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So my AirPods died. Now stay with me, as I'm going to explain how this actually led to a huge realization that impacts both my personal life and my business, and likely yours as well. So onto the Apple website, I went to see what options there are now, and I see this AirPods four commercial with Pedro Pascal in it. Now if you haven't seen it, he's walking through this chaotic city. Scene switches on noise cancelation, and suddenly, silence everything melts away.
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And I'm thinking, Come on, that seems some cheeky marketing. It can't be that dramatic.
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Well, fast forward. I'm walking through my town, and it's the usual cacophony of life, cars going by, then friendly honking to their friends, people chatting, footsteps on the path. You know, the noises we've all become numb to. And I didn't even think of it as a problem at the time, and so I put in my new AirPods, because I'm going to listen to Spotify, but before putting your music on, I hit that noise cancelation button and, holy cow, the world just disappeared. My whole body relaxed. I could actually breathe.
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I felt my shoulders drop. My mind went quiet,
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and that's when it hit me, we're living in a world of constant noise without even realizing it. And I'm not just talking about sounds on the street or my kids screaming and running around the house. In today's episode, I'm going to dive into how we can turn down and even turn off some of that noise, ready to break free from the solopreneur struggle. Join me as I peel back the layers to a thriving online business without the guru hype or the burnout. I'm going to show you the proven strategies and tools that I use so you can build a sustainable digital business without sacrificing your well being.
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Welcome back to ease and impact your weekly dose of practical advice for the solo business journey, wherever you're at and I'm your host, Frankie Jay, and if you're new here, this is where we cut through that Guru noise and focus in on what actually works for your business and your life. Now, before we dive in, I want to be upfront about something. What I'm sharing today isn't coming from a place of I've got this all figured out. Far from it. Since that day I mentioned, I've researched about this topic because I've realized I was drowning in noise myself. So consider this episode part learnings, part my own experiment. I might even do a follow up episode after I've implemented these strategies for a longer period of time to share how it's actually going, and also this is going to be a bit of a longer one for those of my regular listeners, so get comfy. Maybe grab yourself a coffee, because here's what I'm hoping might shift for both you and me, if we actually do some of this stuff together, maybe instead of feeling constantly overwhelmed by information, we'll start to get some clarity on what actually matters. Maybe our brains won't feel like they're running at 90% capacity all the time, maybe even 100% capacity for some of you, and we'll have a bit more mental bandwidth for that creative, strategic thinking that actually grows our businesses. I'm curious if we can stop making decisions from that anxious I need to know everything right now placed and start making them from somewhere a bit calmer. And here's what really intrigues me. The research I found suggests that when we give our brains permission to be quiet, that's when the best ideas tend to show up, not when you're consuming more content, not when you're monitoring your competitors, when you create space for your own thoughts to come up, and these studies I've been reading suggest that shifts could start happening within 72 hours, not months, not years, days. Now, I don't know if that'll be true for all of us, but it seems worth testing, right?
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But first, let's start with what we're actually dealing with here. From some of the stuff I've read, I've identified three types of noise that are almost systematically destroying our ability to think, our ability to think clearly and build a sustainable business.
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First, there's the physical noise, the obvious stuff, traffic, you know, construction. People talk, talking, notifications, buzzing. But here's what I didn't realize until I started paying attention, most of us don't even know how much this ambient noise is wearing us down.
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We've become so adapted to it that we think it's normal to feel maybe slightly on edge all the time. I know I can tune out my kids sometimes, and my wife will ask me, isn't this bothering you? And I'll be like, what? Not knowing that the kids have been riling each other up, but my brain is still processing it, so likely it is wearing me down. Then there's obviously the mental noise, the constant commentary running it in our own heads. Am I doing enough? Should I pivot my strategy? What if I'm missing something? It's like having a.
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A really anxious business coach living in your brain, rent free offering offering unhelpful advice, 24/7, and finally, digital noise. This is where it gets pretty mind blowing. I've found research from digital marketing studies showing we're exposed to about 10,000 ads per day and consume roughly 34 gigabytes of information daily. The average person, which that might be you, checks their phone 96 times a day, according to The New York Times, that's once every 10 minutes during waking hours.
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And I heard Mel Robbins recently say, we spend 20 years of our lives scrolling what the 20 years? Let that sink in.
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For us solopreneurs, or if you call yourself a coach or a course creator, the digital noise feels justified, right? There's industry newsletters, maybe some competitor analysis, client messages, social media for business growth, it feels like staying informed,
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but here's almost the paradox I discovered. Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that 80% of senior leaders attribute information overload to poor decision making. We think more information equals better decisions, but we're we're actually making ourselves worse at the thing we're trying to improve. Now, as digital entrepreneurs, many of us have bought into what what we call the Always On myth. We think being constantly available equals being successful, responsive to clients, active on social media, monitoring competitors, creating daily content.
