Why All That ‘Wellness’ Is Making You Feel Even More Burnt Out

The phrase “get ready with me!” sends shivers down my spine. Somewhere between the gratitude journal and the seventh supplement of the morning, "wellness" stopped being a refuge and became another item on an impossible to-do list. And when I don’t accomplish the items on my to-do list, I’ve introduced a new way to feel failure in my daily life. I’m burning out trying to prevent burnout; I’m anxious about not doing enough anxiety-reducing practices; I’m tired from all my “energy-boosting” protocols. All the self-care that’s supposed to leave me “restored” is utterly depleting me. I’ve reached a paradox of wellness culture, and I can't be alone. 

The surveillance state of self-care

Emily Austen, author of Smarter: 10 Lessons for a More Productive and Less Stressed Life, has witnessed this transformation firsthand. She describes how wellness has morphed into "the new productivity theatre," where people find themselves "drowning in self-improvement checklists: journaling, breathwork, 10k steps, meditation, supplements, skincare, and still logging on exhausted." Wellness culture is its own kind of performance, with its own set of costumes.

What's particularly insidious is how self-care has been co-opted into another metric of success. Austen points out that it "has turned into another form of self-surveillance: something we perform, post, and measure." We're not just tracking our steps and sleep cycles for ourselves—we're curating proof of our wellness for an audience, real or imagined.

And here’s where we reach the paradox of self-care. We know the hustle culture is broken, yet we're sold wellness as the solution…through more hustle. Brands capitalize on our exhaustion, selling hope in the form of adaptogens and morning routines, promising relief for our "fried nervous systems."

Whether or not you’d call your nervous system “fried,” the majority of us feel burnt out in one way or another. And as Austen reminds us, most of us "do not have the luxury of taking six months off to recover." The systems we build need to work alongside our actual lives, not in some idealized version of them. Otherwise, they're just expensive bandages on a wound that needs stitches.

The myth of the perfect routine

Alexis Haselberger, a time management and productivity coach, encounters this wellness mythology constantly in her practice. There's a pervasive belief that "self-care is a set of activities (yoga, meditation, morning pages, etc.) and if you're not doing them, you're not taking care of yourself."

She recalls a client who, after a time-tracking exercise, concluded he wasn't drinking enough water. Her response? "How do you know?" The ensuing conversation revealed the absurdity of following arbitrary rules—like the famous eight glasses of water—without checking in with your actual body. "Are you feeling dehydrated? Is your pee dark yellow? Are you thirsty all the time? No? Well, your water intake is probably just fine."

Even more telling is the phenomenon of people fighting their natural chronotype, trying to become morning people just to squeeze in wellness rituals before work. Haselberger sees "many, many people" attempting this transformation, chasing the Instagram-worthy 5 a.m. routine when their bodies are wired for different rhythms entirely.

How did we arrive at this exhausting place? Haselberger blames "a dystopian content machine" flooding us with claims that one more wellness activity will make all the difference. "People are already stressed, so they're searching for the magic bullet."

Instead, real self-care is often about subtracting, not adding. “No bubble bath or journaling session is going to solve burnout,” Haselberger says. Rather, it’s about removing what doesn’t serve you, not piling on more obligations. Focus on protecting your boundaries, curating your environment, and knowing when to quit.

The simplest solution

Katherine Morgan Schafler, therapist and author of The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control, offers a way out of this trap: simplicity and sustainability. Before adopting any wellness practice, ask yourself two questions: Is it simple? Is it sustainable?

Take exercise as an example. Instead of committing to a complex gym routine, could you take a walk? Do jumping jacks in your living room? Schafler suggests asking what you could see yourself doing "for the rest of your life," not what you could white-knuckle through for six months in an "unsustainable burst that leads to burn out."

And here's the permission slip we all need: "You're supposed to do this thing called 'enjoying your life.'" Fun and enjoyment aren't frivolous—they're essential to mental wellness. "Formal wellness routines that take themselves too seriously and are devoid of fun might not be helpful for you," Schafler says. "Trust what feels good; if you're not enjoying it on some level, don't do it."

Perhaps the most radical act of self-care isn't adding another supplement to your morning stack or waking up earlier for meditation. Maybe it's permission to do less. Trust your body over influencer advice, protect your time instead of optimizing it, and choose actual rest over the performance of rest.

