[00:00:00] Daniel: Mhm. Hey there, Spacemakers. Welcome back to our podcast about making space for a meaningful life by doing less, not more. I'm Daniel Sih, your host, joined by my spacemaking partner in crime, Matt Bain. If you're tuning in for the first time, we're exploring the fracturing of our attention and how to reclaim your focus.

[00:00:23] Daniel: If you notice that your concentration is waning and you're running to stand still, well then you're in the right place. A special thank you to our amazing show sponsor, St Luke's Health, our partner from my home state of Tasmania. They're not just ensuring health, they're inspiring us to become the healthiest island on the planet.

[00:00:44] Daniel: The Spacemakers, with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:00:49] Daniel: Hi, everyone. This is Daniel from The Spacemakers. I'm back with my friend, Matt Bain.

[00:00:54] Matt: Hi, Dan. Hey, everyone.

[00:00:56] Daniel: And we are talking about how to make space for some silence or quiet in a noisy [00:01:00] world. This is part of a broader series about the fracturing of our attention, how we can concentrate better by practicing concentration.

[00:01:07] Daniel: And today's episode is inspired by this book, popular study, which I really like by a guy called Timothy Wilson from the University of Virginia. And so Timothy Wilson and his team got together and they were trying to explore how people manage being by themselves in silence or alone. Uh, more particularly actually they were studying how people respond when reflecting on their own thoughts.

[00:01:28] Daniel: And so he got people in a room. And he just said, look, spend six to 15 minutes by yourself, no devices, no notifications, and tell us what it's like to think about your thoughts. And a lot of people said it was painful. And so, uh, Timothy Wilson and his team thought, that's unusual, painful just to be alone for six minutes.

[00:01:48] Daniel: And so he thought maybe it's the environment. So then rather than being in the uni or the lab, they put people in their own homes in the comfort of their lounge rooms and repeated the experiment. And people said, being alone in their lounge room for [00:02:00] 15 minutes by themselves was painful. And so they thought what do they mean by painful?

[00:02:05] Daniel: So, I don't know how they got ethics for this, but um, they ended up attaching electrodes to people's bodies and then giving them painful electric shocks, which was so painful that people said they would pay 5 or more not to have that zap again. And then they put that cohort into the hospital, into a room by themselves for six to 15 minutes and said, I want you to sit there and reflect on your own thoughts.

[00:02:24] Daniel: Uh, now there's this zapping machine in the corner of the room. We don't encourage you to use it, but you know, feel free if you want to. Uh, and the results were that 67 percent of men and 25 percent of women chose to give themselves painful electric shocks rather than have six minutes thinking about their own thoughts.

[00:02:41] Daniel: And I just think that. Yeah. A, is a pretty cool study, but B, uh, it says something about our culture where whenever we're at the bus stop, whenever we're at the train station or in the supermarket, you know, whenever we're at the park and we have a moment of silence, we habitually reach for our phone, don't we?

[00:02:57] Daniel: And we just distract ourselves. We give ourselves [00:03:00] these shocks, uh, and we've untrained ourselves to experience long periods of silence or solitude. Uh, we've untrained ourselves to reflect on our own thoughts for a significant period of time. And we believe, and we're going to talk about this Matt, that science is really important and that actually we need to reclaim the practices of being by ourselves and reflecting on our thoughts if we are to experience a more focused, concentrated, meaningful life.

[00:03:28] Daniel: So that's what we're going to talk about.

[00:03:30] Matt: Wow, self administered shocks. People prefer to shock themselves, voluntarily shock themselves.

[00:03:35] Daniel: Yeah, self administered shocks. Uh, and we do it all the time. So look, we're going to talk about this in the episode, but before we do I don't do it all the time. Uh, so we're going to talk about this in a moment, but we usually start each episode by reflecting back on what we did, because for us, making space and paying attention is not about what you know, it's actually about what you do with your life.

[00:03:55] Daniel: And so that's what we've been pausing and having activities at the end of each episode to get people to do [00:04:00] something to retrain their focus muscles. So what was the activity?

[00:04:03] Matt: Well, there was a, there was a couple of options within the overall activity, uh, and they all pertained to life, um, planning, trying to work out what the greater why or the greater yes was.

[00:04:14] Matt: So you had more motivation and reason to say no to distractions and get your attention captured.

[00:04:21] Daniel: Because our premise from our experience as well is that you can't remove digital distractions and then retrain your focus muscles on what really matters unless you know what really matters. And actually, to have a greater sense of your why, your purpose, your values, or the people who matter in your life, that takes some self reflection, right?

[00:04:40] Daniel: Yes. And that's hard work. But to do that work is a bit like knowing where you're heading. And therefore - so, how'd you go with that?

[00:04:48] Matt: To be honest, I really enjoyed it. So what? Yeah. So I enjoyed it, mate. Is that the right response? I found it very useful. I ended up going with the, the five year future [00:05:00] exercise.

[00:05:00] Matt: So imagining myself in five years time, literally exactly five years time, and then looking back and answering those questions that we had under that heading. And I particularly, uh, enjoyed it, particularly found the last question in all those prompts very useful. And that was the question that related to what do you wish that you'd done more of?

[00:05:18] Matt: And what, what do you wish you'd done less of? Thinking about yourself five years into the future. Yeah. And I'll tell you that because I've been reflecting upon this a bit and the most useful feature I think about that particular five year exercise is that hard and fast five year timeframe. Because like we talked about, we don't live in complete isolation.

