248: Silence is Painful.

We live in a world of constant consumption, where every spare second is filled with music, podcasts, social media, or videos. In this solo episode, Nole explores the vital and uncomfortable practice of being alone with our thoughts. He shares insights from a Harvard professor's video on the power of "boredom" to unlock creativity, introspection, and our ability to wrestle with life's big questions. 

Big thank you to My Epic and Facedown Records for the use of their song "Hail" in our podcast!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz2RZThURTU&ab_channel=FacedownRecords

Send Nole an email: nolerltw@gmail.com

Video referenced in the episode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orQKfIXMiA8

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Transcript

Nole (00:29.622)
Welcome back to the fire. You carry podcasts for those of you who are listeners on Monday morning. First thing on your way into work. I do apologize that this one is late. I am not going to give you the same excuses that you've heard a bunch of other times. You already know them. So we're just going to jump straight into it at the fire program. There's a point in the program where we're out hiking and we take a pause.

and happens to be at nighttime. So we turn off our headlamps and I just make everybody stand there quietly listening to the sounds of the wilderness because we're up in the mountains, we're in the woods. And the point behind that moment is something that

I found personal value in years ago and something that I find is lacking. And it's this idea that in our lives as modern men, we don't really have any time where we're just alone with our thoughts, where it's quiet and we can really think through things. If you're a believer, we don't really do a lot of moments. Most of us where we pray and talk to God and then pause to listen, we just don't really do that. We're always consuming.

music podcasts, watching a movie, listening to a YouTube video in conversation with other people, whatever it may be. And so I just use that brief moment to highlight that and to recommend to the guys that are there at the program that they implement that in their lives from time to time that it's really good and healthy to do that. And I recently watched a video by a gentleman. He he's a Harvard professor. Interestingly enough, this video has been in my YouTube feed for

at least a few weeks now. I've seen it multiple times and every time I've seen it, I've scrolled past it because I assumed based on the title that I knew what it was about. The title of the video was something along the lines of boredom is good for you or you need more boredom, something like that. And I just assumed I knew what it was about. So I didn't need to watch it. And also this is a content creator that I'd never seen or heard before. So I didn't dive in, but for whatever reason, I eventually clicked on the video and watched it.

Nole (02:47.348)
And what this guy talked about really expanded my thoughts on this idea of being alone with your thoughts, being quiet and having a moment to process things. So I'm basically just going to synthesize this video for you in this brief short solo episode and give you some of the high points. And then I will link the video in the show notes because it is worth watching. It's very short and you'll basically just hear this guy say better what I'm going to attempt to say now.

So I would recommend watching his actual content on this topic. But his whole premise is that as humans, when we're bored, meaning there's nothing for us to do cognitively, our brains switch to a different process and he gives it a name. I'm not going to do the whole bro science thing and try to pretend I know what he's talking about. But our brains switch to a process when there's nothing to do.

where we begin to think about the big things in life, the quote unquote, existential things, questions of meaning and purpose. And we start to work through problems in our lives. And it's a place where we can start to imagine things and have new ideas. It's this creative and introspective place that historically

other men, our ancestors would have had a lot of time to do. They would have engaged in this part of their brain process a lot. If you go back just a hundred years or further, there would have been a lot of time where you were out working in the field or you were out wrangling horses or whatever you were doing. And it was just quiet. was just you with your thoughts. You didn't have music playing. You didn't have a podcast in your ears.

you weren't consuming things on a screen, whether it be your phone or a TV, there would have been a lot of this time. And in our modern society today, we just don't really have or allow ourselves any of that time. And the reason, one of the reasons is that boredom and that mind shift, that process in your brain is actually not very comfortable for us as men because

Nole (05:09.89)
When you start to think about the big existential things, the questions of why am I here and what is the meaning of life? And what am I going to do about this problem? A lot of those questions are things that we actually have to wrestle with and wrestle through, and we may not have an answer for. And so that's, it's difficult and it's uncomfortable, uncomfortable for us to do. And what we have done in our modern context is we have trained ourselves to never be in that space. So if you watch people in the world,

They will, for example, order a cup of coffee, and then they're going to wait two minutes for that cup of coffee to be produced. And during that time, they will pull out their phone and they'll look at it and they'll TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. You'll be standing at a street corner or even be sitting in your car at a light, and you have to wait for the light to change. And so what do you do? You scroll your phone, you look at your email, whatever you do something. And we're constantly doing that now.