Wellness should restore, not deplete. If your self-care routine feels like another job, it's not care—it's compliance. And you're allowed to quit.



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What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Are Aliens Invading in November?

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To the disappointment of Judgment Day fans, The Rapture did not happen as predicted at the end of September, but keep your fingers crossed for November, when aliens are expected to invade. This one's a way more concrete prediction than the Rapture. Unlike Jesus, we can actually see the alien starship in our telescopes, cleverly disguised as an interstellar comet. And it's not just conspiracy theorists or Joe Rogan Podcast guests sounding the alarm—a Harvard astrophysicist kicked off the whole thing. So hold on to your butt!

The ballad of 3I/ATLAS

Back in July, NASA spotted 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar comet about the size of Manhattan, passing through our solar system on its journey from God knows where. This is only the third interstellar comet we've ever spotted, so it's a big deal.

In September, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb (who had a long, legit career until recently) published "News on 3I/ATLAS: Lack of Non-Gravitational Acceleration Implies an Anomalously Massive Object" which posits that the comet could be a giant spaceship that is going to fly behind the Sun on Oct. 21 (hey, that's the day I'm posting this!), and while it's shielded from our view, the "potentially hostile" comet/spaceship could do all kinds of aerial maneuvers, release a squadron of X-wings, or really anything. Then he appeared on a bunch of podcasts and news shows to talk about his "it could be aliens!" idea and it spread in mainstream press.

The cranks took over from there, connecting Loeb's observations with the prophecies of "Baba Vanga" (a blind, Bulgarian fortune teller that cuckoos love), lies about NASA, Loeb's own invocation of the "Dark Forest" theory (where hostile aliens lurk silently waiting to strike), and everything else you could image, then they used AI to make videos about the invasion. So many AI videos about the invasion.

So are aliens landing in November?

I wouldn't bet on it. If you read Loeb's papers or listen to interviews with him, it's clear he's careful to never make any predictions. He says things like 3I/Atlas "could be on a mission to release mini probes meant to invade Earth," or "If it’s a technological object, then it might maneuver itself."

Oh, it could be on mission? It might do something? I could be about to grow 17 heads, and I might release mini probes too. Loeb is not wrong, technically, nor is he lying, but he's not being entirely honest either, because he doesn't follow up his statements with "...but it's so unlikely, it's barely worth considering."

And this isn't the first time he's done this.

What's the deal with Avi Loeb?

Remember 1I/ʻOumuamua? That cigar-shaped interstellar object people thought was an extraterrestrial probe in 2017? Loeb started that, too. He co-authored a paper suggesting it could be a lightsail—a thin, artificial sheet propelled by starlight—sent by an alien civilization. A possibility, but surprise! it turned out to be a comet.

Then there was the meteor. In 2022, Loeb claimed that a meteor that crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 2014 was interstellar in origin and possibly technological. He dredged up fragments from the ocean floor, and held press conferences about the "spherules" that might be alien technology. After sighing heavily, other scientists responded with: "Sure, it might be alien technology, but it isn't," and I hope they added, "why don't we put some money on the next 'space probe?'"

It's a pattern: Loeb makes a qualified outrageous claim, gets the headlines ("Harvard Scientist: Comet Could Be Alien Spaceship!") while hedging enough to say "I never said it was aliens" when the prediction fizzles. He seems to be trying to raise awareness about how we think about extraterrestrial life and push against the knee-jerk scientific dismissal of the subject, but the way he's doing it is questionable.

Science isn't sexy enough

In 2025, "We should carefully study this unusual object" doesn't land you a book contract and media blitz like "Could this be an alien invasion fleet?" does, but it also doesn't corrode public trust in science, and legitimate scientists studying interstellar objects, searching for biosignatures, and working on SETI get drowned out by the noise.

And what happens in November? Our Venusian Sky Brothers might descend upon Earth with cake and ice cream for all, but I'm putting my money on the cranks moving on to flat-Earth theories or weather machines, while Loeb generates headlines in a few months with another "this time, it really might be aliens!" object.



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These JBL Noise-Cancelling Headphones Are $40 Right Now

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Right now, black JBL Live 460NC on-ear headphones are down to $39.99 (originally $129.95), offering a nearly 70% discount on this long-lasting, noise-cancelling alternative to in-ear buds from a reliable brand with free shipping.

