What does it feel like to be in the silence? To sit and do nothing at all. To really get a hold of what this feels like, it is a useful exercise to try to eliminate as much sensory input as possible. Eliminate as much light as possible, as much sound as possible, especially. Certainly, removing any distractions to feel this feeling that for some people is unbearable. Why exactly this is? Is not necessarily immediately obvious and it is not necessarily immediately proven. Feeling of uncomfortability in the silence, it can be instructive. Everyone has a different response to this kind of stimulus or lack of stimulus. We can probably draw some conclusions from our lives as to why this is uncomfortable. Basically speaking, humans are not comfortable with things that we are not used to. If you haven't sat in silence for a long time or if you can't remember ever doing that, then you are certainly not used to it. This can be an unsettling feeling simply because it is foreign. It can also be unsettling to do something that you feel incredibly unskilled at doing, sitting in the silence. If you are like most people in the modern world, we will leave you feeling and urge to feel that void. To pick up your phone, to turn on some music, even some kind of white noise in the background, might relieve that feeling. Everyone experiences this uncomfortability a little bit differently. For me, it feels almost like there is a kind of a background hum or some people describe it as feeling like there is an electronic component that is turned on in the room and it is causing some kind of frequency that you can't really hear but you can almost feel it. Why are we talking about this on this episode of Developer T? You are probably asking. If you have listened to the show for very long, this shouldn't feel like too much of a foreign concept because it certainly is related to some of the mindfulness discussions that we have had on the show. This feeling can be instructive and not only can it be instructive, it can be one of the most effective times to allow your mind to work best. We are going to talk a little bit more about how to use this same kind of model of thinking about kind of diving into this silence or diving into a void. Right after we talk about today's sponsor, Command Line Heroes. In this season, season 7, part of the season 7 of Command Line Heroes, the host, Seran Yitbarik, who herself is a developer and a podcaster, takes us back to a pivotal year in the history of the internet. And this is incredibly interesting for those of us who work in this because we've come to know our tools. We've come to know the internet how it is today. And we probably take a lot of things for granted. For example, in one of the episodes, you'll learn about how DNS and specifically getting a domain name has changed so drastically, you can get it instantly now on GoDaddy as long as it's available. Before that, it was literally kept on paper by one person. Her name was Elizabeth Jake Feinler. You can learn about Elizabeth on this season of Command Line Heroes. Perhaps the most interesting parts of this season and the most important parts of history are how we were able to take this thing that was an academic curiosity and change it in just the right time to become a global phenomenon that still is having waves and tsunamis worth of impact on the world. You can find season 7 of Command Line Heroes wherever you get podcasts. These two Command Line Heroes for their support of Developer Tea. So much of our experience in our lives is created by our changing of the world around us. And so little of it is created by our observation. And so when we think about, for example, prioritization, so much of our priorities are determined by what we decide about them. Think about this. The next time you prioritize your backlog, what would happen if instead of actually moving cards around and assigning priority levels, if instead you did nothing? Let's be clear. I'm not advocating for a sit back and do nothing, approach to everything forever. I'm not telling you to go and be lazy. And I'm also not saying that processes are poisonous. What I am saying is that as you take your hands off the wheel, you'll find that you weren't driving to begin with. You'll find that if you were to leave alone your backlog of prioritization, it's very likely that what is actually truly important, not just what is urgent, will rise to the top. Now, this doesn't mean that prioritization is bad. Certainly determining priorities is one of the most important things you can do to stay productive. But what is true is that if you can't figure out what is important, that is a problem that you are likely influencing with your control. If you are overwhelmed, it's likely that the best antidote to that situation, to this feeling of overwhelm is to slow down, take a few deep breaths and think about something a little bit longer. Most of what we attach ourselves to, the attachment itself is what is overwhelming us. The feeling that we have identified a threat comes from that attachment, that sense that we are observing the world through our active engagement with it, rather than taking a step back and actually watching. So here's the homework for this episode, because this can get a little bit hairy to be a very strong proponent of being active and engaged in your work. Yes, that is something that I would propose is a good idea. It's good for your career, it's good for your health, it's likely that that's going to be something that if you're listening to this podcast, you want to stay active and engaged every day. But I also want you to take a moment and think about some of the problems that you're facing, whether you're facing a personnel issue as a manager, maybe you have a hard technical problem that you haven't been able to crack. And I want you to allow that problem to sit, consider what would happen if you disengaged from the active side of things and instead engaged in the observational passive side. How does the problem transform on its own? Amazingly, doing nothing can actually be an incredible solution to the thinking side of the equation. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to Command Line Heroes for sponsoring this episode. Go back to the pivotal year of 1995 with the incredible Seronio Bark, who is herself a developer and a podcaster. She's going to carry you through the story of how the internet came to be in season 7. You can find it wherever you listen to podcasts, including wherever you're listening to this one right now. If you enjoyed this episode, then take a moment and share it with a friend or leave a review in iTunes. These are the two best ways that you can give back to the show. And everything we do here is free. We never have marketed Developer Tea. Any significant extent at least. So everything we're doing here is only making it to your ears. It's only made it to the iTunes charts because of the interest from developers like you and the time that they spend sharing and reviewing the show. Thank you so much for making it possible for us to keep doing this. Until next time, enjoy your tea.