[00:05:38] Matt: We like exist as in, so what's important to me. And what I want to pay attention to is largely linked to the people who I'm already doing life with. Right. So having five years, like having the hard and fast time timeframe meant that I could map out how old I was going to be in five years time, as well as the people who I'm currently doing life with.

[00:05:55] Matt: And that immediately starts having real world implications for how I want to [00:06:00] spend my time. What who I want to pay attention to, and um, what my yes is going to be in the here and now, because in five years time, a lot of those people are going to be in very different life stages, and that's going to impact where I'm at.

[00:06:13] Matt: Does that make sense?

[00:06:15] Daniel: Yeah, it, it actually reminds me of something I did a few years ago. Yep. Where, uh, this is my, this is me being a complete geek, but I got a Trello board out and I put in the next five years and then the next ten, the next ten, the next ten until, you know, I'm 90 or 80, and yeah, it's my lifespan.

[00:06:29] Daniel: Yeah. And we just wrote down the kind of things that we might expect to pop up and it was super helpful because I was like, okay, I expect my, I actually said, two years ago, I expect my father to pass away in the next five. I thought, you know, this is when my mom might get older. This is when we'll have to look after our parents.

[00:06:44] Daniel: This is when our kids leave home. This is when we have no more school fees to pay. And just those broad landscape changes have been super helpful because one of the insights I gained was actually the next three to five years with orthodontics and three lots of school fees and dealing with, you know, sicknesses and all that [00:07:00] kind of stuff.

[00:07:00] Daniel: Career planning. This is like our real pressure point, particularly financially, and we're really squeezed for time. So therefore, let's be kind in ourselves with how we use our money, because in five more years, things change. So, so that kind of broader planning can be quite useful.

[00:07:15] Matt: Yes, yeah.

[00:07:15] Daniel: And even the idea that actually, if we're going to be caring for sick parents in, let's say, 15 years, let's make sure we have some overseas holidays and some things the next year because we may not have the same flexibility in the future.

[00:07:25] Matt: Yeah, yeah, that's it. They're all concrete examples of how, again, I need to be mindful of this stuff when it comes to working out and planning what I want to pay. and who I want to pay attention to over the next five years. Because this stuff is real world. I'm not going to be able to change it. My kids are going to get older.

[00:07:41] Matt: My friends are going to get older. I'm going to get older.

[00:07:42] Daniel: And if you have a plan, then you can make good decisions about how you use your time now. And more importantly, how you focus your attention. Yeah. Uh, so look, that was that activity. The actual activity was to simply book time in the calendar for people to do it.

[00:07:55] Daniel: So you're ahead of the game.

[00:07:56] Matt: I got to step back. And, and to download the activity sheet, I think it's at [00:08:00] spacemakers.au forward slash life plan. Yes. And it's got the questions, uh, as well as a process to help you make progress.

[00:08:06] Matt: And to answer that first question, um, if, if I'm like most people, that's probably, that is, that's a, that is a significant hurdle.

[00:08:13] Matt: Because I needed, like, I was, I was booking at least an hour. Yeah, so I thought how am I going to go about that and believe it or not, and we'll get into this. I booked that time when I was catching a flight. So I found it a really good time to do that exercise to do that hard thinking when I was on a flight.

[00:08:28] Daniel: Well, people say if you want out of the box thinking, get out of the box. Well, maybe if you want longer term big picture thinking, get into the air, get out of the box, jump into a metal tube. All right. So let's get into this episode about how to make silence in a world that is super noisy and recapture our attention.

[00:08:46] Daniel: Uh, and I want to start with a story about when I was 19 years old and it was really one of the most formative experiences of my life. It's really changed who I am. And so I did this, a leadership development program where we did, uh, language development, we did some self [00:09:00] reflection for a year, and then we went to Vanuatu, just, um, me and six other people, uh, and we did kind of a cross cultural leadership experience.

[00:09:08] Daniel: And, uh, it was, it was the first time where I started to experience the challenges and benefits of being still and alone. So in the prep to heading to Vanuatu, I had a one day kind of silent retreat. And so I'm a 19 year old guy and I had no smartphones back then. I wasn't allowed to use the internet, but we weren't even allowed to read books.

[00:09:30] Daniel: We were just, we were given a pen and paper and we were simply meant to write down our thoughts and go walking and to reflect on our thoughts. I think it was for about six hours. And I found that an incredibly hard experience, sorry, you said six hours, six hours by myself, uh, no other people, complete solitude and to reflect about my thoughts.

[00:09:48] Daniel: So yeah, you know, if I wanted to, I would have electrocuted myself, I guarantee it if I had the opportunity. Uh, and, and it was challenging. And there were times where I'm like, wow, you, I've, I've been able to notice things I hadn't noticed [00:10:00] before. But at the same time, I had all these painful emotions and thoughts and feelings about girlfriends that have broken up with me, about, um, you know, my parents divorce, about, you know, disappointments, about confusion, about my career, uh, and it was actually quite hard to be silent and still, uh, but, and you know, my personality, you know, I come up with a challenge and I have to beat it.

