Life is loud. Everywhere. All the time. Notifications, commercials, podcasts, the neighbor with the damn leaf blower at 7:13 a.m.—it’s a whole circus.
There’s an overwhelming amount of noise out there. Different kinds of noise, blasting at us in different ways.
At work, there seems to be a deafening amount of data. Slack channels scrolling endlessly, chatter about this thing or that—maybe important, maybe not. A symphony of pings and alerts, both loud and quiet, tugging at your attention exactly when you need that attention to stay on the thing in front of you.
So… what do you do?
I don’t know if I have a universal answer. But I can share mine:
Tune in to what you need. Tune out what you don’t.
Sounds
I’ve always been hypersensitive to sound. Physical sound.
The best way I can describe it: I get a lot (a lot) of data from it. Echoes, distances, resonance, sharpness, the “ping” of one surface meeting another—metal, wood, rubber, plastic. My brain parses all of it, whether I want it to or not.
Sometimes I think if I didn’t end up in software, I would’ve been a Foley artist. (I still think about that from time to time.)
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Sidenote: As I’m writing this, someone in the neighborhood just fired up a saw. If I had to guess, it sounded like the house across and down a little.
The pitch was too bright for wood—more like stone—with a small-to-medium blade cutting through.
(Checking… peeking through the window shutters…)
Close. I thought it was two houses down to the southeast. Turns out it was two houses up to the northeast. Yup. Cutting stone.
Whether this is a curse or a superpower... I don’t know. I've been debating that for decades.
Back to the post.
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Loud environments drain me. A crowded restaurant. A room with music blasting. Even a buzzing hotel lobby. Holding a conversation in those places is exhausting—because the more sources of sound there are, all woven and layered, the harder it is for me to pull focus.
So when I say I understand what it’s like to be overwhelmed by noise… I get it. I really get it.
Tune in
I’m reminded of Webflow’s 2025 retreat in San Diego. Conversations in echoing hallways. In cavernous dining rooms, chatter over silverware clattering against plates. In dark, crowded venues where bass thumped through wall and ceiling mounted PA systems.
What I do isn’t special—it’s instinctive. I lean in. I tilt my head. Often, I cup my hand over my ear, like some caricature of an older character in a TV sitcom, before yelling... "WHAT?!". I just do it more frequently than most people. It doesn’t block the noise. But it tells my brain: this, right here, is the thing to focus on.
And it works. Mostly. But it’s not just physical effort. It’s mental effort, too—deliberate focus to stay in the moment, to actually engage with the person across from me. To be present.
Then there’s the other kind of noise: the data kind. Slack messages, emails, GitHub comments, pings from integrations and dashboards. Each one has its own pitch, its own resonance, an urgency you can almost feel in your nervous system.
When the firehose opens—blobs of letters and numbers blasted at you—I treat it the same way. I scan everything. Even for a microsecond, I decide: is this worth my attention? (Yes. Every. Single. Message. Hundreds a day.)
Like in real conversations, I tune into the ones that matter—the ones I need to engage with. And I drop reminders so they filter into an inbox-like system I can return to and take care of later.
If yes, I tune in. I respond. Sometimes in 10 seconds flat, just to clear it. If not, I triage. I add it to my backlog, tagged with a timer, so I doubly don’t forget.
If the stream starts feeling too messy, I refine it again—pulling the most important items into the physical world. Onto a scrap of paper. A sticky note. A card. Something I can actually see. Something I can hold in my hands, circle with a pen, even point at with a finger.
And if even that system starts to shake? That’s the signal. Time to tune out.
Tune out
When the noise gets too heavy, sometimes the only option is to leave. Step outside. Take a walk. Find a quieter room. Give your ears—and your brain—space to breathe.
Digitally, it’s the same. Mute the channel that no longer serves you. Filter out threads that add more heat than light. Sometimes courage shows up in small ways by leaving a conversation. And if it’s truly important—someone will @ you.
The truth is, there’s only so much information a person can process. Only so much energy to give. The broadcast is endless—but your attention isn’t. Every ping, every scroll, every new thread is another hand tugging at your sleeve.
And tuning out isn’t weakness. It’s discipline. It’s self-preservation. It’s choosing to protect your focus before it gets scattered and spread too thin. It’s an intentional act of editing—like trimming the noise from a track so the melody can shine through.
It’s saying: this matters, that doesn’t.
Noise never stops. There will never be a day without alerts, messages, or requests. Waiting for the noise to end is like waiting for the ocean to go quiet.
Because the real work isn’t to absorb everything. It’s to decide. To filter. To point your attention where it counts. To cut through the static—so when the signal does come, you don’t just hear it. You amplify it.
Signal
This practice—finding signal—isn’t static. It shifts daily. It shifts with your projects, your team, your organization. It shifts with your body. Tired-Monday-you filters differently than rested-Friday-you.
And here’s the trap: noise can be misleading in deceptively comforting ways. We cling to Slack, Twitter, endless scrolls, because noise feels like proof we’re needed. Like we’re busy. Like we’re doing the work.
But often, it’s just procrastination in disguise. Back in the day, it was Solitaire on a chonky Windows 2000 desktop. Now it’s Slack, “just checking in.” The medium changed, but the effect is the same: avoidance disguised as attentiveness.
That’s why the real challenge is learning to navigate the shifting noise. To tune in when it matters. To tune out when it doesn’t. And sometimes, to become the signal yourself—making clarity easier for others.
Because everyone’s trying to find their way through the static. Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do is to cut through it for them. To remind them what matters. To point toward the next step.
Noise never goes away. But you can always choose how you listen—and what you amplify.
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P.S. I had Nightwish’s Noise stuck in my head the whole time I wrote this. Fitting, I suppose!
P.P.S. While boiling water this morning, I scribbled three words on my hand: Noise. Deafening data. Somehow, those three words became this whole post.
