I spent 2 hours in silence every day for 30 days...Here's what happened

According to a recent survey from Stanford Health, my generation is more committed to personal improvement and wellness than any other that came before. We participate in yoga classes, running groups, and download meditation apps on our phone. And it's working. As a whole, millennials eat better, exercise more, and smoke less than any of our predecessors. But there's still one area of our well-being I think a lot of us take for granted. How much noise we're taking in. As our economy has moved more and more people into urban centers for work, our daily exposure to noise pollution has rapidly increased. And with it, so have our projections for noise-induced hearing loss. And it's not just our ears that are suffering as a result of this. New research suggests that continuous exposure to noise with outbreaks can lead to increases in stress, reduced creativity, and even long-term problems like heart disease and sleep loss. So for the next 30 days, I want to see what changes in my life if I spend two hours each day in controlled silence. That means no music, no podcasts, and as little ambient noise as possible. So if I'm going to make this challenge work, the first thing I have to do is set up a space. So last year I was working on a show that built a set entirely out of soundproofing panels. And I may or may not have snagged a bunch after wrap. So I'm going to lay these out along the floor to help absorb some of the ambient sound. With my door shut and the foam laid out, I used a decibel reader to measure the total amount of soft noise still present in the room. Before I started talking, my phone was measuring an average of 35 to 40 decibels, coming from things like my air vent, outside noise, and whatever other ambient sounds are coming in. I still want to get as close as I can to total silence, somewhere between 0 and 15 decibels. So these earplugs have a noise reduction ratio at 29 dB. So if I put these in on top of everything else, almost total silence. Okay, so for a while I've been feeling like I got a good rhythm, this is actually relaxing, I'm peaceful, I've been burning through a lot of work. Then I looked down at my phone, it's been 23 minutes. That's it. I'm in trouble. So I just finished my first two hours, and it really was eerily silent in there. So much so that every time I was having a sip of water, I could hear it going down my throat. Each little swallow sounded like I was gulping it down at full volume. I did really struggle with boredom, especially in the last hour. My final 30 minutes really accumulated into a series of pacing, and yawning, and watching the clock tick down. I think for the first week, I'm going to give myself a transition period, where I'm breaking these sessions up into two one-hour chunks, to help ease my way into this and mitigate some of that boredom. At this point, I should probably explain why I chose two hours as a daily goal for this challenge. It all started when I came across an article about the link between silence and brain development in small animals. In 2013, researchers at Duke University divided mice into three groups to test the effects different sounds had on the brain. Group 1 got classical music while group 2 listened to white noise, and group 3 got the sounds of squeaking baby mice. Meanwhile, a fourth group was placed in two hours of daily silence as a control study. However, when the test was complete, it was the mice who were in silence who experienced increased developments in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for forming memories. One of the theories for why silence is so helpful is that our brains spend so much time each day processing information that when you remove an entire source of outside stimulus, we open up time for our minds to essentially repair and recharge during the absence. With all that in mind, I realize I haven't actually exposed myself to true silence yet. So I booked an appointment for Monday to try out a sensory deprivation tank at Float Toronto. Here, I'll be depriving two of my senses of any stimulus as I spend 90 minutes in complete silence and total darkness. So I've been noticing this at home when I use earplugs. You become much more in tune to, like, whenever you swallow water, you almost start to hear the sounds your own body makes because it all gets insulated inside your head. And when I was talking to the staff before my session, they said when you put earplugs in inside this, you will hear everything in your head. So jaw movements, movements within your body. So actually the closest you'll get to true silence is without these in. So I'm going to leave those to the side and hopefully just manage the salt in my ears. I first learned about sensory deprivation when I was doing some reading on sleep habits. And I found an article about Steph Curry's frequent use of sensory deprivation tanks, citing its ability to help him sleep better at night, feel physically relaxed, and clear his head of any stress and pressure he's thinking about. The water inside is heated to match your body temperature, and the epsom salts