as men. And because we're constantly doing that, we never have any moments of quiet where we're just alone with our thoughts. And we've trained ourselves to be completely averse and completely just in unable to be in that space. So this guy mentions a study and I went and looked it up because he kind of mentions it in passing. And I went and read about it a little bit more. And it's a fascinating study on this. And basically what they did is they took participants

and they showed them that we're going to hook you up to this machine and there's going to be this button. And if you push this button, it's going to deliver an uncomfortable electrical shock. And they demonstrated that to them. They shocked them. And a majority of the participants stated that the electrical shock was uncomfortable enough that they would actually pay money to avoid being shocked again. And then without telling them why or what was happening, they put them in a room with nothing in the room except for a chair.

and a table and this button. So there's nothing to do in the room. You don't have anything with you. The only thing in the room is a chair, a table and this button that delivers an electric shock. And of course you're wearing whatever device it is, it's going to shock you. And they left the participants in this room for six to 15 minutes. And what they found was

Nole (07:26.062)
67 % of men in that room chose to give themselves electric shocks during that 15 minutes alone with their thoughts, essentially. And what they, what they posited from this study was just this idea that these people were so uncomfortable being alone in their thoughts and going into that place where their brain is starting to unpack the problems in their life and the big questions and thinking about things. They were so uncomfortable with that and so

trained to not be in that space because it was uncomfortable that they would rather give themselves electric shocks to to be doing something instead of being in that space. And obviously that's an extreme. But if you think about that, if most people in that scenario are going to deliver themselves an electric shock that they already know is uncomfortable that they stated they would pay money to avoid. If you're going to do that, then would you not

pull out your phone when you were going to be bored. There's no, there's no consequence to that. Not only is there no consequence, but there's a dopamine hit that usually comes with that you start scrolling your Instagram or your tick tock feed or whatever you're into. And there's a little dopamine hit that comes with that. So there's actually a reward system to that. So of course, that's what you're going to default to. Now, women, only 25 % of women

delivered the electric shock, but that's still a high enough percentage that it demonstrates the point. And I think that's a gender difference more than it is stating that women don't have an issue with this. But regardless, that's neither here nor there because I don't know. I don't understand what what women are thinking about. And I'm not going to try at this point to explain. But interestingly enough to say quite a bit less of the women actually push the button. But we're talking to men here. I'm a man.

you're going to push the button if you're in that room by yourself and you don't know what's going on. The gentleman making this video posits that we have this epidemic in our country and really in the, in the first world where there's an incredibly high rate of depression and anxiety. And he believes that part of this is due to the fact that we don't ever go into boredom that we don't ever think about what is the meaning of life? What's my purpose? What am I doing here? Why do I exist? What

Nole (09:46.838)
what's meaningful, we never go into those spaces. And so because we don't, because we're always distracted, always distracting ourselves, we don't know who we are. We don't know why we're here. We don't know what's important. And if we don't know those things, we're going to be anxious, we're going to be depressed. And so he posits that if you do allow yourself to engage in boredom, and have those thought processes and work through those things, that you are going to be a happier and more fulfilled and more complete person.

So how do we do this? Now we've talked ad nauseum on this podcast about putting your phone away, right? And that really is the answer, right? That is the big distraction for most of us. Shook is the only guy that I can think of that doesn't have this issue, but the rest of us have smartphones and we're on them too much. Now, if you listen to this podcast at all, you know that I do have an Instagram account. I do have a Facebook account, but I am not on there.

I haven't opened either of those platforms for over a year. I don't engage with them. And that has been great for my personal life. It's been detrimental for my life as a podcaster and as one of the guys in the, in the fire up program on the nonprofit side, because as part of those worlds, you really need to be on social media. And so there have been some downsides for that, but on the personal side, it's been nothing but positives. thing that I do though, with my phone, cause I'm

I'm not any different than anybody else listening to this. I'm not any different than any of you. I spend too much time on my phone. I just don't do it on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or any of the social medias or even Twitter X, I suppose it's called now. I don't do it there, but I spend a lot of time on my phone listening to music, listening to podcasts, audio books, and listening to YouTube videos, listening to people talking on YouTube. I don't do a ton of watching YouTube.

but I do a lot of listening to videos on YouTube. When I'm at work, I have my shocks, bone conducting headphones on, and I'll be walking around doing whatever, and I'll be listening to a YouTube video or listening to an audio book or music. I do a ton of that. So how do we do this? How do we change our behavior? So what this guy recommends, and I think these are solid, although I hate one of them very much and I'm afraid to try it, but that's an exaggeration.