Battery life is the standout feature on these headphones, which provide up to 50 hours of playback with ANC off and up to 40 hours with ANC on. Ten minutes of charging provides around four hours of extra playtime. While some consumer reviews say they experience discomfort due to a feeling of tightness when worn for long periods (likely due to the on-ear design), most find them to be a lightweight option that’s “comfortable enough to wear all day without any regret," as noted in this PCMag review

For a $40 price point, these headphones offer high-quality adaptive noise cancelling to drown out background noise and clear, crisp audio powered by 40mm drivers. They perform well across all genres, making them ideal for everyday listening. They feature three main settings: ANC, Ambient Aware, and TalkThru mode, which lets you hear surroundings or have a chat without taking off the headphones. Buttons on the ear cup allow you to manage calls, with a VoiceAware feature letting you control how much of your own mic input is routed back into the earbuds. They also integrate with Alexa and Google, which can be controlled by tapping the ear cup. If you want to adjust EQ and presets, you can do so on the companion app. 

They might not offer the best-in-class ANC or come with a carrying case, but they offer outstanding value at just $40. If your priority is good sound, long battery life, decent comfort, and modern features like app controls and ANC, the JBL Live 460NC on-ear headphones hit the sweet spot between everyday value, audio performance, and comfort.

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My Favorite Amazon Deal of the Day: The 2nd Generation AirPods Pro

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Since the AirPods Pro 3 were released this September, I've been anticipating big price drops for the older second-generation AirPods Pro, and that price drop is now here: Amazon is selling 2nd Generation AirPods Pros for $169.99, down from the previous price of $249.99. This is matching Prime Day prices, according to price tracking tools.

This model, which came out in September 2023, is the first to feature charging via USB-C. They also came out with a few features that older models didn't have, like adaptive transparency. You can expect solid battery life, with Apple claiming up to 30 hours of listening time on a single charge.

The AirPods Pro offer excellent noise cancellation, plus their silicone tips provide a good seal that will naturally block a lot of background noise without the need to turn the ANC feature on. Transparency Mode lets you have a conversation with someone while your audio is still playing, and Conversation Awareness will automatically lower the volume of your media and boost the voices of the people you're talking to. The Adaptive Audio feature is also pretty cool: It reduces any loud sounds to a tolerable 85 dB, so sudden loud noises in your media don't startle or distract you.

All of that to say: While they don't have all the bells and whistles of the AirPods Pro 3 (better ANC, built-in heart rate sensor, provide an extra two hours of use between charges, feature slightly higher water resistance, and include a second-generation Ultra Wideband chip in the charging case), these earbuds still offer many features that make them a great option in 2025—especially at their current discount.


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The Global AWS Outage Is Over, but There's Still Cause for Concern

If you found it difficult to access sites and services early Monday morning, you are not alone. In fact, the rest of the world was having trouble, too. For a short period of time, a global outage prevented people from accessing a wide variety of sites and services, from Facebook to Fortnite.

The trouble stemmed from Amazon Web Services (AWS), an Amazon product that offers cloud hosting for a massive number of websites and companies. If you use internet-connected products, chances are a good number of them rely on AWS. As such, when AWS goes down, so do those sites and services.

That includes social media platforms like Facebook and Snapchat; retailers and restaurants like Amazon, AT&T, and McDonald's; streaming services like Prime Video, Hulu, and Disney+; messaging apps like Signal; games like Fortnite, Roblox, and Pokémon; cryptocurrency platforms like Coinbase; and media organizations like The New York Times. Even services not immediately associated with AWS appear to have struggled over the past 12 hours. Notably, that includes Apple online services like Apple TV, Apple Music, and the App Store.

Amazon says an issue with one of its core database products caused the outage. AWS's first report came at 12:11 a.m. PT (3:11 a.m. ET) noting "increased error rates and latencies" specifically with its services around its U.S.-East-1 Region center. After a few more updates, AWS confirmed it had discovered a "potential root cause" at 2:01 a.m. PT. By 2:22 a.m. PT, the company had rolled out the first of its mitigations to solve the issue, and saw "early signs of recovery." Five minutes later, they reported "significant signs of recovery." By 3:35 a.m. PT, AWS says the underlying issue was fixed, and most operations are normal now, though certain requests may be throttled, while some services may also be working through a backlog.

