I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal.
Between addictive online media in our personal lives and AI at work, I think we’ve made mental effort largely optional.
That must be a horrible thing.
One of my favorite theories is the physical activity transition.
In my grandparents‘ generation, physical movement became more optional as work shifted from manual labor to knowledge work or operating machines and transportation became motorized.
Exercise was an ambient byproduct of daily life. Then it disappeared (exercise as a hobby was viewed as extremely weird, runners used to be arrested!) and a few decades later heart disease, diabetes, and so on became deadly epidemics.
We now know exercise is not optional for health. And we’ve reintroduced it via gyms, clubs, etc.
But that took decades. And I believe we’re now in the Mental Activity Transition.
We’ve stripped away ambient mental effort so we practice it much less.
I don’t know what the decades-long consequences of that may be, but they can’t be good.
I hope it won’t take decades for societies to rediscover its value and figure out how to reintroduce it.
I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours.
When I was younger I used to get bored way more often. I had to wait regularly during a week (e.g. for a bus, friend, appointment) or even at work as a software dev (e.g. compilation which used to take more time).
This was also the case when doing some physical activities which didn't require lot of thoughts.
Back then, before mobile phones with internet access, you were either reading something or alone with your thoughts in those situations. This was when I had time to think back at things that happened, processing the information I had, refining ideas etc.
Nowdays those are often situations where we ingest more information like listening to podcast, reading stuff on the phone, etc... or situations that just doesn't exists anymore having optimised our work to remove those waiting points.
I personally find myself with clearer thoughts when I break those habits and give my brain some time to be bored again.
I do think there is "lack of boreness" epidemic leaving people with way more raw thoughts and way less time to process and challenge information, leading to some form of exhaustion and lack of clarity.
I have another suggestion which doesn't contradict yours:
This is only a small part of it (tech addiction 24/7 via phone); certainly there is something bigger at play, here (e.g: "the brain isn't the same anymore;" agreed).
I do not use email nor a cell phone (several years; outgoing landline, only), so I have more than enough time to ruminate (and read a few dozen books, annually) – and yet agree very much with OC's theory on needing mental health exercises to replace our newfound AGI tools/workers.
As an extremely conversive person (unbound by a cellphone), it's become an extremely strange world, particularly when talking with strangers, even in just the past two years. It's like: everybody is just mentally exhausted, mortal.
I too subscribe to theory that "being bored" was an important part of our day to day lives. I think it gave us time to basically decompress and "defragment" our minds, and that is also when a lot of novel ideas or clarifications would come to us. Now having 24/7 entertainment at the tips of our fingers is almost completely removing this extra time from us, and there is much less processing that actually happens.
I doubt that's the only factor, but I agree that it's almost certainly a factor. The modern "tech" industry has filled our waking hours with unceasing demands to do something. Buy this product, watch this video, listen to this podcast, react to this social media post; even "practice self-care" has somehow turned into an obligatory virtue-cultivating task. We obviously had advertising before, but this is a different beast, something akin to living in a casino.
As Bo Burnham put it, "apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime".
Definitely. Much of the structure of internet media encourages constant, passive consumption. Or, to use the terms of the grandparent, we move traded ambient thinking, reflection, and imagination, which the brain is pushed into during boredom, for ambient consumption.
I think a lot of people believe that, as long as they consume "high quality" or more intellectual content, the negative effects of constant consumption are mitigated, but I think that's false. It's less about the content and more about the structure and process. If you never give your brain moments to stop basic processing of wildly different inputs and to just critically examine them instead, you will suffer brain rot, even if the content you consume is "educational".
Yes. And I'd also add that so much of it is about context and intention.
If you intentionally sit down to enjoy some low-brow entertainment (Maybe a silly action movie or a mediocre rom-com) because you enjoy that, great.
But I recently realized that there are podcast episodes from 10 years ago that I still remember parts of, but few from recent years, even though I've listened to far more podcasts (and they haven't become less intellectual).
That seems less likely then people being tired and stressed from the costs of living and the increased economic instability.
We have smartphones but we're perilously few missed pay cheques away from not having a house, with a capital class gleefully telling everyone how they'll all be unemployable very soon.
It would be the greatest irony if failing to manage the economic fallout of the coming AI revolution had a larger negative impact than the benefit it brings
We might just run into the worst recession in history as the heavily skewed service economy quickly runs out of customers who can afford to pay for it
We're already several years into the worst economic depression in history. People aren't having children because they cannot afford a home. But it can get worse of course.
>I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal.
I disagree with the premise that you're propping up with the exercise example; I disagree that humans are thinking less because of mechanisms available in society.
if anything I think people are thinking more than they ever have, and that has triggered a lot of people into overthinking themselves into a quagmire of inaction , judgement, and group-think.
Telling codex how to program a feature is a much different, much easier type of thinking than back in the olden days of a year ago, when I had to get everything to work myself. I can't imagine that's going to be great for my long-term brain health.
