You can’t hear yourself think in a room you keep filling with noise.

Your own thoughts are quiet, and they only get a turn when nothing louder is playing. Podcasts, music in every gap, a video while you eat: all of it is pleasant and all of it uses the exact channel thinking needs. The lack of silence is not entirely accidental, because silence is where the uncomfortable thoughts live too. You end up never finding out what you were about to work out.

Take one routine thing this week with no audio: the walk, the washing up, the bus. Let it be dull. The first ten minutes are the price, and whatever turns up after that is yours.