[00:10:20] Daniel: So I'm like, well, that is something I want to reflect on because why can't I be by myself for a day? And why is that so painful? So it kind of. Yeah. Got me thinking. Uh, and then I end up in Vanuatu for nearly, uh, about six weeks. And for three of those weeks, it was me and another 19 year old guy in a tiny village in a remote island.

[00:10:39] Daniel: There was no communication, no running water, no power. We hunted for our food. We slept in grass huts. Uh, and we're the only English speakers. So we had to speak Bislama the whole time and there were no other adults around. Like, who were, you know, part of the program, you'd never be allowed to do this nowadays.

[00:10:55] Daniel: Uh, but it was full on. And part of the practice is we had to sit by ourselves for [00:11:00] one hour a day in the jungle of Vanuatu, you know, spoiling hot, 80 percent humidity, I'm getting bitten by these massive mosquitoes, and all I had to do was sit and journal my thoughts for that hour. I think we might have read some scripture, there might have been some readings, but ultimately I was by myself.

[00:11:17] Daniel: And I was learning to be silent and it was super hard, but like reps at the gym, by the end of that three, four week period, I absolutely loved it and I felt completely full from the inside out. Uh, it was physically hard. There was something about that time that helped me discover the power of stillness and solitude.

[00:11:40] Daniel: And so I came back and I think I've taken that experience away with me and the idea that you can retrain yourself to enjoy, uh, being still and, and that stillness, that space can transform the rest of how you live your life. Uh, so that's my big experience, my formative experience with space. But do you have something similar or?

[00:11:58] Matt: Have I spent six hours in [00:12:00] the jungles of Vanuatu as a 19 year old by myself hunting wild boar and eating fruit?

[00:12:05] Daniel: Yeah. Yeah. Have you done that or have you just gone soft?

[00:12:07] Matt: I've heard your story and I've seen Apocalypse Now, that's about the closest I've, I'm probably going to get to that. Uh, but I have, I have like, I've, um, I've dearly wished.

[00:12:17] Matt: To put myself in a position where I am silent for like decent periods of time on a regular basis in order to try to get more clarity, I suppose. Um, probably one of the catalysts for me is this, this quote that I came across. It's a pretty famous quote. It's been popularized now. I came across it maybe, um, a couple of decades ago, but I remember like the moment someone, someone voiced it first, it really stuck with me.

[00:12:39] Matt: So it's by the, I want to say French, uh, philosopher and polymath, and I want to say hopefully 18th century, I should probably fact check that, but Blaise Pascal. So he's quoted as saying, all of humanity's problems stem from a person's inability to sit quietly in a room alone. All of humanity's problems stem from, he wrote man's originally, [00:13:00] but we'll go with people's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

[00:13:04] Matt: So that had a really, uh, quite a profound influence on me because I, I'm someone, as you know, who really gets by and thrives on information and stimulation. And so to sit just with my thoughts for, uh, even like five minutes, like let alone an hour or six hours at a time on a regular basis, I found quite confronting.

[00:13:24] Daniel: I mean, here's the thing I've experienced that I think that when you're by yourself with your thoughts, if, if you're untrained, as in if you never have time, so every time you have six minutes, you pull out your phone and zap yourself with some type of digital stimulation. Well, then you do end up filling your life with unprocessed emotions and thoughts.

[00:13:43] Daniel: So disappointment, stuff that went wrong, things that you're angry about, people you haven't forgiven. And so when you're silent, it's like it just bubbles up because you pay attention to what you need to pay attention to. And often it's, it's shitty stuff, right? Yeah. And, and so therefore you avoid the [00:14:00] silence because every time you're still you experience it.

[00:14:02] Daniel: I was um, working with an executive once and they said I've, I've suffered with clinical depression in the past and the way I get over it is I outrun it. I'm never not busy and if I ever stop it'll come back. But I just don't think that's a smart way of doing it longer term. I don't think it's workable.

[00:14:21] Daniel: Yeah. And so. So you pause for long enough and the emotions come up but then if you can work through that and practice that and journal it and maybe talk through it with others, I don't think it has to be solo, but if you can deal with the stuff in your life, well then you end up in this place where you actually might enjoy being by yourself and have a sense of who you are, um, to be able to have the creative, the fun.

[00:14:41] Daniel: I don't know, being silent, and actually just delighting. I absolutely delight in just delighting, like, I love just sitting there looking at some trees and just, and just being still. I'm not a very still person, I'm a super active person, so I can't do it for long. But, you know, [00:15:00] usually the stillness for me is moving.

[00:15:02] Daniel: So even if I'm at the gym, I'll often not listen to stuff with my, an iPod or iPod, what, 1960. You walk, man. I might walk, man. I won't be listening to stuff on my earbuds.

[00:15:14] Matt: Yeah.

[00:15:15] Daniel: Um, you know, if I go walking, I'll just, I'll think. And so that's, that's, that's the thing.

[00:15:19] Matt: Yeah. I love it. Yeah, absolutely. I love it. I love it, man.

[00:15:21] Matt: Okay. So, so again, I like this, but it seems that the risk for me is that it can seem to be such a high bar. You know, my reality is more, uh, I've got Renault's going on at the moment. I've got like a 42 K chocolate Labrador who salivates all the time. And when I'm up, he's always up in my face. I've got a couple of kids.

