Signal Over Noise: Why I'm Unreachable and Fine With It

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My phone doesn't ring.

Not because it's broken. Because I turned off the ringer years ago and never turned it back on. No notifications. No popups. No badge counts screaming for attention. My computer doesn't beep. Social media doesn't interrupt me. Nothing does.

If you message me on Facebook and expect an immediate response, you will always be disappointed. I'm not available when you decide to reach me. I will address it when I get to it. Maybe today. Maybe next week. Maybe never.

This isn't an accident. It's architecture.

I've optimized my entire environment for signal and systematically eliminated noise. Sterile workspace. No ambient interruptions. No small talk about sports teams I don't care about, weather I have no use for (unless I'm doing a preflight check, in which case weather becomes extremely relevant), or politics and what the "other side" is doing this week. Zero interest. All noise.

I'm not apologizing for this. I'm explaining it.

The Cost of Silence

This has cost me relationships.

People interpret unavailability as disinterest. They're not entirely wrong. If your primary mode of connection is casual check-ins, spontaneous calls, and ambient social maintenance, I will fail you. I don't do ambient. I don't do maintenance for its own sake.

Some friendships faded because I didn't respond fast enough. Some family members gave up trying to reach me through channels I don't monitor. Some professional opportunities evaporated because I wasn't "responsive" on the platforms that mattered to them.

I've made peace with this.

Not because I don't value connection. I do. But I value deep signal over shallow frequency. One real conversation is worth more than a hundred "how's it going" pings. I'd rather see someone once a year and talk about something that matters than exchange weekly pleasantries that neither of us remembers.

The math is simple: attention is finite. Every notification is a context switch. Every interruption is a tax on focus. I refuse to pay that tax to maintain the appearance of availability.

The people who matter learned how to reach me. The others filtered themselves out.

Signal to Noise Is Everything

As a software developer, signal to noise ratio isn't a metaphor. It's the job.

A codebase full of noise is a codebase that lies to you. Dead code. Misleading comments. Verbose abstractions that obscure what's actually happening. Noise kills projects. It kills productivity. It kills your ability to see the thing that matters buried under the things that don't.

I've spent decades learning to filter. To ask: what is this actually telling me? What can I ignore? What's the one piece of information that changes my decision?

That skill doesn't turn off when I leave the keyboard.

When someone talks about the weather for ten minutes before getting to the point, I hear noise. When a meeting has no agenda, I hear noise. When a message says "hey can I ask you something" instead of just asking the thing, I hear noise.

I've found I fit better in cultures that don't tolerate it. Places where people get to the point. Where directness isn't rude, it's respectful of everyone's time. Where the social contract is: say what you mean, then stop talking.

Small talk has always been hard for me. Not because I don't understand its social function. I do. It's bonding. It's tribal maintenance. It's the human equivalent of grooming behavior in primates. I understand it. I'm just not willing to pay the cost of participating in it.

You Might Be Like This Too

If you've read this far and felt something click into place, you might be wired the same way.

You're in decent company.

Steve Jobs was famous for ignoring people. Not because he was unaware of social norms, but because he was ruthless about what deserved his attention. He'd walk out of meetings that weren't useful. He'd ignore emails for weeks. He built the most valuable company on earth while being essentially unreachable to anyone outside his signal filter.

Elon Musk sleeps on factory floors and responds to engineers directly while ignoring entire layers of management and media. His attention goes where the signal is. Everything else gets silence.

Warren Buffett barely uses email. Bill Gates took "Think Weeks" where he'd disappear completely to read and focus. Paul Graham wrote about the "maker's schedule" and why a single meeting can destroy an entire day of real work. Cal Newport built an academic career around the idea that deep work requires eliminating noise.

Einstein was notoriously dismissive of social obligations. Newton was a recluse. Tesla worked alone through the night and had almost no personal relationships.

This isn't a character flaw. It's a pattern.

You might have a phone that hasn't made a sound in years. You might have destroyed relationships because you forgot to respond to something that seemed urgent to someone else and trivial to you. You might dread the "let's catch up" messages because you know there's no agenda, just noise dressed up as connection.

You're not broken. You're not antisocial. You're not a bad friend.

You're just expensive to interrupt.

The world runs on ambient availability. Most people leave their notifications on. Most people respond to messages within hours. Most people enjoy talking about nothing in particular because the talking is the point.

That's fine for them. It doesn't have to be fine for you.

I've stopped pretending I'll change. I've stopped apologizing for how I'm built. I've stopped feeling guilty when someone is disappointed that I didn't see their message for three days.

My attention is mine. I decide what gets it.

If that means fewer relationships, so be it. The ones that survive are the ones that matter. The ones that don't were always going to cost more than they were worth.

Signal over noise. Always.