting seconds, and how it was different for different people. His counting was internally verbal and he could do anything that didn't require him to speak or anything else that was internally verbal.

On the other hand, a mathematician he knew was able to do lots of mental things while counting that Feynman couldn't, and wasn't able to do other mental things while counting that Feynman could, because the other guy counted visually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&...

Feynman is great. After reading about this a few years ago, I spent a few minutes trying to teach myself how to count with other senses, like touch or taste.

I picked an ordering of foods and imagined the transition from one to the next.

Touch is easier, since the ordering is already there. Just look at your fingers and imagine a sensation in each finger as you count. Easiest is to actually move your fingers though.

Touch is also much faster than visual or audio. With Chisenbop, I can count at around 15Hz, which is faster than I can look at the things I am trying to count.

Related to this, I've discovered what I can and can't listen to depending on the task.

When I'm writing, I can't listen to music with lyrics or podcasts. That's not too surprising, since I'm obviously using the parts of my brain related to processing language for my work, so I can't process language in the background.

When I'm doing grunt-level programming or debugging, I can listen to music with words or podcasts.

But when I'm doing architecture-level program design, I can't listen to music with lyrics or podcasts. For me, this kind of thinking is too similar to writing.

I read Oliver Sachs Musicophilia: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Oliver-Sack...

In it he points out how some people with Alzheimers or other degenerative brain damage can use familiar music to co-ordinate a sort of 'flow' a rhythm of activity.

When I am coding it is like this. I can put on a familiar record that know back to front and then suddenly it is over and I haven't heard any of it but it has marshalled my flow for me.

Put on an unfamiliar playlist or a 'radio' style thing from last.fm (or the radio even) where I don't know what is going to be played next) and it trashes my flow.

So to get stuff out of Spotify I have to make and learn playlists (as it trashes the order of all the LP's which I have burnt into my head from years of listening to them on vinyl....)

Interesting. I can try that with Metallica's older stuff, as I have been listening to it for over 15 years.

I'm the same, I just have the same playlist on repeat for months, thanks for the link to the book!

Some nights, when I lay on my bed trying to sleep but my mind is still racing, I try to calm down by counting or something that requires concentration in order to forget everything else. I noticed how I cannot count without having another train of thought talking or replaying a song I was listening to the same day. It's like having two threads running in parallel.

Trying to count visually is almost impossible, I lose track before reaching twenty. As a friend of mine put this, “I can't count sheep to sleep because they are always cheating.”

Have you tried thinking about the process of breathing ?

Ask yourself, "how do I know I am breathing?": there is some physical sensation that tells you that you're breathing, whether it's a whistling noise in your nose, the feeling of air rushing past the tip of your nose or the back of your throat, the feeling of wanting to return to the neutral position that your ribs give you during a deep breath.

For a lot of people, just one of these sensations is the most dominant one. If you can pick one, just lie quietly and concentrate on it and notice it every time you take a breath.

This process is more about noticing sensation than doing any kind of cognition, so I find it very useful when trying to take a mid-day nap (I haven't had trouble sleeping at the end of the day since I had children, funny that).

stop reading if you're not a smoker...

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"mind racing before sleep"? If you smoke, try not to smoke at least 1 hr before you go to bed.

Ha, I never tried to count visually, it's funny. I also tried to think about number names sequentially trying not to drift in their other representations.

I'm with pg here on the endless search for silence as well as your use of late nights to find it. I have sound-blocking ear muffs scattered all over the house and in two backpacks for when I'm studying on campus at Stanford, because at Stanford "quiet study area" seems to be an oxymoron. Studying, like everything at Stanford, is a social event.

One disturbing phenomenon I've discovered: When I use these ear muffs to block other people's noise, I gradually get more sensitive to their noise. My brain gets weaker at filtering out the distractions if I go too long without practice. I discovered that I had to force myself to NOT artificially block the noise for a few hours every few days to maintain an ability to block out the distraction in circumstances where I was UNABLE to artificially block the noise. Resistance to noisy distraction is a perceptual skill that can atrophy without practice.

I have to do any high-concentration work at night as well, and have likewise found that successfully finding some level of silence in life makes me more sensitive to noise...

In my case I've made a concerted effort to remove all aural advertising from my life -- this is rather easier nowadays, when it's trivial to watch videos and listen to music without ever consuming broadcast media.

But now when I do accidentally encounter normal TV/radio, it's amazingly grating and completely invades my head. I was in an airport in the US with TVs everywhere, and it was like trying to do work next to a fistfight. Commercial jingles pop into my head and stay there, when I'm unlucky enough to encounter them.

I think the problem is compounded by the fact that modern advertising is calculated to break through the normal deluge of attention-seeking noise that people are drenched in, so if you are not, in fact, already swimming in other noise, the sudden bursts are overwhelming.

    When I was living in Providence,    

An area specifically designed for work or study should be a quiet space, but the example given by PG is regarding his living quarters. I personally don't want to live in a library.