[00:15:38] Matt: And so even just my, my physical environment on a daily basis is just noise. Yeah. There's always noise. Noise. And when I can do it, and I think this kind of ties back into that Pascal quote, I don't think he was saying, I don't think he was meaning that this is going to be, um, enjoyable at all. I think he was saying the reason that so many people avoid it is because exactly what you were saying [00:16:00] before, it's confronting.

[00:16:01] Matt: It's confronting. It kind of shows you, it, it, it brings you face to face with perhaps the stuff that you've got to address in your life, or perhaps you can't change and it's beyond your control. And that can be confronting too, but at the same time, if people persisted, then they'd be able to work through it.

[00:16:16] Daniel: And then, and the only thing I would say is I do think it can end up being a place of pleasure or delight. And I think it's similar to exercise at the gym, okay. So typically when you start running, or when you start any type of, you know, weights training, it just hurts. And, you know, there's a motivation because it's new and fresh, but it just hurts, it's not easy.

[00:16:34] Daniel: Uh, but if, and then there comes a stage where your body kind of starts to get used to it and you start to enjoy it, you start to feel better at the, as a result of that. But what I've noticed is if you just follow the process, if you're not outcomes driven, but you just never miss a workout, you do it day after day after day after day for years and years, you just come to a point where actually if you don't have that exercise, your body misses it.

[00:16:55] Daniel: You crave it and you crave the feeling. So it's actually a pleasure. And the [00:17:00] motivation of the pleasure is what drives you, not the pain of having to get over something and look, I'm, I'm speaking from my subjective experience. Yeah. We're very different people as well. And so maybe the motivation is quite different.

[00:17:09] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. But the couple of times, this is, this is something I want to reapply myself to, but the couple of times when for maybe a week or two, I've managed just to carve aside five minutes in the morning in my place in this imperfect environment. So it's still pretty early in the morning, maybe like the kids have just gone to school.

[00:17:24] Matt: So I guess it's not that early. Um, but there's, it's a little less silent, still not completely silent. I'll sit there and just try to shut my eyes and put it on a timer. Nothing else. And just sit with my thoughts for five minutes at a time. And I managed to again, sustain that for a couple of weeks. I think my, my PB was like a month and it was great.

[00:17:42] Matt: So, but there's no way that I can claim ever reaching those dizzying heights of enjoyment or pleasure, but I found it was still immensely worthwhile because it was almost a sifting process for me. Stuff kind of sifted through. So my priorities became quite clear. The things that I should be paying attention to became a bit more vivid.[00:18:00]

[00:18:00] Matt: So, really helpful, even maybe necessary, not enjoyable, but it was clarifying. Yeah.

[00:18:06] Daniel: Yeah. And I would say the same thing. I agree that there's something about silence and space that can clarify where you're at, who you are, and, and how you engage in the world. Yes.

[00:18:21] Daniel: All right. So, Matt, I want to, start this next section by being a bit smug and smart because our producer has just said that Blaise Pascal was a 17th century mathematician and philosopher.

[00:18:31] Matt: Great. Thanks. Now I feel like one of those like dumb guys is trying to come off as a smart guy. And that's a terrible feeling.

[00:18:37] Daniel: And I'm one of those smart guys that just looks up Google. Um, okay. So I don't want to pretend that I walk through life as Zen. I just really enjoy silence. Yeah. You know, and. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, there's a bit of a story between my Vanuatu story as a 19 year old and then what happened, you know, to lead me to this place I am now.

[00:18:52] Daniel: I mean, life just got busy, as you can imagine, and my environment was full like everyone else's. And I found myself, you know, early thirties, maybe nearly [00:19:00] mid thirties, and I nearly burnt out. There was a time when I had, um, I had one child, one baby, and one on the way, I think. I was building my own house with, like, as an owner builder type contract, so it was just super busy.

[00:19:11] Daniel: I was a physiotherapy manager at the time, helping leading a service. I think I was the chair of my church board, and we'd started off this side hustle called Spacemakers. So, just not a smart mix of stuff. And at that time, I am a doer, I'm a Taipei personality, you know, I thought I could achieve anything.

[00:19:27] Daniel: And, but I just started to get breathless. I started to not sleep well and then I started to get breathless and I would be breathless if I stood in front of my team and started to kind of do a team meeting and then I found myself breathless at the dinner table. Eventually, you know, I was breathless just reading, you know, the Gruffalo to my child at night.

[00:19:44] Daniel: And I'm like, oh, there's something seriously wrong. And I got concerned. So I went to the doctor, had lung function tests, I had heart tests and thankfully there was nothing physically wrong with my body. And then when the GP heard about my lifestyle, he was like, I think this is anxiety. This is stress related [00:20:00] anxiety.

[00:20:00] Daniel: And your body is saying it's time to pay attention to your life. Uh, and that was a real wake up call. And the other thing that happened at the time is I had a very close friend who did burn out. Uh, and it started with breathlessness. He was a CEO of a big company and he ended up hospitalized and he's never been able to work at a high capacity again.

[00:20:17] Daniel: And I saw that journey and I thought, this is where I'm heading. And I didn't feel anxious in, in the sense of what I thought anxiety was, uh, it was anxiety. And so I took some sick leave, uh, I made some hard decisions over the next few months to try to make some space in those kind of bigger picture commitments.

[00:20:37] Daniel: But then I got a mentor, a kind of a coach, and we started to explore. Essentially, what I would say is now the making and meaning of space. And I kind of remember that time back in Vanuatu when I was 19 and what it was like to sit in the jungle for an hour a day and reflect and pause and contemplate.

