This article first appeared on QuietRev.com
I am a loud person.
I talk all day, I talk for a living, and when I’m not talking, I’m writing things down to talk about later. And what’s with me every moment of my life? The Robin to my Batmanning? My cell phone. A free ticket for anyone, anytime, anywhere to tweet, text, or email me. I scroll through it as if it’s a drug. As Nicolas Carr wrote in The Shallows, it turns me into a “lab rat constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.”
And isn’t it a drug? Research firm dScout reported the average person touches their cell phones over 2,500 times a day. (No, that’s not a misprint.) And three years ago, Kleiner Perkins reported we check our cell phones over 150 times a day—or once every six waking minutes.
I am a loud person. And I live in a loud world.
Maybe that’s why I love Quiet Revolution so much.
This place is an escape from my everyday. I read articles here. I write articles here. Susan Cain’s name is printed on the cover of my book. (I think the publisher is more excited about hers than mine, to be honest.)
I’m working to stop being so loud. I’m working to be more quiet.
I’m looking for a place I can put my mind to just stop more often…and think.
In that spirit, I spent the last six months writing something new. Something different. Something that lets me aim outside the noisy circle instead of sharp-elbowing my way in.
I asked myself one key question: In a world where everyone wants to give a TED Talk…what about doing the world’s first TED Listen?
So I read dozens of books, pulled out themes that resonated, curated questions from those themes, and tried to weave them into a narrative about where we all are right now…and where we are all going.
It’s called “How do you maximize your tiny, short life?”
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