I Stopped Listening to Music for a Week. Here's What Happened to My Brain
I've always been a guy that listened to so much music.
It was on from the moment I woke up.
Working. Driving. Showering. Cooking. It didn't matter. There was always something playing.
I told myself it was just a habit.
That it helped me focus. That I liked the energy.
But the truth?
I used music as a way to escape reality and silence my own thoughts.
And at some point, I couldn't ignore what that was doing to me.
My brain felt foggy all the time. Not tired. Not distracted. Just... foggy.
Like there was always a layer of noise between me and my own head. Melodies looping. Lyrics replacing my internal monologue. Constant stimulation that left zero room for silence, and zero room to actually think.
So I decided to stop.
One week. No music.
The only exceptions: white noise, brown noise, and lo-fi. Nothing with lyrics. Nothing that could hijack my thoughts.
Day 1 was strange.
The moment I woke up, my hand moved toward my phone on autopilot.
Open Spotify. Play something.
I caught myself. Put the phone down.
The silence felt louder than I expected.
The first two days were uncomfortable.
Without music, thoughts started surfacing. Old ones. Unprocessed ones. Stuff I hadn't given space to in months.
It felt like living in a room with the TV always on, and someone finally turned it off.
I replaced my morning Spotify ritual with just silence. Sometimes white noise or brown noise to ease into it. Nothing else.
Sometimes I listened to podcasts or watched videos in the background of topics I was interested in.
It wasn't comfortable. But I stayed with it.
Then something shifted around day 3.
I woke up and my head was clear.
Not just quieter. Actually clear. Like a fog had lifted that I didn't even realize was there.
And then ideas started coming on their own.
Not forced. Not from staring at a blank page trying to think. Just showing up on their own, in the car, during a workout, in the shower.
My brain finally had enough space to produce something.
I drove in silence. Trained in silence. Worked in silence.
And instead of feeling empty, it felt like being present for the first time in a while.
Here's what actually changed:
Mornings hit differently. Without Music as the first input of my day, my mind woke up on its own terms. Slower. Cleaner. More mine.
Creativity came back uninvited. I wasn't looking for ideas. They just showed up.
I became more aware of everything around me. Sounds, thoughts, moments I would've usually drowned out.
By the end of the week, something had permanently shifted.
I still let myself listen sometimes, in the evenings, as an actual choice. If a song got stuck in my head, I'd play it just to scratch the itch. Then stop.
No more endless autoplay. No more using music as wallpaper for my brain.
It went from something I couldn't function without, to something I choose when I genuinely want it.
That's a completely different relationship.
This wasn't really about music.
It was about learning to stop running from silence.
And discovering that the thoughts I'd been avoiding were actually worth having.