The issue highlights the fragility of the current internet and its services: When so many companies all rely on the same provider for cloud hosting, any critical issues to that cloud hosting service can take out a huge number of sites and services.

For now, the internet as a whole appears to be back to normal operations—just in time for anyone on the East Coast to start work.



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This Arlo Video Doorbell and Chime Combo Is Nearly 25% Off Right Now

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If you’ve been meaning to add a smart doorbell to your home setup, this might be the time to do it: The Arlo Video Doorbell 2K (2nd Gen) and Chime 2 bundle has dropped to $88.26 on Amazon.

That’s a strong deal for a doorbell/camera combo that’s been highly praised by reviewers—PCMag named it the best video doorbell of 2024. It’s a smart, wireless setup that delivers a clear 2K video feed and works without a base station, making it easy to install. You can mount it on your front door, porch, or gate in minutes. It runs on a rechargeable battery that lasts up to four months, or you can hardwire it into your existing doorbell system for continuous trickle charging.

When someone presses the doorbell button, your phone rings like a call instead of sending a silent push notification, which makes it harder to miss visitors or deliveries. And the built-in 2K camera captures a wide 180-degree field of view, giving you a full head-to-toe look at whoever’s outside. The motion detection kicks in even if no one presses the button, and the app lets you speak to visitors or play pre-recorded messages if you’re busy. Daytime video looks sharp, with balanced contrast and detail, while the black-and-white night vision holds up well for spotting people or packages after dark, notes this PCMag review.

The bundle also includes the Arlo Chime 2, which plugs into any wall outlet and acts as an indoor alert system. You’ll get audible notifications whenever the doorbell rings or motion is detected, and you can even customize the chime sound, volume, or silence it completely if you prefer just app notifications. There’s also an 80-decibel siren built into the Chime 2 for extra deterrence. Arlo doesn’t lock basic features behind a paywall—you’ll get live video access for free, but if you want to store clips or get smarter alerts, you’ll need an Arlo Secure subscription (starting at $7.99/month). That unlocks cloud recording for up to 60 days, plus object detection for people, packages, and vehicles. Also, while it’s compatible with Alexa, Google Home, SmartThings, and IFTTT, it lacks Apple HomeKit support.


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The Out-of-Touch Adults' Guide to Kid Culture: Bringing Pumpkins to Starbucks

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Welcome to The Out of Touch Adults’ Guide to Kid Culture, where I make sense of youth nonsense. This week, kids are bringing hollowed-out pumpkins into Starbucks and demanding they be filled with pumpkin spice lattes; TikTok is obsessed with a fake video game called Bird Game 3; everyone’s growing the universe's AI slop-pile with videos about a fictional video game, and teens are fighting about Lorax costumes. Plus the world's police departments are issuing a warning about a prank that is not funny and you should never do.

Filling pumpkins with pumpkin spice latte

Look, we're all excited for Halloween; it's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. But please, in the name of all that is holy, do not bring a hollowed-out pumpkin to the Starbucks drive-through and ask the baristas to fill it with a pumpkin spice latte. Even if influencers on TikTok are doing it. Even if their videos are getting millions of views. Virality is not a permission slip.

It's fine, sometimes heroic, to be whimsical, but baristas are doing seven invisible jobs at once and being paid for half a job, and trying to force them to be extras in your twee little video is job number eight. Maybe they'll force a smile when you hand them the gourd, but when they say “oh, cute,” there will be murder in their eyes. They want to react like this, I promise:

What is "Bird Game 3"?

Bird Game 3 is the name of an imaginary video game for the imaginary Xbox50 game system. Making AI videos of people who are very excited to play Bird Game 3 is becoming a hot thing to do on TikTok and elsewhere. Unlike almost all other AI slop videos, some of the Bird Game 3 videos are actually funny. Like this one:

And this one:

I don't know what everyone is so excited about. Now, when I played the first Bird Game at E3 2010, that was exciting.

Everyone is making "celebrity elevator selfies"

Speaking of AI slop, if you've been anywhere near TikTok lately, you've likely seen the proliferation of posts of people posing with celebrities in elevators, like this one:

They are, of course, fake—products of AI image generation tools—but it's a fun kind of fakery that's easy to be part of. You just use CapCut or Gemini, or any AI-slop-making machine, and you too can pretend you rode an elevator with Brian Boitano or Ice Spice. If you'd like more detailed instructions, I broke it down here.