I feel the exact same way. I wear a pair of noise canceling headphones and listen to music so I can block out all of the noise produced by other people. What I found a few days ago, however, was that I had a very, very difficult time concentrating and focusing when I wasn't wearing them or listening to music, where as a year ago that problem was nonexistent. I feel like the only time I can truly concentrate and be at peace anymore is late at night, when everyone else is asleep.

noticed this 110% percent - I started wearing earplugs pumping whitenoise a few years back to help sleep - I need these things all the time now - I have whitenoise running probably 18 hours per day now (except when I'm driving).

I think the opposite is also true. I became able to sleep through nearly anything (nearly including, unfortunately, 4am fire alarms and, more fortunately, 4am wrong-numbers) in the dorms at college, where it was noisy nearly all the time.

I would imagine that exposing yourself to noise (on high volume?) 18 hours a day would cause permanent hearing damage.

18 is possibly the high end, but probably 6-8 per day, plus sleeptime, and it's never 'loud'. I've wondered about hearing loss, but I've done it for a few years now and have not noticed any loss (what did you say?) ;)

My office at work is a virtually silent team room. All of my coworkers are exceptionally quiet people. It drives me mad.

Most days I spend my entire productive workday in a coffee shop across campus, precisely because it is loud and busy. Only with the surrounding noise can I avoid being distracted by specific things. The environment is so noisy that it allows me to ignore to entirely.

My wife is the same way: she works best in a coffee shop, with background noise. My hypothesis is that people who are able to multitask (ie. not me) need a certain level of stimulation to absorb the attention that would otherwise crystallize into distractions.

For me, when I'm able to concentrate, the background noise is irrelevant. I simply do not hear it.

There's something to this, but there's also the fact that any given sound gets literally lost in the noise.

That's exactly what it is, for me at least. The slightest noise of something other than nature is enough to throw me completely, the best I can do living in a city is to work in an environment where the background noise has a masking effect. It's either no noise or a constant background drone loud enough to mask any single interrupting sound - anything in between is unworkable for me.

As much as I love the mountains and forests, I've come to realise that I like the idea of solitude a lot more than the reality of it. And so I find myself living in large cities, constantly seeking noise because it's the only way I can find peace.

When the ambient sound level gets too low, I get a strange feeling in my ear -- kinda like a hand or leg "falling asleep". It's really distracting.

White noise, and ambient "study" music is great -- it's like a null placeholder, I can focus and I remember hearing nothing instead of hearing silence.

My work place is the same. I really didn't like it in the beginning. But I have learned to love it. I have noticed that I am far more productive there than at my previous job where they had an open plan office shared by both developers and noisy sales people.

I have taken the quiet attitude home as well. I used to have the radio or TV on all day long when I was working on my computer. Now I turn everything off when I work at home.

I think noisy sales people would drive me crazy. If we leave the door open to the team room we can hear recruiting right outside. Very nice people, but I have even more trouble concentrating when they're on the phone all day.

Then again, that's focussed noise where I can easily pick out entire conversations. By contract, the coffee shop I'm in right now is full of a wild cacophony. So much noise that none of it forms a coherent picture. This is trivial to ignore.

In the end it probably comes down mostly to what you're willing to make work for you. I find a mostly silent room maddening enough that I'm unlikely to ever give it a try.

I remember that the Sun Microsystems drop in office in SF had a "quiet room" that the developers loved. No phones at the desks, and absolute quiet. But disagreements would break out when the spaces outside were all taken up and sales people needed a seat. Some just yakked. Others brought in cell phones and felt that as long as they used a hushed voice, they were honoring the silence. Other people felt that allowing a cell phone to ring and then taking the call outside the quiet room as you talked counted as quiet.

The office manager ruled with an iron fist, fortunately, and she really didn't care if someone didn't like her, so these folks got the boot. She saved that quiet room, as far as I'm concerned.

This is my preferred working style as well. Noise, as long as it is unrelated to what I am doing, doesn't bother me. I can work well in a library or a coffee shop (at least until someone recognizes me and comes up to say hello, which happens about once a week).

A crowded open plan office, with interesting and relevant conversations going on all around me, is detrimental to my productivity.

For the same reason, I wake up early (0200-0300 or so) because most tech people are likely to work late, so waking up early and doing stuff from 0400-1000 or so is functionally the same as staying up late.

My mother is a pretty deep thinker and she requires constant TV chatter simply because she has tinnitus and can't stand the sound of it. But I think she's an exception.

Have you introduced her to brown noise? I typically use it for blocking out background sounds when I'm tired of listening to music, but it might work well for tinnitus too.

There seem to be two very different definitions of brown noise.

Haven't heard of it before actually. Thanks!

I have tinnitus and needs background noise - but to be non interuptive it has to be background - a coffee bar, or the telly on low - what it can't require is any processing like music or something that is designed to be 'listened to'.

This feeling is disturbingly good. I remember my shift being offseted at work for I was always late, as a side effect I had to enjoy 1 hour alone at 5pm, the second people left the workplace, my brain expanded out of my suddenly relaxed self. As if I could use the walls as extended mind storage.