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But here's what the research tells us about the real cost. A 2017 study from the University of California Irvine found that every time you check your phone, when that notification comes in or you're switching tasks, it takes about 23 minutes to regain full focus. Think about that, if you're checking notifications even five times a day, you're losing almost two hours of productive thinking time.
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Now, if you feel like me, I'm like, I don't believe it, because I think I can refocus again really quick. But can I really, is my brain really back on task, really back on focusing in on that task as quick as I think it is. And there's another study from UC Irvine that really opened my eyes. They found that knowledge workers, so that's someone whose primary work involves developing processing and applying knowledge to produce something of value. So I imagine that's probably a lot of us, solopreneurs and coaches that they check email every 11 minutes. On average, every 11 minutes, no wonder we feel so scattered. And then there's what researchers call social media fatigue. I'm sure you felt it. A study published in Computers in Human Behavior found that heavy social media use is directly linked to increased anxiety and depression, which is particularly problematic for entrepreneurs who depend on these platforms for business growth. Kind of stuck in this catch 22 but here's the part that really got me, FOMO fear of missing out. It keeps us constantly checking in on industry news, staying on email lists for topics we aren't even focusing on right now as a just in case option, social media platforms are specifically designed to create that dopamine driven engagement cycles that encourage us to continually scroll. They literally profit from fragmenting our attention. The real cost we're busy consuming everyone else's content and watching everyone else's moves, and we're missing out on the deep work, the strategic thinking, the creative breakthroughs. We're so busy watching the game that we neglect actually playing it. Okay, so I went down a bit of a noise research rabbit hole on that. But what I found, you know, it felt really mind blowing. So what about the other side the silence?
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Well, there's this study from Duke University, led researcher that completely changed how I thought about silence. So researchers put mice in a sound in soundproof chambers for just two hours a day and measured what happened to their brains. Then they tested different stimuli, like white noise, Mozart, even baby mouse sounds. Measured this against complete silence.
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What they found, which is published in the journal brain structure and function in 2013
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was that silence, not any of the sounds, led to the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus, and that's the part of your brain responsible for memory and learning. New brain cells come on like from silence, and then follow up research shows the benefits start showing up after 72 hours of cumulative quiet time, not months of meditation practice, not years of Zen mastery, three days. Another study by physician Luciano Bernardi, published in the journal heart in 2006 found that just two minutes of silence reduced how.
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Rate and blood pressure more effectively than listening to relaxing music two minutes.
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And then there's this fascinating research on what's called the brain's default mode network. When you're not actively focused on something, when you're in silence, your brain doesn't shut off. It goes into this default mode where it starts sorting and organizing information, making connections you might not make when you're actively consuming content. A 2013 study published in frontiers in human Neuroscience found that this default mode is most active during self reflection, and it's where the brain integrates external and internal information into what he calls a conscious workspace. Now this is where breakthrough insights happen. This is where strategic thinking lives.
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So here's what got me thinking,
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while everyone else is drowning in noise and information. Does silence become a competitive advantage?
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When was the last time you had a genuine breakthrough idea while scrolling social media? I'm going to assume probably never, but I bet you've had insights in the shower, on walks, during quiet moments when your brain finally has space to think. All right, so knowing all this is great, but what do we actually do about it? Well, I'm working on testing these three strategies, and I want to share what's working and what's not. We're going to start with the daily sort of five minute reset ritual. Now this is probably the simplest, but I think also the most impactful change. I've started not checking my phone first thing, that's one side of it, and what I have started doing is just five minutes of complete silence before anything else. Now, not meditation, not breathing exercises, just sitting quietly and listening to nothing.
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Now, at first, my brain fought this hard, you know, racing thoughts, anxiety, mental to do lists starting to pile up. Your brain is literally addicted to stimulation, so it's going to create its own noise when you take away an external input. But from what I've read and heard from some experts in this field, this is completely normal, while silence
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is the approach here. If complete silence does feel a little too intense. There are some science backed alternatives. Apps like balance, which I actually regularly use, has a bunch of different sessions you could use. So it's great for even just like breathing and staying silence. So not a full meditation, but not complete silence, as someone's coaching you through it. Or brain FM uses specific frequencies that help your brain focused without over stimulation. Then also, I've added in a midday reset. Now this could be a silent walk somewhere away from the noise of the world, or use noise canceling function on your Airpods for or it's just sitting quietly for a few minutes, just in the middle of the day to reset. So here's the big one that I'm kind of experimenting with. That's what's called a digital sunset, which is one hour before bed, no screens, no inputs, just letting your brain wind down. Now this is probably the hardest as I will watch TV right up until bedtime, or even watch American Dad or listen to American Dad as I go to sleep sometimes. And the way I found around this is going to bed at the same time as the kids, yeah, so call me a Nana. Uh, so we have no screens rule after dinner already, and if I go to bed at the same time, my two won't have been on screens, right? So the information. Call it a diet.
