In an interview with Vox’s Ezra Klein, journalist and author Ta-Nehisi Coates argued that serious thinkers and writers should get off Twitter. It wasn’t a critique of the 140-character medium or even the quality of the social media discourse in the age of fake news.

It was a call to get beyond the noise.

Coates, a 2015 recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation’ “Genius” grant, a National Book Award winner and contributor to The Atlantic, believes that generating good ideas and quality work products requires something all too rare in modern life: quiet.

He’s in good company.  Author JK Rowling, biographer Walter Isaacson, and psychiatrist Carl Jung have all had disciplined practices for managing the information flow and cultivating periods of deep silence. Ray Dalio, Bill George, CA Governor Jerry Brown and Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan have also described structured periods of silence as important factors in their success.

Recent studies are showing that taking time for silence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive to the complex environments in which so many of us now live, work, and lead. Duke Medical School’s Imke Kirste recently found that silence is associated with the development of new cells in the hippocampus, the key brain region associated with learning and memory.

Physician Luciano Bernardi found that two-minutes of silence inserted between musical pieces proved more stabilizing to cardiovascular and respiratory systems than even the music categorized as “relaxing.” And a 2013 study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, based on a survey of 43,000 workers, concluded that the disadvantages of noise and distraction associated with open office plans outweighed anticipated, but still unproven, benefits like increasing morale and productivity boosts from unplanned interactions.

But cultivating silence isn’t just about getting respite from the distractions of office chatter or tweets.  Real sustained silence, the kind that facilitates clear and creative thinking, quiets inner chatter as well as outer.

It’s about taking a temporary break from one of life’s most basic responsibilities: Having to think of what to say.

Cultivating silence increases your chances of encountering novel ideas and information. When we’re constantly fixated on the verbal agenda—what to say next, what to write next, what to tweet next—it’s tough to make room for truly different perspectives or radically new ideas. It’s hard to drop into deeper modes of listening and attention. And it’s in those deeper modes of attention that truly novel ideas are found.

Even incredibly busy people can cultivate periods of sustained quiet time. Here are 3 practical suggestions:

1) Punctuate meetings with five minutes of quiet time. If you’re able to close the office door, retreat to a park bench, or find another quiet hideaway, it’s possible to hit reset by engaging in a silent practice of meditation or reflection.

2) Take a silent afternoon in nature. You need not be a rugged outdoors type to ditch the phone and go for a simple two-or-three-hour jaunt in nature. Immersion in nature can be the clearest option for improving creative thinking capacities. Henry David Thoreau went to the woods for a reason.

3) Go on a media fast. Turn off your email for several hours or even a full day, or try “fasting” from news and entertainment. While there may still be plenty of noise around—family, conversation, city sounds—you can enjoy real benefits by resting the parts of your mind associated with unending work obligations and tracking social media or current events.

The world is getting louder.  But silence is still accessible—it just takes commitment and creativity to cultivate it.

These are uncertain times. Of course, this is always true, but collectively, there is a palpable sense of shifting sands and rapid change. Our challenge is to respond to these changes and attending uncertainty (e.g. national and global crises, work and family concerns, or an unwelcome diagnosis) with our fundamental values intact-and lived.  

How do we do this?

The first step is to acknowledge how uncomfortable we feel.  Usually, we attempt to bury this fact of uncomfortableness in all kinds of escape hatches.   Rabbit holes of stress eating, excessive talking, social media, drinking- you can fill this in with a million other not so sly schemes.

So, today, try just acknowledging the truth of how you’re feeling.  Acknowledge, and if you can, name what you’re feeling. Fear, anxiety, anger, powerlessness, worry- these are all natural responses to uncertainty. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with any of these responses or with you.

And then, allow yourself to actually feel it.  I don’t mean think it; the tendency we all have to reactively spin stories in our head about how horrible a situation is, how we “can’t stand it” another minute. These narratives ramp up our experience of these feelings, guaranteed, but they (the thoughts) are not our feelings. If it’s fear or anxiety- where do you feel in your body?  Is in your chest, perhaps feeling a tightness? Or is your heart racing? Is there a restless energy throughout your body?  The same goes for anger – these feelings have specific patterns in our human bodies.

If we don’t keep adding more story (more fuel for the flame), the feelings pass. Neuroscientist Jill Bolte-Taylor, in her book My Stroke of Insight, notes that the physiological lifespan of an emotion in the body and brain is 90 seconds. The sensations—adrenalin, heat in the face, tightness in the throat, rapid heartbeat—arise, peak and dissipate on their own…if we let them.

Go easy; try not to judge yourself. When experiencing strong emotions, become aware of the current stream of thoughts without judging whether you should be having these thoughts or not. Be curious about them, but not necessarily true in any real way.

We don’t need to act on our feelings or thoughts before it’s time. When we are uncertain as to the outcome of a situation at work or home, we often feel the strong urge to push things to a conclusion before they’re ready. It feels like it will just be a relief to know, one way or the other, to have some sort of an answer instead of this not knowing. It is human to crave certainty and to want to know. But don’t push- answers will come.  Start small.  Here is a practice to begin:

Awareness of bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions

Settle into a relaxed posture.  Feel your feet on the floor and your body being supported by the chair.

Now, taking three full breaths, as deeply and slowly as feels comfortable for you.  Then, turning attention to the energy in the body. Pausing and breathing and feeling the energy. What’s here? Does the energy shift from moment to moment?   Does the intensity of any particular sensation peak and then soften?

As you continue to breath, lean in to your experience. If agitation or uneasiness is here, see if you can put out the welcome mat for these feelings.  Move closer, even if just a moment, treating these sensations as an invited guest.

Begin working with little uncertainties (whether it’s the possibility that an important meeting may get cancelled or how a colleague may respond to a change in plans). This increases your ability to wisely respond to whatever shows up in the future.

Hat wearing isn’t what it used to be. Prior to the 1950s, nobody would think about going outside without a hat, no matter the season. In fact, your hat, whether you were a nurse, a white collar executive or a gas station attendant told the world a lot about your socioeconomic status and what your occupation was.

The phrase “wearing too many hats” emerged relatively recently. In the past century, the pace of our culture and the workplace evolved rapidly, women AND men are now homemakers AND marketing specialists, parents AND business owners. Of course, so much more too, we may coach a little league team and dance the two step on a Saturday night.

While much of this is good and brings meaning to our lives, it also means that we must juggle.

And anyone who has attempted to juggle knows that juggling for any length of time is hard to do! Even if you are good at it soon enough it is very tiring. And as you add more objects, it becomes more stressful. Then what can occasionally happen? It all falls down.

There is where mindfulness can be enormously helpful. When we carve out time for just being, intentional non-doing, we reconnect with who we are at our core.

Read more