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I genuinely have never paired Bluetooth headphones to my phone. So I haven't worn headphones for a phone since the 3.8mm jack was taken from us.
I listen to music when I drive and I wear headphones on my PC.
Walking? 99% of the time that's exercise like hiking, and I raw dog that shit. Listen to nature and and my surroundings.
Why would you choose to do that?
I'm easily distracted and am usually occupied with my own thoughts. So, not hearing traffic, other people, and my general surroundings is actually stressful for me; relying on vision alone would be dangerous. I do a lot better keeping my ears open so I can relax, muse about this or that in my head, and let any sudden sounds or irregularities in my environment catch my attention.
Edit: By musing, I'm actively problem-solving fix-it situations in my house, thinking about software projects I have going, exercising mindfulness for better mental heath, self-assessing where my body aches/hurts, building fictional narratives for D&D, and so on. It's seldom idle time up in here.
Tell me, on the street after the second corner you turn on the way to the store, how many trees are there along the sidewalk? What kind of trees are they?
There's an interesting book called "On Looking" where the author walked around a city block with 11 experts in different fields and saw the world through their eyes. Here's an article about it: https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/08/12/on-looking-eleven-walks-with-expert-eyes/
The world is endlessly interesting, even in the mundane. Even if it's just keeping an eye out for new street art or thinking about a project or figuring out what I will do this weekend or just listening to my body and feeling the new aches or am old pain going away. There's often not a need for music for me.
My thing is that if I'm outside relaxing, I want the birds and bugs and wind. If I can't have those, headphones aren't an acceptable replacement, so I'll fuck off back inside.
If I'm outside as in going about town, I don't want my hearing compromised. It's a fate safety issue. Even bone conduction gear is a distraction that I'm not okay with. Like, it isn't even about being hit by a car or whatever, it could be something as simple as a shopping cart that's loose banging into me. My crippled ass would be in the floor.
My brain is enough stimulation for me. If I'm out in the world, my brain is going to be going a mile a minute scoping everything out. Doesn't matter how many times I've been in a given location.
I usually choose to have a podcast or music on, but sometimes it's really nice to just appreciate my surroundings. I like to hear birdsong, or the wind, the rain. Even cars passing. It's nice to be grounded in the world.
Even when I have music, I spend most of my time when I walk (which is a lot) not looking down at the ground. I look around, and I try to appreciate the little things. The other day, I noticed a really, really polished front door on a house I was walking past. The wood was so bright red and all of the metal was this gleaming silver, it was really striking! There are wild parakeets in the city I live in, so getting the chance to see these beautiful green birds swoop overhead is a treat, too. Where I live is quite hilly, so getting to see what I think are beautiful views of the urban sprawl interspersed with big tree plumages in the green spaces is pleasant, too. Sometimes it's quite imposing, it's not always a pretty and cheery sight, but it's always beautiful.
When I don't have music or podcasts playing, I feel like I can appreciate those sights a bit more. Picking up on snippets of other people's lives is interesting, and I find my mood is easier regulated when I just ground myself in the world around me rather than disappearing up into my head with the podcast or music playing. If I have sound on that I focus on, I'll often not really remember my walking to and from work, but if I'm just experiencing the world, I'll usually find something memorable. I find that slowing down and taking the time away from tech has been nice for me, sometimes.
When I listen to music it's the only thing I can do, which makes me anxious about walking into traffic or off a cliff.
I have profound hearing loss, too.
Interestingly enough, I've been suspecting I am on some sort of spectrum, but I typically feel like you do. Like I need to be listening to something when going for a walk because walking itself is inherently a boring activity.
But there have been certain days where I feel entirely different. I'm less in my head and more out of it, soak in my environment more, pay more attention to my posture, the way I'm stepping with my feet, the sounds around me, etc. And it's not me forcing it either, I just feel genuinely more interested in that stuff.
I've been told I live in the future a lot, but on those days, I feel "normal". Like, I'm more interested in and living in the present, instead of daydreaming all the time.
