My podcast bankruptcy

I stopped listening to podcasts this summer. 

It was the quite accidental undoing of a habit, and it seems to have stuck.

For more than 15 years and 3 to 5 days almost every week, I’d bring two things along for every morning run: a cheap pair of wired headphones and my phone, with a stream of podcasts at the ready.

By listening to podcasts (sped up to 1.7x), I was keeping my mind busy while my body was moving. Some of the shows were straight up entertainment, while others were related to my work. I delighted in being the person who would share these with clients and colleagues.

I didn’t delight in feeling like I had another inbox or to-do list to try to zero out. And if I’m being honest, I can’t remember a thing about the vast majority of the hundreds of podcasts I heard.

Then all of a sudden, the distinguished guests, the true-crime stories, the ads for therapy and sweaters… simply turned to silence.

This summer, my daughter started joining me for my morning runs to prepare for cross country season. I left the headphones at home so we could talk, or simply run together quietly. And on the few days she wasn’t running with me, or leaving me in her dust while doing speed work, I stuck with the no-podcast habit to see what would happen.

What happened was that I really liked the feelings I was having. Along with the feelings I wasn’t having.

Some big life questions had emerged over the summer, and the answers were becoming more clear during those solo morning runs. The questions and answers were spilling over into my morning meditation practice less than usual. I was more in tune with my surroundings and my body. I noticed my breath. I noticed my footsteps. I noticed my neighborhood.

That inbox feeling? After a few weeks, I simply declared “podcast bankruptcy” and deleted everything in my feed. It felt great.

A couple of weeks into this experiment, I got a reminder about Liane Davey’s book Thoughtload. She’d written a post encouraging her readers to make space in their brains by deliberately eliminating new input. To spend 5-6 hours a week, for two weeks, just processing what’s already in our brains.

Turns out, in the two weeks it took me to print out her worksheet and consider the prompts, I’d already done the exercise. I was clearing out my own brain pantry without knowing the terminology. The cleanse worked, and it’s still working.

I can’t say I’ll never listen to a podcast again. I have friends who host them, occasional solo road trips, appearances of my own. But for now, I’m ever so grateful for the extra space in my own brain.