Deep work is for people who like noise, too—stop trying to be a monk

I tried the ‘monk mode’ thing for exactly four hours back in 2019 and it was the most miserable morning of my professional life. I’d just read Cal Newport’s book—which is fine, I guess, if you have the temperament of a cathedral—and decided to book a $450 cabin in Lake Tahoe to ‘finally get some real work done.’ No Wi-Fi. No phone. Just me, a desk, and a window looking at some very quiet trees. Within twenty minutes, I could hear my own pulse in my ears. It was deafening. I spent the next three hours staring at a blinking cursor, wondering if the scratching sound in the walls was a squirrel or my own impending mental breakdown. By noon, I packed my bag, drove to a crowded Starbucks in town, and finished three weeks’ worth of reporting in two hours while a toddler screamed three tables away. Total failure. Or maybe not.

That time I spent $450 to fail at being a monk

The problem with most productivity advice is that it’s written by people who genuinely enjoy the sound of their own thoughts. I don’t. My brain is a pinball machine with three balls in play at once, and if I don’t give it some external friction to bounce against, the balls just rattle around and break things. That cabin trip taught me that for a certain type of person, silence isn’t a canvas—it’s a vacuum. It sucks the productivity right out of your lungs. I used to think I was just ‘bad’ at focusing. I was completely wrong. I just needed to stop treating my workspace like a funeral parlor.

Anyway, I eventually figured out that ‘Deep Work’ isn’t about the absence of noise. It’s about the presence of a specific kind of internal flow. And for some of us, that flow requires a background hum that keeps the lizard brain busy so the executive function can actually do its job. I know people will disagree with this, but I think people who work in libraries are actually just pretending to work so they can feel superior. There. I said it. It’s a performance of focus, not actual focus.

The «silence» lie we’ve all been sold

We’ve been told that distraction is the enemy. It’s not. Uncontrolled distraction is the enemy. Controlled distraction—the kind you choose and curate—is actually a tool. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. You need to give your brain a ‘fidget toy’ for your ears. If you don’t, your brain will go looking for its own distractions, like that tiny smudge on your monitor or the fact that your left sock feels slightly tighter than your right one.

Key takeaway: Silence is a sensory deprivation chamber for your career. If you hate it, stop forcing it.

I’ve spent the last three years testing this. I’m not a scientist, but I’m a guy who has to get stuff done or I don’t get paid. I’ve tried everything from white noise to death metal. Most of the ‘productivity’ apps out there are garbage. I’m looking at you, Brain.fm. I know everyone loves them, but I refuse to recommend them. To me, their ‘scientifically engineered’ music sounds like clinical depression mixed with a dial-up modem. It’s grating. I’d rather listen to a lawnmower.

The 72-decibel rule (and why it matters)

I tracked my output for 3 months across 22 different work environments. I measured my words-per-hour and my ‘time to first distraction.’ I used a decibel meter app on my phone because I’m a nerd like that. Here is what I found: my sweet spot is exactly 72 decibels. For context, 60 decibels is a quiet conversation, and 85 is a shouting match. At 72 decibels—roughly the sound of a busy-but-not-chaotic cafe—my brain locks in.

• 60dB or lower: I start thinking about my taxes or that embarrassing thing I said in 2011.
• 72dB: Peak flow. I am a god of spreadsheets.
• 85dB+: Too loud. I start eavesdropping on the person next to me.

I tested 14 different cafe noise loops on YouTube and Spotify. The best one, by far, is a 10-hour loop of a ‘Rainy New York Jazz Cafe.’ It has just enough clinking spoons and distant muffled chatter to keep me grounded. If it’s too clean, it doesn’t work. It needs that grit. Total lie that you need ‘alpha waves’ or whatever. You just need a coffee shop in your ears.

Why I hate the tech everyone else loves

I have a confession: I hate the Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones. Every tech reviewer on the planet treats them like the holy grail of deep work because of the noise canceling. I bought them, tried them for a week, and returned them. They create this weird ‘pressure’ on my eardrums that feels like I’m underwater. It makes me anxious. Instead, I use a pair of $20 wired earbuds I bought at a gas station in 2022. They let just enough of the real world in so I don’t feel like I’m trapped in a coffin.

I might be wrong about this, but I think the ‘noise canceling’ trend is actually making us more distracted. Because the moment a tiny sound breaks through that digital wall—like a door slamming—it hits ten times harder. If you’re already in a noisy environment, your brain has already tuned it out. It’s about the baseline. Keep the baseline high and the spikes won’t bother you. Never again will I spend $400 to feel like I’m in a vacuum.

Just do this instead

If you’re like me and silence makes you want to crawl out of your skin, stop trying to fix your brain. Fix your audio. Here is my very basic, non-professional recommendation for your next deep work session:

1. Get some cheap, comfortable headphones. Not the ones that suck the air out of the room.
2. Find a ‘Cafe Ambience’ track that is at least 3 hours long. Avoid the ones with lyrics.
3. Set the volume to exactly where you can hear the ‘clink’ of a cup, but not the specific words of the fake people talking.
4. Close your 54 open tabs.
5. Work until the track ends.

That’s it. That’s the whole trick.

I still don’t know if I’ll ever be the kind of person who can sit in a quiet room and produce brilliance. Maybe I’m just broken. But I’ve written more in the last year with a fake Italian bistro playing in my ears than I did in the five years prior. Is it weird that I need the ghost of a barista to help me focus? Probably. But it works. Worth every penny of that $0 YouTube search.