Quiet Hours
Notes on sound, sleep and slow evenings
Triggers

Triggers are personal, and that is the whole point

Tapping, brushing, paper, rain — what settles one person irritates another.

People arrive expecting a universal list and leave with their own. One reader falls asleep to pages turning and cannot stand tapping; another needs the tap and finds paper unbearable. Both are normal.

The useful exercise is to notice what you already gravitate to in ordinary life — rain on a window, a kettle, someone quietly working in the next room. Those preferences transfer almost exactly.

Once you have two or three that work, stop hunting. Novelty keeps attention engaged, and engaged attention is the opposite of what you are after at eleven at night.

More from Quiet Hours