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Shut The Noise Off

24 June 2026 · 6 views · 0 likes · 0 reposts · 186 blog views

focus motivation neuroscience productivity

Shut The Noise Off

Let me introduce you to a few friends of mine.

The mood boosters I've practiced for years: a cold plunge, meditation, and jogging. Though jogging isn't really exercise for me - it's meditation in movement.

All three do the same job: SHUT THE NOISE OFF

You know that thing where your head won't shut up? Questions keep piling up, waiting for answers. Emails are sitting there waiting for replies.... even when you're with your kids, you're not really present - your mind is still grinding on it all in the background. When you're running a company or building a product, that never really stops on its own.

It started with a stranger. On a winter walk I watched a guy jog past me shirtless, heading for the sea to get in. Mad, I thought - and then, a beat later: screw it, maybe I should try. I'd been hearing the same thing from founders I talk to anyway - cold water is what keeps their head clear.

I have a rule for this kind of thing. Give it three months and see if it fits - if it works, it stays for good. This one stuck. I do it at least every other day now, and I kept going through the winter until the sea was frozen.

I won't tell you the romance of it. Getting in feels like a thousand sharp knives going in at once, and your whole body is screaming: I'll die right there (btw, I came up with a name for that: Liquid Death). But somewhere in there, the whole mental shit-storm goes quiet. No lingering questions chewing at you, no production issues - just the cold and your breathing.

There's a real mechanism under it. Cold water flips on a controlled stress response - your body floods with noradrenaline (it makes you sharp and awake when something actually matters). The catch is you chose it - your terms - for a minute or less. So you get all the alertness and pay for it in discomfort you can actually handle.

Running does the same job the slow way. That's why I stopped calling it exercise. Past the point where it gets hard, the noise drops and I can finally hear myself think.

Meditation is the third one (and the least dramatic). It's just seven to ten minutes of attention training. The goal isn't to stop thinking. It's to catch your mind the second it wanders and gently bring it back. That happens dozens of times every single time. The science even has a name for what it does to you: relaxed alertness - calm, but still awake and present. You come out having spent a few minutes returning to yourself instead of getting dragged around by every thought.

That's the whole system. Cold water to start the day, seven quiet minutes to reset it, a run when the head gets loud. There's more I'm testing right now, but that's a post for another day.

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PS: I'm pretty active on 𝕏 if you'd like to follow along

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