Last week, I had a week off. Fully off. Checked out. Something I hadn’t taken intentionally in a very long time.
I found myself walking around a new city and gave myself a challenge: No headphones. Just me, the air, the streets, and everything happening around me.
It sounds a bit ridiculous that this was a new experience to me, but I often spend the majority of my days (walking, on the subway, at work, at the gym) with headphones in.
Without the crutch of tiny things in my ears blasting a podcast or a new song, I noticed the trees. I noticed people. I noticed conversations floating through the air. It made me realize how much I usually miss when I’m caught up thinking about the next deliverable, the next obligation, or just numbing the noise with more noise.
And it made me wonder: How often are we just rushing from place to place?
Sometimes, the things we think are a waste of time — the slow moments, the stillness, the silence — are actually the exact things we need to give ourselves space to feel grounded, creative, and alive.
This week I challenge you to take a breath, take a moment, take a step back, and take those damn headphones out. When you’re not rushing from place to place, you might finally notice what’s been trying to get your attention all along.
Are we all just drowning?
When you’re thinking about work, listening to a podcast, scrolling Instagram, and flipping between chats, your internal monologue doesn’t just get scrambled; it becomes completely suppressed. You don’t even have time to critically think about what you’re consuming anymore. You are just a passive observer in your own life, an unconscious consumer.
I’ve been there too, but let’s be serious, this isn’t normal.
This is information overload, and it’s way too normalized in 2025.
I found quite a powerful message on an anonymous board, a call to help in a time of information overload in 2025:
“How are you dealing with information overload in 2025? I'm drowning
Honestly, I’m losing my mind. 5 work chats, 3 personal messengers, 8 social apps, news alerts, AI notifications, subscription updates, streams, podcasts, newsletters, “must-watch” videos... my brain is literally melting. Used to just turn off my phone on weekends, but now I’m freelancing and scared to miss important clients. Started having actual anxiety attacks from notification sounds. Even my sleep app keeps waking me up with “sleep insights." Has anyone found a system that actually works? Or some tech or method to filter the important stuff without missing opportunities? Does digital minimalism even exist anymore, or are we all just doomed to information burnout? — CLK”
In a world where digital minimalism doesn’t align with how we build connections, form friendships, acquire new information, work at jobs, or attend school, we have just become numb to being dinged multiple times an hour. We are no longer being distracted, but rather, are in a constant state of competing attention.
So, how can we be more critical of what we consume ourselves? Also, how can we reduce our consumption in the first place?
Our lifesaver: practicing underconsumption
Now let’s visit the other side: underconsumption. When you feel like you’re drowning in all things media, content, and want, want, want, how do we find a place to pause and just float?
We weren’t put on this planet to shop and consume media, but we’ve somehow melted into this belief that we must fill every second. More information. More inspiration. More more more.
In reality, we need much less, but we struggle to feed that feeling of wanting with anything less than a “for you page.
A creator who has been inspiring me a lot recently is Jess Clinton, as she has outlined very clearly how to replace our feeling of wanting by doing:
“You can’t embrace underconsumption because you're focusing too much on owning instead of doing. You're going to need to be filling your time with other stuff that's not consuming media or shoppin. And this is where you find your passions - the most important step.
So, what do you do? You find hobbies, you hang out with your friends, you start creating, you read a book, and you start to find the things you like to do instead of consuming media and shopping. Because you think that buying things is going to fix this problem you have of wanting to be someone else, when really you need to go out and live your life. And then you'll realize that owning the next big thing was not as important as you thought.
Easiest way to find hobbies: think of what you liked to do as a kid, start with that stuff.”
I love Jess’s overview because it is so. Damn. Simple.
Doing things you liked as a child will give you more fulfillment than any TikTok or reel ever will.
How ironic that I found her content while scrolling through my Instagram feed? It is unlikely that quitting media consumption can be done cold turkey, and I’m not even offering that as a solution.
Instead, I encourage you to fill your days with such vibrant experiences of creation, connection, and kinds of experiences your 7-year-old self would be proud of, that you’d even feel compelled to open the app to fulfill you.
The island: The silence
Now we’re here — the quiet place we’ve been avoiding.
Colouring time as a kid. Staring at the ceiling with teenage angst. That one walk in the park when you put your AirPods through the washing machine (rice works by the way!)
We have to return to the version of ourselves that existed before the scroll.
Silence can be ugly. Painful. Uncomfortable. It forces you to listen to your voice — the one that might be used to being buried under all the noise, but is still very much screaming at you to hear it.
It brings back the conversation with yourself. The clarity. The fears you’ve been ignoring. The little sparks of passion. The random person you forgot you wanted to reach out to. The idea that’s been trying to surface for months.
When you can sit in the silence, you begin to reclaim your attention, your creativity, your time.
What is more precious than that?
One of my faves - thanks ky 💟
Love this!