From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I’m trying to make dull moments more palatable by shoving my ears full of talking.
I have a stack of podcasts and YouTube videos. Which stack I’m attacking depends on my Wi-Fi access.
When I wake up to go running, I use the time while I’m trying to wake up my body to continue watching or listening to whatever video is next in my queue, be it a reaction video, a video essay about filmmaking, or a video podcast I’m not subscribed to yet.
When I actually begin running, I’ll then switch to a long podcast, preferably one that I know for a fact will front-load its ads or provide time-coded chapters so that I can easily skip them during the run.
If I have a monotonous work task that requires no cognitive functioning or reading, I’ll repeat this cycle, again utilizing the Wi-Fi.
When I’m cooking or cleaning up the house after dinner, vacuuming, taking out the trash, doing the dishes, folding laundry, lifting weights, doing push-ups, shaving, brushing my teeth, and especially using the toilet, I am filling this time with distractions.
You’ll probably forgive me, but I even listen to podcasts while I’m driving my kids to school or back home, empty car or not.
Is this wrong? No, not on its face, it’s not. It’s normal for people to want to entertain themselves, to make the boring things feel less boring, or to attempt to multitask and get two things accomplished at once.
Do I think it’s wrong for me to do these things? Again, not necessarily. Not for all of it. It’s not like anyone’s getting hurt.
I mean, yeah, maybe no one’s getting hurt, but someone’s getting the short end of the stick.
And that someone is either you, or the person/people you’re with.
I’ll keep the focus on myself to avoid judging others, and also because I’m the one who’s falling short of my own standard here, so if you’re distracted and proud of it, keep on keeping on, I’m not here to make you feel bad. But if you’re like me, allow me to be your avatar and walk through this shame tunnel for a second.
As a member of the Millennial generation, I’ve been exposed to YouTube and podcasts for quite some time now, and my use of those platforms far exceeds my engagement with social media apps or dating apps (thank Christ I got married in 2013, I have no experience with the current dating scene, and from what my single friends tell me, it’s a fucked up place to be).
I wouldn’t even say I have a problem with videos or podcasts, per se. According the Pew Research Center, I’m in the 20% of Americans who listen to 4 or more podcasts and who listen to a podcast nearly every day. I’m also confident I spend less time actively vegging on YouTube than the average person.
But I’m not here to compare myself to the average person or any person. Except for one. I’m comparing myself to the person that I’d like to be. You know who I’m talking about.
The Better Me.
The Better Me is an attentive husband, a good listener, a patient father, pretty damn physically fit for his age, understands insurance, reads a book every week, isn’t afraid to speak his mind or live life on his terms, knows what he’s talking about, keeps quiet when he’s uninformed, and doesn’t say embarrassing things at inappropriate times.
I don’t aspire to a man-bun, this is the best stock photo I could get, which hopefully means The Better Me is super-unique! Yay!
The Better Me is great. He’s also going to take some time to get here, and I’m not going to wait around for him. I have to be proactive if I want what he has.
I’m not flogging myself because I listen to too many podcasts and videos. That’s not a bad thing and the positives far outweigh the negatives of those free activities. What I’m identifying as a problem are the times I’m choosing to partake. At least half of the time, I’m with someone else, and that someone else would benefit from my attention.
Let’s start there, with someone else. When I’m in the car with my kids, most of the time, there’s no reason for me to speak at length. My car does not suppress road noise very well at all, so it’s usually pretty loud and difficult to converse with my kids unless we’re semi-aggressively raising our voices and repeating ourselves a lot. I also try to let them entertain themselves, speak to each other, or listen to the radio (we listen to a cool local station with minimal commercials and great music, no corporate pop sugar dogshit). I’m justified in using that time to engage my brain with interesting podcast interviews with experts of things I’m interested in, instead of listening to children bicker about trains or imaginary space ships.
But, I’m not fully paying attention to my shows, either. And I think it’s because I know that if I fully block out everything else and listen to my podcast, then my kids will know for sure that I’m choosing to ignore them.
Some of you may be thinking “oh well, Dad, you know, it’s ok to have some you time” or “don’t beat yourself up about it, champ, your kids know you love them”, or even “those kids should be lucky they even have a dad at all”. I got it, there’s worse things to do to your kids.
But for some reason, I’m triggered by the idea of my kids thinking that I don’t want to hear them talk or that I have no interest in their opinions or perspectives.
It freaks me out when I think about the possibility that my kids may one day grow to be adults who don’t talk to me because they’ve learned not to share anything with their Dad because he always seemed bothered when they spoke to him, as if he had something else he’d rather be doing, or as if they were interrupting something more interesting. The idea that my kids might bend over backwards for my approval and finally give up and disengage one day makes me want to die.
So when I listen, I only use one ear bud, and I always hear and respond when someone says “hey, Daddy” and I tap the thing to pause every time. That’s how I keep my kids from being disappointed in me.
But then I’m not absorbing the podcast either. So why listen in the first place, during this time, when the possibility of interruption is so high? Even when I’m not being spoken to, I hear every word and react as if it’s spoken to me, initially, I’m tuned into them anyways, so what is the point, then, of listening at all?
