I have tried Pomodoro. I have tried time-blocking. I have tried 4 AM wake-ups, cold showers, binaural beats, bullet journaling, and at least six different to-do-list philosophies. I have been chasing productivity for over a decade, and I have a confession to make: the most effective thing I ever tried was silence.
The Noise Tax
Every popular productivity method has a common thread: they add something to your environment. A timer. A notification. A list to check. A habit to track. A soundtrack to curate. Each addition is sold as a feature, but it is also a cognitive tax. You are now managing your productivity system in addition to actually doing your work.
I did not realize how much this tax added up until I stripped everything away.
The Experiment
Three months ago I ran a simple experiment. For one week, I worked with no music. No podcasts. No ambient noise app. No timer. No Pomodoro. No productivity stack at all. Just a blank screen with what I needed to write, and silence.
The first two days were uncomfortable. My brain kept reaching for something to fill the quiet. I realized I had been using background sound as a crutch — it was not that music helped me focus, it was that silence made me aware of how unfocused I was. Once I sat with that discomfort, something shifted.
By day three, I was finishing tasks in half the time. Not because silence is magic — because I stopped switching contexts. Every time I opened a timer app, I checked a notification. Every time I switched a playlist, I lost my place. Every time a track ended and I noticed the silence, I had already broken flow. Removing all of it removed the triggers that pulled me out of deep work.
Why We Reach for Noise
I think most people use background sound as a barrier. It signals to others (and to ourselves) that we are working. It fills a space that would otherwise feel empty. But silence is not empty — it is just unmediated. And unmediated attention is exactly what deep work requires.
This is not an argument against music or podcasts in general. They have their place. But if you are using them as a productivity tool, ask yourself: does this actually help, or does it just make silence feel less uncomfortable?
The OneZen Approach
This insight is what led me to work on OneZen — an app that takes the opposite approach from every productivity tool I used to rely on.
- No timer. You do not need a countdown to do deep work.
- No playlists to manage. Just real field-recorded nature sounds, or pure silence.
- No streaks tracking you. If you find your rhythm without the app for a week, great. The app is not competing for your attention.
- No notifications. Ever.
OneZen is built on the idea that the best focus tool does the least. It is basically a door you open, walk through, and leave behind. You can check it out here: https://www.opennomos.com/en/project/01KW9BJYTZ8R30NHT81PBBZB8Y
What to Try Tomorrow
If you want to test this for yourself: pick one 90-minute block tomorrow. No phone. No music. No timer. Just your work and silence. See how it feels. It might be uncomfortable for the first 30 minutes. That discomfort is not a sign that silence does not work — it is a sign that you have trained your brain to need constant input.
The best productivity hack I have found in ten years is not a new app or system. It is turning everything off and listening to nothing. Try it for one session. You might be surprised.