and magnesium that hold you up have been shown to aid in muscle recovery and relaxation, which is all well and good, but today I'm here specifically for the quiet. I ease into things by keeping the lights on and listening to soft music to give my body some time to adjust. But after 10 minutes, I kill the music and I kill the lights. So that was a totally unique and singular experience. First thing I noticed once I got in there was tension in all these different parts of my muscles, areas that were sore. Because you have no distractions and nothing occupying your attention, you begin to become aware of a whole bunch of different places and areas of muscles and joints in your body that might be stiff or sore. That was the first thing I went through. Mostly my mind just wanted to wander once I was in the tank, and once I started to relax and get into that, it was a really good experience. But yeah, yeah, really good. Really, really different than anything I've ever done before. After 21 days, I can say with confidence, this challenge is going very, very well. Not only are these two-hour segments helping me work through projects faster and more efficiently, I also feel like the quality of my work has been improving as a result. And yes, it's still really boring at times, but I'm learning to just embrace that as part of the process, understanding that boredom has value in helping our minds sort through problems and find solutions. All that said, there are two days each week where this challenge has not been fun, and those are the days I'm working in the scene shop. Trying to find quiet time in addition to working a 10-hour shift while doing a two-hour commute means I'm either trying to force that time on the subway ride to work, which is never really actually quiet, or I'm getting home late, tired, and trying to force the time then when my mind is exhausted and I really don't want to do much of anything, And that just further reminds me this challenge might not be accessible for a lot of people who work traditional hours, so I want to find a compromise that can allow time and silence with almost any schedule, and I think I found another study that might help a lot with this. In this study, subjects were asked to listen to relaxing music that was broken up by two minutes of silence between each song. Researchers found the quiet breaks between tracks created a more relaxed state for its test subjects who experienced lower blood pressure, reduced heart rate, and even changes in their breathing compared to control groups who listened to either continuous music or continuous silence. So this week, I asked my wife and a few friends if they'd be willing to come over and test this approach out to see what they think. I built a playlist for each person based on music of their choice and spaced out the songs with two-minute silent tracks. Each session will last 20 minutes. It was good. It was, like, really relaxing. I was able to just focus on my task. Like, I didn't even lean back once. The pauses, the, like, moments of silence, I could not handle them. And the music started to kick in, and it was just like, oh, okay, now I'm, like, really mellow. Like, it was so distracting that I'm like, what happened to the music? Why is it so quiet? What am I supposed to be doing? At times, I didn't even realize the music stopped playing until maybe a minute. If the song was a little bit faster, I would read it a little bit faster. If the song was a little bit slow, I'd kind of go with the pace of it. I always have music. I always have BBC. I always have something. I'm never in, like, complete silence. I think close to the very end, I thought I was going to fall asleep. It just made it very comfortable. I don't even know how to explain it. But yeah, I would definitely do it again. I'm sure everyone else was like, it was so peaceful and tranquil, and I'm, like, sitting over here being like, has it been 20 minutes? It was hard. So I did nothing to persuade Catherine, but I'm really glad Carlos and Kim took something out of it. As for myself, this has been one of the most impactful challenges I've tried yet for the channel. Going forward, even if I don't hit two hours every day, this is absolutely a practice I intend to keep going. Right now, I just started trying to improve my skill at chess, and I'm already incorporating periods of silence into my practice sessions. The other thing this challenge has given me is a new reminder of just how prevalent noise pollution is in our culture. There were a couple nights this month when I was out with some friends, and I looked at my decibel reader, and I was like, oh, wow, this bar is well above 85 dB, which is the point where extended exposure will cause hearing damage. So I was just like, oh, excuse me, guys. I'm going to step outside for 10 minutes and not listen to this. So yeah, try to give your ears and your mind a break each day. It doesn't have to be for two hours. I can't recommend it enough. And if you have your own suggestions on how to work silence into your own routines or schedule, I'd love to hear from you guys in the comments. Thank you again for watching. Cheers.