On a more serious note, the kids making these fake videos are devaluing the unique and meaningful relationship between some random person and a celebrity jerk who are forced to interact because they're trapped in an enclosed space. Now no one will believe my dream-come-true celebrity elevator encounter with Dr. Phil actually happened.

Viral videos of the week: Invasion of the Lorax girls

Over the last few years, TikTok and Instagram have been taken over by Lorax girls every October. Videos of girls dressed as Dr. Seuss's self-righteous hero are everywhere. Here's a typical example:

The Lorax costume pioneer seems to be TikToker McKenna, who posted a Lorax video in 2023 that went viral to the tune of over 30 million plays:

Since then, the costume has become very popular; there are over 200,000 TikTok videos tagged #Lorax. The trend has become so widespread that a backlash is building. The word among young men/boys is that only "unfunny popular girls" dress as the Lorax for Halloween. Some teenage boys are even calling the costumes a red flag and posting anti-Lorax-Girl meme videos like these:

Fellas, the only thing less funny than dressing as the Lorax for Halloween is complaining about other people dressing as the Lorax for Halloween. Face it: You're actually mad because girls are doing something that isn't designed for male approval. On the flip side of the coin, I can totally understand the appeal of the costume for "popular girls." You gotta really work on shaping your personality to be "well-liked" in the murder pit of high school popularity, so having a night where you dress like a pot-bellied goof and act the fool must be liberating, especially when acting the fool in an established way that won't reflect badly upon your image and might get millions of views.

Police warn of AI homeless prank

Last week, I laid out the basics of the AI Homeless Person prank going viral—basically, kids are AI-faking images of homeless dudes in their houses and sending them to their parents as a funny joke. Well, the cops want everyone to know it's not funny and no one should do it, because some parents, understandably, seem to have called the cops when they got the message.

The police in Salem, MA got the ball rolling by issuing a statement warning that pranksters could face up to two and a half years in jail for the stunt. Many other police departments followed, from all over the U.S. and even overseas. My favorite is from Yonkers, NY, who posted this on its Facebook:

"We get it — some pranks are funny and we like to laugh at the best of them. Some, though, pose a public safety risk..."

Yonkers Police Department, you do not "like to laugh at the best of them." I've had enough teachers use that line to know it's a lie.

But on a serious note, it's actually a bad idea to pretend a homeless person is in your house to scare your parents. It wastes resources and the cops coming to your door is almost always a bad thing. If you must pull a prank, try the less confrontational option of generating a shirtless plumber to prank your boyfriend:



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The Best Ways to Beat the 'Forgetting Curve' While Studying

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It seems like common sense that the longer you go without retrieving a memory, the harder it is to retrieve—but it wasn’t always one of those things we simply knew to be true. In the 1880s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus studied the phenomenon and published his findings, giving the world the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve. The curve is a simple graphic demonstrating how information is lost over time, but it proved that time-related forgetting is real (and has been reaffirmed by further study since). Want to fight the curve and hold on to your memories, especially when you’re studying? Here’s how.

How long do memories of new information last?

Ebbinghaus concluded that how quickly we forget something depends on factors like how difficult or meaningful the material was, but also how tired or stressed we are, so there’s no clear-cut answer to the question of how many days you’ll hold on to a piece of information if you don’t think about it. It depends on things like what you study, how into it you are, and how stressed you are, there are just too many variables—and for the average student, those shift every day.

We do know that the order in which information is presented matters a lot when it comes to how long we store it in our short-term memory, so there are even more factors that go into our memory retrieval and retention abilities. I'm sorry to say there's no black-and-white answer when it comes to how long you'll hold onto a piece of information, but there are a few answers Ebbinghaus and today’s educators agree on when it comes to how you can better retain it.

Beat the forgetting curve with spaced repetition

The first strategy you can use to better retain information is called spaced repetition or distributed practice, an evidence-based technique that helps learners absorb numerous pieces of information and store them in their memory.

Basically, you need to study the material multiple times, giving yourself space between each review. The amount of time you go without studying the material depends largely on how well you’re already remembering it, which means the longer you review, the longer the periods between each review should be.