[00:20:56] Daniel: And I started to put in small practices that build up over time, [00:21:00] like a small reflective time in the morning where I wrote in my journal and said what I was thankful for. And eventually things like a digital sabbath and significant rhythms annually, weekly, and daily where I made some space and enjoyed silence.

[00:21:12] Daniel: And it actually recaptured my life again. And a lot of that is in my book, Spacemaker, which I wrote 10 years later, which was really my experience of how to shape your life in a rhythmical way so that you're working from a place of rest and from a place of solitude and silence rather than going, going, going, and then crashing with burnout.

[00:21:29] Daniel: Now, I still get breathless. occasionally, maybe once a year, and it's when I'm overcooking it. And it's like, oh, that's my, that's my body's way of saying the petrol's running out and don't go down that route again. And, and the, the solution is almost always stop being hyperactive and stop cooking. And I'm doing so much and put my to do list down and just start to be still again

[00:21:52] Matt: Because you're still a type A personality that hasn't changed.

[00:21:54] Matt: That's probably not going to change.

[00:21:56] Daniel: No, and I'm probably busier than ever before. If I look at what I actually do day by day, I mean, I've got [00:22:00] a podcast, YouTube channel. I run my own business, I volunteer, I've got a community so that, I mean, it's not like my life is quiet, but my capacity is where it is. I think partly because of the productivity skills that you and I have, but also because of that sense of working from a place of space and knowing when to,

[00:22:17] Daniel: when to pause and when to stop. And that's made a huge difference.

[00:22:19] Matt: Yeah, look, seriously, um, because I was around, uh, you just, hearing you talk reminds me of when all that went down because I was there and, uh, and I've, yeah, that's one thing that I've continued to admire about you because you took some, you took some serious big steps to address that and change that.

[00:22:35] Matt: And that took a lot of courage, seriously. That was, and, and again, hats off to you. You've, you have largely maintained that for decades now.

[00:22:42] Daniel: And you've been part of that journey of pulling me up actually and keeping me accountable and asking questions when I need it, you know. It's good to have friends who see your patterns and can go, I've got two or three friends like that who can say hey, how you going with your marriage?

[00:22:55] Daniel: How you going with your business? How you going with your work? Yeah. Yeah So in the in [00:23:00] the vein of making space and having silence let's have a pause for 30 seconds. And I'd love you to think about, you know, what does space mean for you? What does it mean for you to be silent? Do you suffer from solitude, deprivation, and what might it look like for you to practice in some type of intentional way, being alone with your own thoughts?

[00:23:17] Daniel: Enjoy the 30 seconds of space.[00:24:00]

[00:24:02] Matt: So Dan, we talked a little bit about the ideas of space and silence, and we've started to touch on in kind of maybe some general terms about their benefits, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on the specific.

[00:24:17] Daniel: Yeah, because I've done a lot of thinking on this and I reckon there are two key things at least for me.

[00:24:21] Daniel: I'm sure there are other things. So one is deep thought, the ability to think and reflect and, and have self reflection. And the other one is deep peace. I don't know what, if there's a better way to say it, but the sense of the inner life shaping the outer life. So why don't we talk about those two things?

[00:24:36] Daniel: Uh, so deep thought, uh, I always go back to a comment that one of my mentors once shared when I was a physiotherapy manager and I was new in my job, I was getting busy, I was getting frantic like all new managers do and uh, this guy called Gil, he just told me a story and he used to be an exec. He told me a story, he was basically looking out of the window once having morning tea, I think he had a muffin and maybe, you know, having a coffee and he was, he was looking out at, you know, the Derwent [00:25:00] River and there's some beautiful views and he was just reflecting and, and one of his

[00:25:04] Daniel: teammates walked past and looked in and said, oh, Gil, uh, you're working really hard earning the big bucks for the company, I see. And, uh, and Gil staring out of the window kind of just confidently and carefully turned around and he looked and he said, actually, I'm doing my most important work. Just kept staring out of the window.

[00:25:25] Daniel: And that's all he said. He didn't explain the story, but that has just stuck with me so much because I've reflected on that. And there's such a paradox to leadership that the further you go up the corporate ladder, you know, the more you become a manager, a leader with responsibilities, or even a busy professional with parent, you know, being a parent, like the, the busier you become, the higher you go up the corporate ladder.

[00:25:47] Daniel: And yet the more important it is to have space and silence to think. You know, you, you are paid to do strategy, you're paid to make good decisions, you're paid to reflect on your risks and opportunities, to think about the culture of your team, uh, you [00:26:00] need to reflect on, you know, the health of people in your department, like, all these things require deep thought and if you don't think, you end up just saying yes to everything and that's it.

[00:26:08] Daniel: running to stand still and yet people just don't have time to think because of meetings and teams messages and email and going from thing to thing. And so the thing about thinking and Gil's story points it out to me beautifully is that it does not look like work. If I was emailing or in a meeting or you know typing something up well then I look like I'm doing something meaningful but if I'm staring out of the window reflecting on how I can actually develop strategy and change my culture.

[00:26:35] Daniel: I'm not working.

[00:26:37] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying it doesn't, um, it doesn't appear to be work, whereas in, if I'm on email, it appears like I'm working. When in reality, it might not just be fake work, it might not just be like needless work.

