Screening out the noise

Its hard to hear yourself think sometimes.
Photo by James White.

One of the great things about living abroad in new countries is that you just can't understand what the hell people are talking about.

In the new world of constant information bombardment, not being unable to understand what people are saying is some sort of wonderful gift.

Currently I'm reading a book about re-energizing yourself and what that means for performance. Being able to shut out external sources of information, especially when they are trivial, is one of the ways that we can recharge our batteries. It gives us that little bit of extra time to organize our thoughts and find a little time for ourselves.

Something that my friend Daniel in Warsaw got me thinking about over a year ago finally clicked in my head today on the bus while I was reading a blog post by a journalist colleague from Estonia.

We are really totally bombarded by information to the point where we can't process it all anymore. I don't know if it was ever possible to process all information put in front of a human being, but surely it was easier before we all had four different electronic items we carried on our bodies and switched between at regular intervals.

What my friend Daniel rightly said back then in Warsaw is that he loves living there because he doesn't fall into the trap of listening to what people are talking about. In his native England he is of course able to listen to people talking on the bus or on their phone.

I noticed the same thing when I went home to Australia for three months over the summer earlier this year. You start listening to what people are saying because suddenly there is that extra source of information that you are able to process.

The trouble is that most of the time it is just rubbish. White noise almost. I don't want to listen to what people are saying on the bus, but the thing is that I understand them anyway. My brain automatically tunes in and I listen. Just another source of useless information. Just more noise to cloud my mind.

Add this to things like Facebook, Twitter, the phone, blogs, news, work, friends and you start to go insane. Its no wonder people can't function properly and don't sleep well.

Just another reason why its sometimes nice to live abroad...