Reviewing your notes for a difficult class should be done more frequently than reviewing the notes for a class where you easily get the concepts, for instance. Instead of subjectively deciding if you’re retaining the information and need to review it or not, try using the Leitner system, which helps you schedule your studying based on whether or not you answered a particular flashcard correctly the last time you went through it. If you got it right, you don't need to pick that one up as often going forward.

If you're hesitant about using old-school methods like hand-written flashcards, don't be. Writing by hand can actually help you retain information better, so using the Leitner system that way can have a two-for-one benefit.

Then again, it's time-consuming and inconvenient, so if writing it all out and hauling 100 index cards around doesn't exactly work for you, you have other options. Here's a list of my favorite flashcard apps, many of which rely on a Leitner-esque strategy to force distributed practice without you having to do much of anything beyond indicate whether you got an answer right or wrong.

You can also try scheduling your review and revision using a technique like 2357, which has you study again on the second, third, fifth, and seventh days after first going over something. If you're going to do that, I recommend sticking with a dedicated scheduler, like the My Study Life app, just to keep things organized.

Beat the forgetting curve with engaged learning

Teaching resources recommend that educators use methods to make lessons more engaging to help kids beat the forgetting curve, but you can apply that same idea to your own individual studying, no matter what level you're at. When you’re reading new information, for instance, use techniques that help you stay absorbed in the material.

Try examining new info through the lens of Kolb’s learning cycle, for instance, which relies on the belief that you need to have concrete learning, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation to truly learn something.

Alternately, use a critical-thinking method, like SQ3R or KWL, to track your progress on a topic. With SQ3R, you’ll write down a little of what you can gather from a review of the material, then questions you want to answer when you give it a more thorough read, so you’ll stay engaged as you go, searching for the answers to your questions. KWL is similar, but you start by writing down what you think you know, what you want to know based on a brief overview of the material, and what you ended up learning.



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When It's Best to Study in Silence (and When a Little Noise Is OK)

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Whether you’re a fan of listening to music while you read or you simply live in a household of noisy people, silence may not be something you’re used to finding before hitting the books—but it should be and it can be. Despite the boom in popularity of study-based playlists on YouTube and Spotify, quiet is the way to go when you’re trying to retain information you’re taking in. Don’t take my word for; take science’s.

What the research says

First, research published in 2019 showed that “mental workload and visual/auditory attention is significantly reduced when the participants are exposed to noise at 95 dBA level.” That, per the Center for Hearing and Communication, is about how loud a blender or truck is. The 2019 study focused a lot on the way noise affects people at work, which is where people tend to do tasks they already have a grasp on; noise can be even more detrimental if you’re trying to attain new information. Other research that has focused specifically on studying has found noise to be even more of an issue: On average, participants experienced a 7% reduction in performance on a test when researchers introduced noises, when compared with quiet, per one 2021 report.

Some research breaks things down further, examining different effects of noise on introverts’ and extroverts’ studying and information retention, but that’s both too granular and pretty irrelevant; for the most part, it still finds that noise is distracting and reduces cognitive ability. Other research is broken down by type of noise. For instance, one study found that while silence was beneficial for cognitive tasks, lo-fi music was better than music with lyrics (with the exception of when participants were doing math, when music type didn’t have any impact).

What about white noise? Research shows that it's not as detrimental as lyric-filled music; in fact, it's helpful for studying. It can actually enhance your acquisition of new material. Anecdotally, that makes sense to me. I run white noise a lot in my apartment because my window directly overlooks the smoking section of a rowdy bar and I get tired of hearing the drunkest conversations known to man every night. It drowns all of that out, but also sort of fades into the background. It's not like I'm hearing or focusing on "Box Fan #10 Continuous Loop" or whatever I have queued up on YouTube.

Exceptions to the rule

No study solution is one-size-fits-all, although you'll have a hard time convincing me you can stay focused on physiology or world history with the new Taylor Swift album playing in the background. There are, of course, some exceptions to the rule, like the semi-acceptability of lyric-less tunes.

Another exception to the "silence is best" rule is when you're using the production effect. This study technique involves speaking out loud to better retain information. Others, like dual coding, call on you to use two modalities to study at once, like drawing while you listen to a lecture or narrating while you label a diagram. Depending on what you are studying and how you prefer to do it, you may even want to make a personal study podcast by reading your own notes out loud into a recorder, then playing it back. Finally, I've found the ability to create custom "podcasts" out of study materials through Google's NotebookLM extremely helpful for studying while I do other tasks, like clean the house.