[00:26:49] Daniel: Not only just does it appear that way, I think we undervalue, we fundamentally undervalue in Western culture the value of thought, of deep, reflective practice and contemplation that actually involves [00:27:00] silence, you know.

[00:27:01] Daniel: Previous generations gone by, like we would talk a lot about the inner life, about virtues, about character development, about the importance of silence or meditation or solitude or, you know, all of these kind of contemplative practices and they would be fundamental in helping us live a good life. Uh, you know, yes, we have meditation now, which is usually framed in terms of well being and caring for self, but I think contemplation is much broader than that.

[00:27:24] Daniel: Yes, you know, it helps us from the inside out, it helps us with resilience and anxiety and our mental health challenges, but I think just fundamentally having silence helps us to have both the moral conviction to make the decisions we need to make, uh, as well as the strategic broader life thoughts and choices that allow us to not only know where we're heading, but to allow us to do it in a way which is not full of anxiety or insecurity.

[00:27:47] Daniel: That allows us to, to act on our decisions from a much more peaceful place, uh, I think it's massively undervalued.

[00:27:53] Matt: Mm. Okay. Yeah. So I hear you talking about almost silence being good for [00:28:00] clarifying and strengthening perhaps convictions. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:02] Daniel: I've probably gone a few places there. I suppose essentially, you know, I like the expression that wherever you go, you are.

[00:28:10] Daniel: Uh, and ultimately, I think if you, well, I think there's great value in having silence and stillness to discover who you are and to, to learn to be at peace with yourself and to enjoy your own company and have a sense of what you value on. So you, you end up essentially acting from a different mode. The actions might be different.

[00:28:34] Daniel: be the same in, in terms of the things you tick off, but the approach is different because you're acting from the inside out rather than the outside in. You're doing it from a thoughtful place, an intentional place, a planned place, rather than just that kind of obsessive hurry.

[00:28:48] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. Um, Again, probably the only thing that I'd want to add to that is a caveat.

[00:28:55] Matt: I'm all for like the peace and the clarity and the conviction at the end. And I'd love to get to that, that your [00:29:00] mentor's kind of state of like zen like feet on the desk, eating the muffin, hands behind the back of the head, staring out the window. But I just wouldn't want to underestimate the fact that I'm still going to have that drive there to prefer to shock myself at times along the way.

[00:29:13] Matt: Or like, you know, Pascal said, um, yeah, it's going to be impossible for me to stay in that room. By myself.

[00:29:19] Daniel: Yeah. And I hear this all the time that people feel guilty if they go for a walk at lunchtime. They feel guilty if they were to have some time to think. They feel guilty if they actually turn off notifications and actually do some work that requires planning.

[00:29:31] Daniel: So there's, it's not easy at all, even in small. Yeah. So let's talk about the last bit, which, I mean, I'll call it deep peace, but essentially it's about the inner life changing the outer life. Yeah. We already talked about this to an extent, but I do love a story. I think it was, I read it first in John Mark Comer's, uh, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.

[00:29:49] Daniel: It's a religious book, but it's a good book. And, uh, he gives this story about uh, this explorer, and I don't know if it's a fable or if it's true, but this explorer in South America. So he got a [00:30:00] bunch of people, indigenous people, they knew the lay of the land and, uh, they would carry his stuff and obviously help him explore the Amazon.

[00:30:07] Daniel: Uh, and he pushed them hard, you know, he would, he wanted to get to some type of explored destination as fast as possible. And you can, you can understand it. I've read stories from explorers where they die of these horrible diseases. So you want to go through quickly. Uh, but suddenly. In a random spot, in a random point of time in the middle of the day, all of his indigenous crew sat down and they wouldn't move.

[00:30:29] Daniel: He started yelling at them, he started cajoling, trying to get them to move and eventually he said, you know, why aren't you moving? And uh, the elder of the community said, well, we've been traveling for three days straight and it's time for our souls to catch up. And I really love that. I love that analogy, that

[00:30:49] Daniel: If we move too far forward in our activity, our souls can't catch up, you know, like and in my experiences, uh, when I feel like a pancake, you know, wide and thin, where I'm just going after going [00:31:00] after going, I'm ticking off tasks, I've got projects, I'm achieving things off my list, but I'm doing it from a place of anxiety or insecurity or just this internal drive to keep moving.

[00:31:13] Daniel: Uh, then there's a place where my soul needs to catch up and you know, I didn't know that when I was 20. I think in my mid forties, I'm now wise enough to not avoid it, but I, I realized, oh, okay, I'm in that place again where I'm kind of wound up, I don't know, like a spring. And because of that. I don't have the time to stop and think about how I'm working.

[00:31:36] Daniel: And so I just work harder and I work faster and I go more and more until I get breathless. I've been there a few times, uh, as opposed to working from a place of rest or having a space where your inner life is shaping the way in which you move. And I think that's an entirely different thing.

[00:31:54] Matt: Yeah, this is good.

[00:31:55] Matt: So if I've heard you correctly, right. Um, I think particularly I've talked about the [00:32:00] benefits that I've gained or gleaned in terms of helping identify the what I should be doing, what I should be doing. I think you've just spoken of both the benefits of silence and solitude to reveal not just the what, but also the why.

