Commutes, running, chores, children, sleep and when quiet is more than uncomfortable

The rule holds for every quiet minute. Some need their own paragraph.

Commutes. A forty-minute train journey is long enough for a chosen listen and long enough for a quiet stretch. Do one each way, or the first half quiet and the second a podcast. A commute that's entirely filled every day is the largest daily loss of quiet most people have, and a commute with twenty quiet minutes in it is where a lot of the day's sorting can go.

Running and exercise. Music that carries you through a run is a chosen thing and I'd keep it. A podcast on every run is the fill. Try one run a week with nothing, and notice that the run has a rhythm of its own and that the ideas that arrive on it are different from the ones that arrive on a walk.

Chores. The washing up, the ironing, the garden. These are the undemanding tasks Baird's incubation study was about, and they're the natural home of the drift. A podcast on the washing up takes the one stretch in the evening that was doing the incubating. Try the washing up in quiet for a week, and see what arrives.

Children. Two things. The child in the waiting room with a screen is learning what chapter 15 said. And the child in the car with the radio off is a child who talks, and a parent who can hear them. The quiet in a car is one of the few places a child will tell you things, and the fill takes it.

Sleep. Chapter 11. If the audiobook works, keep it as a chosen listen with a timer. Give the day a quiet stretch earlier so the pillow isn't the first one. If sleep is a real problem, two earlier books in this series are about it, and a GP is the route for anything that's lasted weeks.

Tinnitus. The NHS says that if you have tinnitus you should not have total silence, that soft music or sounds can distract from it, and that loud background noise can make it worse. If that's you, the method's quiet stretch isn't for you, and the sound you keep on is treatment, not fill. Tinnitus UK has a free helpline on 0800 018 0527. Follow the NHS guidance and not this book.

When quiet is more than uncomfortable. The itch this book describes is restlessness. If what arrives in the quiet is dread, or thoughts racing so that you can't follow them, or thoughts that frighten you, or a low mood that's been there most of the day for a fortnight, that's not the itch, and the fill has been managing something that needs a better tool. See a GP, or in England refer yourself to NHS talking therapies. The method here is for ordinary minds meeting ordinary quiet, and it isn't a treatment for anything.

Attention difficulties. Some readers find every quiet minute intolerable in a way that goes with a lifetime of restlessness, distraction and difficulty finishing things. The NHS pages on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder describe this, and a GP is the route to an assessment. The method may still help, in smaller stretches, but the itch for someone with that pattern is a different size, and a book shouldn't pretend otherwise.