Tag Archives: silence

Simplifying life and creating a zone of silence

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Until today, I maintained two blogs, this and Pajama Entrepreneur. I decided to merge Pajama Entrepreneur, my other blog about entrepreneurs and technology, into this blog. Why? I have no time to maintain two blogs. It means updating two different sites every time WordPress updates its software. That also means updating all the plugins. Too time-consuming.

The end of every year is a good time to examine what we can simplify in our lives and how we can use our time wisely. This means:

  • leaving social networking sites that waste lots of time and give nothing in return except endless spam from “friends” or dubious requests for an endorsement (why I left Linked In);
  • limiting the number of blogs I read everyday (deleting RSS feeds of blogs that say the same thing as other blogs);
  • unsubscribing from newsletters that provide little value and only regurgitate what I already know or what’s posted elsewhere (I unsubscribed from almost a dozen telecom-related newsletters whose content is absolutely worthless — the same blah-blah about mobile advertising, mobile Internet, MMS, SMS — really the same stuff for the past few years);
  • managing email: not responding to everyone’s email, putting people in the Junk Mail folder, checking email only twice a day.

I will be looking for other ways to streamline my life and expand my zone of silence so I can focus on the things that mean a lot to me. There’s too much noise out there and it is distracting.

The luxury of silence

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We are assaulted everyday by noise — sounds from cars, alarms, security people yelling in airports and music (or muzak) in stores, cafes, bars and restaurants. We can’t have decent conversations or concentrate on what we are doing. So I enjoyed this article from Salon talks about No Music Day in Britain (November 21) where “radio stations, stores, recording studios and scores of music lovers took a laudable vow of musical silence.”

How about no TV in restaurants unless it’s a sports bar where people gather around to watch a game? Recently I was in a Vietnamese restaurant with my parents and my brother. We couldn’t keep our eyes off a large TV screen that was showing a Vietnamese song-and-dance program. It definitely interfered with the flow of conversation. That TV screen was intrusive. A lot of Asian restaurants have these big-screen TVs and I wish they’d just take them down. The staff are not watching it because they’re too busy serving customers. So who’s it for? The customers? They’re trying to eat and having conversations!

But even that’s not enough. There should be less advertising all around. We are assaulted by billboards on the street, ads on the Internet and TV, phone calls from telemarketers, junk email, spam, everywhere! There’s no place to hide. The result is the opposite that advertisers want to accomplish: people tune them out because they have become part of the landscape like street lights. But that act of tuning out takes a lot of energy and having all that stuff around disturbs our peace of mind. It comes at a real cost.