[00:32:16] Matt: So the motives behind why we do what we do. So, you know, working from a good motive, a healthy motive. Yeah. as opposed to a poor motive. And lastly, I've heard you talk about the quality as well of the actual work that you're trying to undertake as well. So again, silence and solitude helps, um, leads to rest, which will help ultimately provide a better quality of work.

[00:32:38] Matt: Yeah. So three things right there.

[00:32:39] Daniel: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I don't, this is my experience, but do you have, do you have anything similar where you catch yourself, I don't know. Maybe it's not on the to do list treadmill. That's my default, but where you catch yourself working or acting from a place of guilt or insecurity or fear or anxiety because you [00:33:00] haven't been still long enough to work on the inner life.

[00:33:02] Daniel: It's very hard to describe. So I'm, I'm curious to hear it from a different perspective.

[00:33:05] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, uh, for me, it's. those, those periods of solitude and silence. And I should say, as well as those, the, the multi week runs that I've had of say five minutes, so very formalized and set in the morning, trying to make that a habit.

[00:33:19] Matt: As well as those periods, I've had other periods, usually it's an environment such as literally being stuck on a plane, or maybe being in a cafe by myself. You know, these environments where there's background noise, almost like a hum. But it helps me shift contexts. And I suppose I, I, I feel and experience some inner solid, some inner silence.

[00:33:40] Matt: And I've almost always got a journal with me and I find it's really conducive in those spaces to just start getting clarity on things that I write down. And they're reminders usually for me, the little moments of insight and reminders. And they're almost always relating to what you've just been talking about.

[00:33:56] Matt: Why am I doing what I'm doing? How am I easily [00:34:00] kind of. Um, push this way, sway that way. What are some of the less than ideal motives that I often kind of work from? Yeah. So it's not, it's like. And for me in those spaces and context, it's not normally you should be doing this very specific small scale task or project.

[00:34:17] Matt: It's more the why.

[00:34:19] Daniel: So you're lifting your head up and the space is giving you a broader context, which then changes how you act day by day and it makes all the difference. Yes. Yeah. So to wrap up this thought before we go to the practical section. How does this all relate to regaining your attention? Because that's the whole purpose of this season one to regain our attention.

[00:34:39] Daniel: So why is this conversation important if we're going to retrain our attention muscles?

[00:34:43] Matt: Like we talked about before, there's so much vying for our attention, primarily from the bottom up system that we've already discussed. I find the silence and the solitude, I need it to be able to turn down that [00:35:00] stimulation and those potential sources of attention grabbing, I need that.

[00:35:05] Matt: And again, I need to, uh, have that silence and that solitude for the clarity and for that sifting process where things will present themselves, I think usually of a high priority for my attention. Does it make sense? So again, the stuff that comes to me is usually around my greater yes, my why.

[00:35:25] Daniel: So when you slow down and you lift your eyes, silence gives the ability to think about who are you?

[00:35:29] Daniel: What do you value? How do you want to live? And the natural consequence of that is you delete Facebook messenger, you know, you delete whatever app is vying for your attention or you give more attention to things that really matter. Yeah. And that's often about shaping your environment, which we talk about.

[00:35:45] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Look, and, and to give like a concrete example, for me, it can be as, as helpful, uh, and as specific as, I now realize that for the next month, I've got enough on my plate. That means I have to say, [00:36:00] No to almost any opportunity or invitation that crosses my path, my desk over the next month because I know I've got enough in my plate and these really important areas I know are suffering.

[00:36:10] Matt: So I have to say no to this stuff. So that's really concrete and specific for me. They actually help. And particularly if I write that down and maybe I look at it the next day, it'll be a really useful reminder and pride. You've got to just say no.

[00:36:21] Daniel: Hey, that reminds me. Do you want to, um, be on my YouTube channel and start an e learning course with me?

[00:36:27] Matt: Yeah. And it's funny, like, just going back to something you were saying before about lifting up your head. I was reading, I can't remember where, but, um, but when it comes to the, uh, the bottoms up and the top down, uh, the author made the point that, um, you Historically, as human beings, and it still happens even in our modern world, when I want to do some quick, deep thinking and actually focus my attention, most of us look up.

[00:36:49] Matt: And the reason that we look up is because compared to our, I guess, like our horizontal plane, There's all this stimulation. There's all this stuff that it will be naturally like grabbing our attention in the environment. If we [00:37:00] look up, there's very little stimulation compared to what we see down here. So physiologically looking up will help you think differently.

[00:37:06] Matt: Yeah, because I need to focus. I need to, again, like take my eyes and my focus off this immediate environment and its potential threats and benefits. And I need to zone in and focus on something specific here. So I look up to turn down that distraction.

[00:37:17] Daniel: I wouldn't be surprised if there's something physiological because, you know, the, the eyes are part of the,

[00:37:21] Daniel: The brain is attached to the eyes outside of it. So there is definitely a connection. So that's fascinating. All right, well let's get practical. Let's wrap up this conversation and get practical, but I'd, I'd be curious what are, um, I said, what are our two, two best tips for getting started with practicing silence?

[00:37:37] Daniel: If you really do electrocute yourself every time you have six minutes of space.

[00:37:43] Matt: For me, and again, this is really talking to myself because as I've already confessed, this is something that I want to reapply myself to over the next couple of weeks. My two big takeaways, uh, very small steps to begin with.