Just birds chirping, wind blowing, leaves rustling, all as I walked the same path I walk all the time and see the same things I've seen hundreds of times, just waiting to get home.
This is what I prefer, and never wear headphones. Sometimes it's good to turn off the noise to hear my own signal.
Weird how you're getting shit on for asking a question in "no stupid questions." Fucking NT people acting high and mighty.
As someone who loves music and listens to it every chance I get, I honestly never got into using headphones and walking. It just doesn't feel right to me. I am also very attentive to my surroundings, and if I feel like I don't know what's exactly going on, I really don't like that feeling. It may also be a generational thing? Im in my 40s, and the headphone market was a bit different 20 years ago when I was younger, and none of that really appealed to me. I never even had an iPod, I owned a zune lol.
Sometimes I enjoy just basking in the dark morass of my own thoughts.
I don't listen to things necessarily day to day. If I commute regularly on a train I may. I may be in my head or I may pay attention to the world. I do like trying to be present. When I walk my dog its about walking my dog so I let her go where she may, mostly, and watch her and wonder about what she is experiencing with her superior sense of smell and if she will notice that person and animal way over and be happy to see a friend. When running errands I think about what I need and where in the store I will go to retrieve it. I check the price per unit maybe doing a bit of math to determine the best value. While waiting in line may people watch a bit. Can think about something I read hear or saw on the news or how I will approach the next segment of a game im playing.
I try to pay attention to my surroundings because I like being alive. When I do wear headphones I put them in pass through mode.
I never listen to music. When I'm running errands, I listen to the birds and the wind. I watch the leaves change colors. I chat with people I know by sight. I stop by stores I don't need anything from just to chat with the owners. I meet friends doing their shopping and we decide to go to see a play next weekend. I sit down at a terrasse to have coffee with my kid's former piano teacher. Think the movie Amelie, but in small-town France instead of Paris. I love my life.
I think there are different seasons of life and different moods for wanting to listen to the world around. When I got into backpacking it becomes a pretty conscience decision when deciding to listen to a podcast or some music or go for 5 hours of silence. Live your life and go with the flow. If your tunes die, find a way to make a life lesson in some way or fashion that makes sense to you. Our ancestors were stuck with nothing but themselves and local community so I guess connect with your primal self.
Well, I have a pretty nice setup. iPhone and AirPods. Both Pro, for whatever that's worth. More marketing than function these days, though it used to mean something. I wouldn't use a base 16, but base 17 is the best of this year's lot. And AirPods 4 are good enough for anyone.
Anyway, I think sticking AirPods in your ears in public is kind of a rude gesture. It indicates "don't bother me." And I like strangers far less than normal people, neurotypical, whatever you call them. And I'm hard of hearing, so even if I'm not listening to music, I benefit from Apple's "hearing aid" mode (which I have set up). We also have this thing, it's buried in accessibility, called Live Listen. Superhuman hearing. Takes whatever the phone mic picks up and amplifies it. I stick the AirPods in my wife's ears, go into the bedroom and shut the door, place the iPhone on the bed, then go past the bedroom into the bathroom, and whisper a phrase, and she hears it, clear as day. It's that good. It's literally spy tech. "Leave" your iPhone hidden and completely out of sight in a room, leave the room, pop in AirPods, hear every word spoken in that room. (When you first set up the feature, it actually tells you not to do exactly that.)
So, yeah. I can hear way better with them on. But mostly I just do what I came to do and GTFO. I listen to the music in the car. Weird stuff like K-Pop (and not just the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack, though that's good too) or Enya.
I have a lot of stuff going on in my head that needs my full attention. Dinner planning, a work problem that I've been slowly chipping away at, toying with some random ideas, etc.
I understand that for some people, especially if you have ADHD, it can be easier to attend to those thoughts with music and other stimuli present. That is not the case for me.
I don't listen to music or watch TV
I never leave my home without headphones, but often i do not even have music on, just using active noise cancelling to reduce the outside sound. For me it's all too loud and hectic, too many people talking and cars driving. So even as i do as you do, it has more to do with reducing stimulation than increasing it.
Outside? I try not to go there.