Good question, Better Me. Let’s come together on this.
The answer is: There is no point.
If your leisure activity is being interrupted by non-leisure stimuli, ask yourself one question: Am I in leisure time right now?
If the answer is yes, then ignore or put away whatever non-leisure annoyance is currently vexing you, you’re off the clock.
But if the answer is “no, this isn’t leisure time, I’m kind of supposed to be doing something else”, then that split attention would be your conscience.
I’m interrupted by my kids because I really should be paying attention to what my kids are doing.
What about the other times? What about when I’m driving alone, or running, or cleaning? I’ll say that right now, I’m working on limiting those times. I have a goal to unsubscribe from one podcast every month. Eventually, I’ll have to be very honest with myself about which ones I’m really enjoying the most and if the day ever comes that I actually feel like I’m losing something valuable or joyful if I delete it, then I’ll know I’ve finally reached a small amount of very worthwhile subscriptions. My goal is to get to the point where if I have time to listen to something without distractions, then I’ll listen and enjoy it, and if I’m out of things to watch or listen to, then oh well, I’ll just be alone with my thoughts or with the task at hand.
And that’s the thing I’m afraid of. I’m reluctant to be alone with my thoughts.
My thoughts are scary and intrusive and sometimes very sad and dark. It’s kind of the whole premise of this column. But I also know that the scary places are often the places we have to go if we want to grow. It’s a concept that’s so ubiquitous that even if you haven’t studied philosophy or theology, it’s baked into pop culture to its core, in nearly every movie, video game, or fantasy novel. The Abyss.
We aren’t going that deep, this is not a life or death journey. But it’s a slow burn. If I keep living my life as a dopamine-chasing drone, I’ll never improve as a listener, I’ll never think actively about a task while I’m doing it, and most importantly, I’ll never give my brain the idle time it needs in order to process my subconscious clutter and have shit, you know, occur to me.
You’d think that as a writer, I’d be making full use of my idle cognitive time so that I could have more ideas, that I’d be using every minute available to me as a time to think and reflect and find a fresh perspective on whatever menial thing I happen to be doing. But I’m just like every other person, reflexively trying to distract myself to avoid engaging with my automatic thoughts, justifying it by claiming I’m leveraging amazing, free technology to learn exciting and insightful things that will benefit me as an intellectual and therefore, as a human person.
It’s not a flawed premise. I think you’ll gain far more insight and wisdom from long conversations between interesting people than you’ll gain from short clips on TikTok or cable news or late-night talk shows. The knowledge and studies of countless smart people that is available to us for free via our phones is miraculous.
But I’m a dad and someone’s partner. I can listen and study and try to absorb the expertise and thoughtful insight of a sociology professor or global economics expert on Spotify, and maybe I’ll be a little bit smarter. But those things won’t make me a better husband or dad.
I get better at the husband and dad part by doing the husband and dad stuff. The husband and dad stuff, by the way, isn’t found in your podcasts.
You could split the difference somewhat and listen to shows that are all about marriage and parenting, those can be helpful for thinking of ways to do that stuff better, but at the end of the day, every situation is different, and your favorite show’s host has a different life, different kids, and a different marriage than you. Advice only goes so far as a general rule.
I do better at home when I’m tuned in at home. I do worse at home when I’m tuned out at home.
My mission as a curious person who likes to think about big ideas, but who also has human beings I’d like to stay married to or have speak to me in 20 years, is to do the curious idea part on my own time and do the other stuff on family time. Most time, by the way, is family time. Take the wisdom and insight and applicable knowledge you’ve gained from that private time and use it to either make family time better, or to tide yourself over until you can return to it.
For example, in my free time, I like to write essays, record podcasts, read books, watch movies and YouTube videos, go running and listen to podcasts. Those are the times I don’t have to be someone’s father, I can just be myself, so to speak. That is to say, I’m allowed to focus on my personal, creative free time, the thing that makes me who I am. When I don’t get an appropriate amount of that time, I act cranky. When I successfully make time for myself, I have fewer excuses to act like a piece of shit when my wife or my kids wants my attention. (Still perfecting).
Most people, no matter what they tell you, can not, in fact, multitask. Our brains simply do not work that way. What they can do is multiple things at once, poorly. They cannot do multiple tasks with the same speed and quality as if they were done one at a time. When you do multiple things at once, unless they require ZERO high-level cognitive function, you do them less efficiently and you’re far more likely to make a mistake.
So stop trying to. I’ll let myself listen to podcasts while I do monotonous tasks where I have a lot of time to myself, like doing yard work, driving, running, etc. But I’m not doing myself or anyone else any good by teaching my brain to find something, anything, with which to occupy itself for every waking minute. I didn’t need it when I was a kid, what’s telling me I need that now?
Engage with your inner thoughts, let the brain do its housekeeping, think about the thing you’re doing while you’re doing it, let that annoying song repeat in your memory, notice the sounds of whatever environment you’re occupying right now, or be aware of the sound of your breathing.
You can’t die of boredom. If you are, then my advice is to get some sleep. If you need that much dopamine just to get through the day, then you didn’t get enough rest, friend.
Nothing bad is going to happen to you if you do fewer things at once.