Nole (12:13.326)
but not really. So the first thing he recommends is working out without your phone, like leaving your phone behind. And for me, I have a specific playlist that I have built and curated for workouts. It's very angry. It's very aggressive and I love it. I don't work out in silence. Almost never. I have done it before just for mental toughness reasons, but I don't like it. And it's very rare. I might do it twice a year.

And that's his first recommendation is go do a workout and just be alone in your thoughts. Don't do anything else. Don't watch TV. Don't, you know, obviously if you're working out with somebody else, there's going to be some conversation, but just be alone in your thoughts during a workout. So that's, that's the first thing he recommends. The other thing he hits is the commute, the drive. And I know most of you listening to this have a commute. Like we're all firemen. We all drive to work on average. I drive an hour and 15 to an hour and 30.

every day when I go to work and then the next day when I go home. So I have a ton of time in the car and I spend all of that time, all of it, listening to music, podcasts, audio books, or a YouTube video. Of course, I don't watch YouTube while I'm driving. That would be unsafe, but I do listen to YouTube videos. So his recommendation is while you're in the car commuting to work. And he, gives an example of a 30 minute commute, which is ridiculous, but

But whatever your commute is, he recommends he's, says, just be in silence during that time. Don't even turn the radio on, just drive to work and be alone with your thoughts. I tried that this morning on my way into work. I did not do it for the entire time, but when I got about 20 minutes out, I was like, okay, I can do 20 minutes. And I took my headphones out, I turned off my radio and I immediately began to fill that time with talking to myself.

I immediately began to fill that time with a practice run for this very podcast. I started just talking through the ideas that I had heard and couldn't even sit still and be alone with my thoughts for that long. had to talk to myself, which I don't think is super negative, but it wasn't achieving the actual purpose. So I found that really interesting. And then the final thing that he recommends is having some rules and some guidelines around the phone. And for him, I'll just give you his

Nole (14:31.95)
His is essentially after seven o'clock. He has a no phone policy when he's having meals at home with his family. There's a no devices at the dinner table rule, which I think is very good and very solid. We, we implement that in our own home. And you've heard Kevin talk about it a lot about being home and putting the phone away. Those are all good things. And I think those are good places to start. But I think that for me,

Obviously I know that I need to be off my phone more, but this was interesting because it gave me a bit of a different reason. And just this idea that being alone in your thoughts is part of the creative process. It's part of imagination. That's where you're going to have your best ideas. It's where you're going to work through the big questions in life and the problems that you're having and allowing yourself that time can be uncomfortable. can be difficult, but just like anything, it can also be trained.

And so practicing being quiet and being not distracted and allowing yourself to think through things and to just go where your brain goes. And then even deeper, of course, as a believer, I believe that that time should also be spent in talking to God and then just being quiet and listening and giving him space and the opportunity to speak into your life when he wants to, rather than just doing what I too often do, which is

I will pray and then I will move immediately onto the next thing. And I'm not sitting there and taking time to listen. So real short episode for you guys today. I found this super fascinating. Again, I'll link the video in the show notes of the professional guy actually talking about this. I found it super interesting and challenging and it is going to be something that I'm going to be trying to implement in my own life. And I'll let you know how it goes being bored at specific times on purpose.

Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you. We're glad you're out there. This has been the Fire You Carry podcast.

Nole (16:46.062)
As of today, which is the 10th of November, 2025, we are a mere four days away from our next class at the fire program. We do still have spots. This is actually going to be one of our smaller classes that we've ran recently. So if you last minute have the time and would like to come out, please reach out to us. We would love to hang out with you and we would love to see you out there on Friday. If not, that's okay too.

We'll miss you and we'll see you next week right here on the Fire You Carry podcast.

Nole (17:47.836)
Welcome back to the FireUKerry Podcast. For those of you who, no, a notification.