[00:37:55] Matt: So for me, there's going to be five minutes with a timer in an admittedly [00:38:00] imperfect environment as well, and just closing my eyes and being happy with that. So that's again, small steps, five minutes at a time every day, ideally same place, same time. And the second part of that is I'm not going to beat myself up

[00:38:12] Matt: about it. Um, a, perhaps not, um, not being as immediately fulfilling or as useful as I think it could be. So I'm going to kind of settle my expectations. And if I only make it four minutes, if I get distracted, again, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time self flagellating. I just want to persist and do that for at least two weeks.

[00:38:29] Daniel: Yeah. So just have five minutes a day and just practice it. Five minutes a day. Yeah. Just practice it. Yep. Yeah. I quite like looking at a candle or something that stops you from uh, being distracted. If you need to have something to look at, you're smiling. Doesn't surprise me. That doesn't work for you.

[00:38:44] Matt: Did you have a candle in the jungle?

[00:38:46] Daniel: Uh, look, I'm going to go much more hardcore than yours because, uh, I've never found practicing the daily perspective as useful as the weekly or the annual. Uh, I find that, you know, I, I just find the best practice for me and I know it's a hard habit, but [00:39:00] I just turn off all technologies where possible one day a week.

[00:39:03] Daniel: And I've found that Hardcore Weekly Rhythm has done a reset that is just so helpful. Uh, now I'm not saying that's simple at all. And in my book I write heaps and heaps about how you might even approach that. But for me it's probably the weekly rhythm more than the daily kind of reset that works. And the other one is actually having, uh, I have a day a quarter, so summer, autumn, winter, spring, where I actually just have a whole day off of work to think and I write a strategic plan for the next three months and I reflect on my life and read in my habits.

[00:39:32] Daniel: So, I mean, look, that's the opposite end of the spectrum for you, but, um, look, somewhere in the middle, people might find something useful. Yeah, that's right. All people can do both. In theory. All at the same time. Come on. We're challenging you. Uh, so look, our final practice though is not so much about making space because we want to continue the activity we started last week, which is essentially helping people think about their bigger why and come up with some type of solution.

[00:39:56] Daniel: broader sense of what they're trying to achieve because in the next [00:40:00] few weeks we're going to look at then how do you reduce the digital distractions of the environment in a practical way and then how do you replace that space that you make with meaningful life activities and relationships. So we're taking on a process.

[00:40:10] Daniel: So do you want to quickly recap the activity we gave last time and then just encourage people do the same thing.

[00:40:16] Matt: So this activity is going to involve, um, either looking forward five years in, uh, in advance of your life imagining what your life looks like in that five years time with aid of a bunch of prompting questions that we had and it's worth stressing um, as in my experience, those questions are a really good start, but don't feel absolutely restricted or confined by those.

[00:40:36] Matt: Yeah. There's 10 questions.

[00:40:37] Daniel: There's quite a lot for each section. They're just prompts. So pick the ones that work for you. Yeah.

[00:40:42] Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's the, there's the, the five year option, which is, uh, which I found super useful. And then there's the imagining yourself at say your 80th birthday option.

[00:40:50] Matt: So imagine yourself. And again, there's a whole lot of really useful questions alongside. That, but you're really envisioning your 80th birthday celebration, who's there and what they're saying about [00:41:00] you and what, what it is that they're kind of, um, encouraging and praising you for and are thankful for in terms of what you've done with your life and using both those,

[00:41:08] Matt: either of those perspectives or both those perspectives to inform what your greater why and what your greater yes is going to be in relation to here and now and going forward. Yeah.

[00:41:18] Daniel: And look, this is not a one and done process. I think the idea of reflecting on where you're heading and having an intentional idea for your life.

[00:41:25] Daniel: I don't like the plan idea as much because I think life isn't planned and things don't go to plan and you'll change in different seasons, but at least to be intentional about who you want to be, you. And where you want to end up in five or 80 years. It just gives you data that helps you make decisions about what you pay attention to now.

[00:41:42] Daniel: So don't feel like it has to be a perfect exercise. Just download the resource sheets and get going. So you can get them at spacemakers.au forward slash life plan.

[00:41:51] Matt: And maybe for bonus points that we talked about, do it with someone else or maybe just share the results. So this exercise with someone who knows you, who loves you.

[00:41:59] Matt: Get that [00:42:00] take on it too.

[00:42:01] Daniel: Sounds good. That'd be useful. So hopefully this conversation about silence and solitude and deliberately practicing some space in a noisy world, hopefully this has been useful for you. Next week, we are going to dive into a fun conversation with my good friend, Tim Hines. The title is “Is everything really awesome when you're part of an MS team,” we're going to talk about teams, notifications, uh, and distraction in the workplace and get super practical.

[00:42:26] Daniel: But until next week, make space. Make space everyone.

[00:42:31] Daniel: The Spacemakers with Daniel Sih and Matt Bain.

[00:42:34] Daniel: Big thanks to our sponsor, St Luke's Health. Our partner from my home state of Tasmania, they're not just ensuring health, they're inspiring us to become the healthiest island on the planet.

[00:42:48] Daniel: Are you looking for a speaker at your next big event?

[00:42:51] Daniel: Daniel Sih is a bestselling author, TEDx speaker, and productivity consultant. To download his speaker kit and start a conversation, visit [00:43:00] spacemakers.au.

[00:43:03] Daniel: Until next time, make space.