Don't let the science-backed fact that silence is golden when you're studying deter you from trying out those techniques. Employing them isn't the same as trying to read a chapter in the middle of a bustling cafeteria or playing the latest episode of your favorite show while you take a practice quiz. As with any approach or suggestion, you have wiggle room to make it work for you.

How to create more silence

If you’re attached to lo-fi tunes for studying, that's fine. You just have to keep them low and make sure no lyrics sneak in. Otherwise, try to prioritize a reduction in noise as much as possible—especially outside noises, like chatter, household appliances, or traffic. Here are a few tools that might help:



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Here’s When You’ll Be Able to Buy the M5 MacBook Air

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Apple officially entered its M5 era on Wednesday. The company not only announced the new M5 chip, placing a major emphasis on its AI processing power, but also the first batch of new devices that will ship alongside it. If you're interested in buying an Apple device with the company's latest and greatest hardware, it's all just around the corner.

That said, the list of product announcements was limited. While Apple revealed M5 versions of the iPad Pro and Vision Pro will be available starting on Oct. 22, it only showed off one M5 Mac: the 14-inch MacBook Pro. The 13- and 15-inch MacBook Airs are still stuck on M4 for now, as are the Pro and Max versions of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. But a few days later, we know when that might change.

More M5 Macs are on the horizon

If you're holding out on buying one of the current M4 laptops in the hope that Apple will soon upgrade them with M5 chips, you're going to be waiting a little while longer. As Bloomberg's typically reliabe Mark Gurman reports, Apple doesn't plan to refresh its MacBook Air line until next spring. That goes for a host of other Mac products as well, including M5 versions of the Mac Studio and Mac mini, in addition to new Mac monitors.

It's a similar story for the M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros. While Gurman doesn't specify whether these laptops are also coming in the spring, he does report Apple is planning on refreshing the 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros with the new chips in "early 2026."

Gurman says the new MacBook Pros will recycle Apple's current design, and I'd imagine the same will hold true for the M5 MacBook Airs. The M5 14-inch MacBook Pro looks identical to its M4 counterpart, after all, with the only notable changes (other than the M5 chip) being a boosted 24 hour battery life and faster SSD.

If you're currently holding out on buying a new MacBook, I don't think there's much reason to wait for the M5, unless you just really want the newest hardware Apple has to offer. The current M4 machines are excellent, and, in the case of the MacBook Air, can be bought for a very reasonable price—especially when they go on sale. During October Prime Day, stores offered the 13-inch M4 MacBook Air for only $799, which is an excellent value.

Apple is also working on a touchscreen MacBook Pro

In this same report, Gurman discusses Apple's current plans for a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen, which would be a dramatic refresh—no Mac has ever shipped with a touchscreen, unless you count the controversial Touch Bar (RIP), which only added a touch-based strip to the top of the keyboard.

According to Gurman, these touchscreens will be OLED, which the company already uses in its iPad Pros and iPhones. You'll still have the standard keyboard and trackpad, so you could ignore the touchscreen entirely, though Apple is considering replacing Touch ID with Face ID, again mirroring its iPads and iPhones. To that point, the "notch" (the large camera cutout at the top of the screen) may be replaced by a smaller hole-punch design, reminiscent of the iPhone's Dynamic Island.

Alongside the touchscreen, Apple may update the design of these MacBook Pros to be thinner and lighter, and they may run on the M6 chip, rather than a version of the M5. They may also include a new hinge and lid design to compensate for the force of touching the display. Remember, this would be a new design challenge for the MacBook line, which has never had to deal with users purposely touching the display before.

Gurman says the touchscreen MacBook Pro won't debut until late 2026 or even early 2027. When it does arrive, it will likely come with an increased price tag of at least "a few hundreds dollars more than current versions." Right now, the M4 Pro MacBook Pros start at $1,999 for the 14-inch model, and $2,499 for the 16-inch model. Apple would be upgrading the hardware here considerably, so the increased price tag isn't without merit. But if you're looking for the best value Mac possible, it's challenging to beat the current M4 MacBook Air—especially when it's on sale.



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