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This one's a bit harder and I but I think it's pretty
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important, is scaling back on the amount of information that you're
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inputting into your brain every day from outside sources. So batch processing emails checking only two to three times per day, instead of constantly remember what I said before every 11 minutes people are checking email, so I'm working on a max of sort of 15 to 30 minutes morning and afternoon. There may be work in these emails that I need to action and that will get added into my project manager, but that's about
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it. Now this one I'm starting as of today, and I think it's gonna be a hard one to break, as I have gotten to the habit of being super responsive to my detriment, on email. It's a story for another time, but it almost becomes a bit of an addiction, that I do a bit of a task and then check in on the email, do another bit of task, check in on email. I think it's a habit that needs to be broken, then a bit of a notification purge. And this is a big pill to swallow. You know, research from various digital wellness studies show people receive over 50 notifications daily, which you know constantly takes your focus away from other things. So as of today, I have turned off everything except truly urgent communications. So no more notifications on my Instagram, Facebook, class.
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Dojo, which is like my kids school app, and I've set aside time to check the necessary apps for my business, like I'm going to do for email. If it's actually urgent, people will call now. I challenge you to do the same right now.
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I'll wait. You can pause me now if you want one more area to get the benefits of silence, let's talk about strategic silence
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now, I think this is probably going to be the hardest with experts at our fingertips online and AI crawling the internet for information, there's a lot of thinking that's done for us. So here's where it gets interesting for business. Before making any significant decisions, take a strategic pause, just two minutes of silence and let your mind clear before choosing
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or perhaps for weekly planning, spend 20 minutes in silence reviewing your goals and your priorities. No podcast, no music, no inputs, just thinking about what actually matters for the week ahead
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or for when you're stuck on a creative problem, writing, strategy, content creation, just taking 15, maybe 30 minutes silence instead of immediately reaching for more information or inspiration. The solutions that emerge from these quiet sessions, while research suggests that they're likely to be better than anything you'll find through content consumption or AI because it comes from you. Now I think this is going to probably going to be the hardest one for me, and I wonder if it will be for you too, because often it feels like taking that 15 to 30 minutes. Well, it's wasted time. I could be working on something, but I challenge you to just try it, see how it goes for a week or two weeks now, we talked about a bunch of strategies around this topic, and in a minute, I'm going to tell you how you can get started without getting overwhelmed. But I want to be honest about something. This isn't meant to be easy, and I'm not pretending that I've mastered it. There are days when I will fall back, and I do fall back into old patterns, or when FOMO gets the better of me and I convince myself, well, I just need to check one more thing. But even implementing these strategies imperfectly is set to create noticeable changes. Decisions should feel clearer. Creative Work should flow better being less anxious about missing out because you're more focused on what you're actually doing. Remember, the research from neuroscience studies suggests that our brains adapt to these changes within about 72 hours of cumulative quiet time. So if you only manage a few minutes here and there, it adds up.
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So here's where I want to challenge you for the next seven days.
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Day one to three, start with just five minutes of morning silence before checking your phone. Set a timer, sit somewhere comfortable and just listen to quiet.
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Notice your brain's resistance, but don't judge it. Days four to five, add in some information boundaries, maybe batch your email or batching your social media checking to specific times
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day six to seven, try one of the strategic silence sessions when you're making a decision or solving a problem, instead of immediately reaching for Google, Claude, chatgpt or asking others for input, give your own mind some space to work and track how you feel, notice the quality of your decisions. Pay attention to whenever creative ideas show up,
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or if all of that feels just too much, and just focus on one strategy for seven days, once you feel like you've nailed that. Then add another listen in a world that literally profits from keeping our attention fragmented, choosing silence is almost a rebellion.
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It's not about becoming a hermit or disconnecting from your business. It's about being intentional with your attention
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and protective of your mental space,
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your best ideas, your clearest strategies, your most innovative solutions. They're not hiding in the next newsletter or competitive analysis. They're waiting for us in the quiet spaces that you create for your own thinking. So if you try any of these strategies, or if you try them in the past, I'd love to hear how it's gone. Drop your questions, your wins, your wins, your struggles in the comments, and let's figure it out together. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of ease and impact. Remember, if you don't need another tool or technique to transform your business, sometimes you just need to stop consuming everyone else's noise and start listening to your own wisdom. Until next time, keep creating impact with ease.
