Notice the Noise
How to tell what's real when everything feels urgent
When Everything Is Loud
Open your phone and it shouts in a dozen languages.
Pings, banners, and tiny red circles that all claim an emergency.
Scroll long enough and your mind forgets what silence even sounds like.
Modern life runs on false alarms.
Every alert says: look now, reply now, decide now.
But urgency has gone feral.
It no longer serves protection, only attention.
If you feel constantly behind, it’s not because you’re broken.
It’s because the volume knob got snapped off.
The Moment I Realized I Couldn’t Hear Myself
During my final year as a director, I lived in Slack threads and Zoom squares.
I could recite metrics faster than memories.
One morning, I stared at a slide I had built the night before and couldn’t remember why it mattered.
That was the first quiet moment in months, and it was terrifying.
Because when you finally hear nothing, you also hear yourself.
The noise had been hiding a deeper truth: I wasn’t busy, I was avoiding clarity.
The Coordinate: Notice
In the ENOUGH Compass, Notice means awareness before action.
It’s the pause between the stimulus and the story you tell about it.
Most of us skip straight to fixing.
But noticing isn’t fixing; it’s witnessing.
It’s the discipline of seeing the whole board before you move a single piece.
Try asking:
What’s actually happening right now?
What story am I adding on top of it?
What signal keeps repeating beneath the noise?
A Real Example
Last week I felt that twitch to “catch up.”
Emails, ideas, half-written drafts.
Instead of planning harder, I opened my Compass to Notice.
I observed the tightness behind my eyes
I noticed the sentence running through my mind: “You’re late.”
Then I asked, “Late for what?”
There was no answer.
Just inherited urgency.
So I closed the laptop and took a walk.
By the time I returned, a false deadline had disappeared.
What remained was one clear next step that I actually cared about.
Noticing had filtered noise into direction.
What the Culture of More Gets Wrong
We treat awareness as inefficiency.
We rush through reflection because it doesn’t look productive.
But noticing is the beginning of every wise decision you’ve ever made.
It’s how intuition gets signal strength again.
You can’t align with your values if you can’t hear them.
Where does noise show up disguised as responsibility?
What would happen if you waited long enough for the real signal to surface?
Practice for the Week
Once each day, stop mid-scroll.
Close your eyes.
Listen for three seconds.
Ask: Is this important - or just loud?
Then act from the answer, not the alert.
That’s your compass.
You’re already holding it.
Exhale.
P.S. Tell me - what’s the loudest thing in your week? What happens when you listen underneath it?