Eradicate the noise. I don’t think that’s possible. You’ll always have noise, and by noise I mean all the distractions that come into your life. Maybe you can reduce the noise and prevent the noise.
Where does this noise come from? The noise or distractions come from various sources. One could be people who are bored and call you to say nothing or to stir the pot with you. These are the time wasters, and it seems with cell phones these days, anyone feels they’ve got the right to call you at whatever hour. People also call you to invite you to braais, social activities. This becomes another distraction. Some of them invite you at the last minute — an hour before — or like someone who wanted me to come on a road trip and phoned to say, “I’m leaving now, are you coming?” I mean, I can’t believe how others don’t respect your time, but this is how it goes.
Then there are people who send you information late at night. I mean, don’t they have better things to do? Are they insomniacs? Are they drunk? What’s going on? To send something at quarter to 11 at night is seriously wrong. Communication — unless it’s with someone very close to you — can carry on after 6 p.m., but not later than that.
People blame social media for distraction, but that’s their own fault. Social media is just there, like anything else. If you engage with it, you are creating noise in your life.
Then there’s content noise. Information people give you that you don’t really trust, but you can’t exactly tell them that. People are mainly interested in themselves — and that’s fine up to a point. We all are. We’re all the hero of our own story.
With the amount of self-help advice on social media now, and in newspapers like The Citizen in Johannesburg, it becomes overwhelming. Years ago, if you read self-help, you almost did it secretly because people would laugh at you. Now it’s everywhere, often dressed up as clickbait.
So the reason I mention this is because I don’t want to sound like I’m handing out self-help advice. All I’m saying is this:
If you can find a way to reduce the noise — whatever that noise might be in your life — you create more space for what actually matters to you. More time. More attention. More energy.
There’s a term from engineering called the signal-to-noise ratio. In simple terms, the signal is the meaningful stuff in your life. The noise is the static — the distractions, chatter, and constant input. When the noise is loud, the signal gets lost.
Modern life makes it very easy for the noise to take over unless you deliberately turn the volume down.
That doesn’t require dramatic life changes. It can be small things. Not answering every call. Muting notifications that don’t matter. Being more careful about what — and who — gets access to your time.
And on the other side, giving a bit more protection to the signal. Time to think. Time to work on something properly. Time to sit quietly somewhere — like the beach Buddha I saw under the umbrella yesterday — doing nothing, which is sometimes when the best ideas arrive.
I’m still at the starting blocks with this. I don’t have it mastered. But I’ve noticed that when the noise drops, even slightly, something shifts. Stress eases. Decisions feel clearer. You stop reacting to everything and start choosing what deserves your attention.
It’s not about silence. It’s about being able to hear your own life again.