This only holds when you keep the task fixed and compare with and without AI. But because AI changed expectations the difficulty of work we supervise today is much higher. My theory is that AI runs our brains just as hard as no-AI, maybe harder. That is if you want to have high quality outputs, not for slop.
Yeah I think this is also true. Maybe "thinking less" is the wrong framing. Whether it's an excess or a deficiency of thinking, there's definitely a lack of straining cognitive activity.
It might be reading books, pondering deep ideas, painting a landscape, doing software engineering, or solving crossword puzzles.
But all of those are happening much less due (in my opinion) to the factors I described.
But this quagmire of inaction, judgement and group-think is older than technology though. Just because social media wasn't available before didn't mean there weren't "mechanisms" of society to channel those impulses into. So why do you think people are thinking more than before and why this quagmire is a modern invention? Like how are we measuring what people are thinking and what people are not thinking?
I understand its your subjective opinion but I would like to know what basis your claim stands upon. Just like more easy information so people overthink?
The neurologists and neurotherapists for a family member who is a stroke survivor have been pretty consistent in saying that cardiovascular exercise and regular social engagement seem to be the most promising activities to stem cognitive decline.
Yes, I think both things can be true. And also, we haven't had decades of mental activity being mostly optional, so we're not yet seeing the consequences nor science of long-term impact.
In the 1950s, many doctors were convinced that exercise was actively harmful and running was dangerous.
Additionally, everyone seems to have forgotten that covid can leave lingering mental symptoms for years after “recovery”. I wonder how much of the mental fatigue/ brain fog that people blame on tech is actually from covid…
It's not just COVID, either. You can get brain fog effects from a variety of things. The first and biggest is sleep apnea (woefully underdosed).
Plenty of things can develop as you grow older. Some of them may have been present all your life and you only start to notice them when your body is a little less resilient. Food sensitivities, for instance -- eat the wrong thing, trigger a major release of histamines (which trigger both the stomach acid and a whole-body response). Too much of that releases other neurotransmitters, too, and you can get Depression and Fatigue too. (And then try changing the whole way you eat while at the bottom of a depressive slump where all the easiest foods are the likeliest triggers!!) Autistic people (plenty of us in tech) are especially predisposed to many of these inflammation-related issues.
If you're brain fogged, see the doctor... and be prepared for a long slog of self advocacy, and maybe shopping around.
>I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal.
One would hope so, but there are countless people that believe this can't ever be the case, and it's just lack of personal motivation that's the problem.
Yes, this is a big issue. I really think these things are basically like cigarettes used to be when they were ubiquitous.
I'd have a hard time blaming someone in the 1930s for being addicted to cigarettes. Everyone constantly smoked everywhere and their harm was rumored, but not proven.
Try to quit smoking in that environment: the thing you're trying to get away from is inescapable and it's not even clear why you should quit. They might blame themselves for not being motivated enough.
We're in that exact environment for the things I describe above.
I think running down the road is still suspicious and to get you stopped by the cops (not arrested per se I’m not sure that ever happened…) which is why runners wear a uniform.
I have bad news for you: for the majority of the population mental effort was always a foreign concept. That's exactly what got us in this mess in the first place.
Not sure if always but probably there's a rise of anti-intellectualism in general since I'd say the 2000s. I remember being amazed by how intelligent adults were when I was little. Always doing cross-words, sudoku, reading books, discussing the classics, etc. But now those same adults don't read anything anymore, and just spend their time watching netflix on bed. The same adults that used to correct my vocabulary, grammar and ortography, somehow forgot the meaning of slightly obscure words and don't remember if a certain word was written with an "s" or "c" for example.
I think the anti-intellectualism crisis gets mischaracterized. Common rejection of experts, academia, and empirical findings is certainly a part of it, but I tend to see more of an issue with targeted, self-serving ignorance, particularly among the elite.
You have extremely intelligent and influential people balking at, say, the undeniable net benefits of universal healthcare, renewable energy investment, and cash payment UBI.
Worse, they use their intelligence to attack interventions that run against their preconceived notions. Milton Friedman was not an idiot, and yet he and his acolytes did (and do) untold damage in anti-intellectual perpetuation of their outmoded ideas.
The common thread between that and skipping conversation for Netflix is disengagement with cognitive load that doesn't immediately benefit you. They both suck, but I think that one hurts more, and hurts more.
This second thing (either slightly different from anti-intellectualism or maybe a different form of it$l) is quite odd. I wonder where it comes from. Sometimes it feels like we have a strong bias toward surprising effects, to the point where we’ll start treating the first “possible, counter intuitive hypothesis” as if it ought to be the default assumption. I wonder to what extent that’s a natural thing, or to what extent it is the result of consuming pop-sci content that has to start with “Rebel scientist overturns conventional wisdom…”
I don't think that's true. Even if you think about what was considered junk entertainment decades ago, they still required much more cognitive effort.
Reading about a celebrity breakup in a gossip magazine requires more cognitive effort than hearing about the same breakup in a gossip TikTok:
-You consumed the thing for minutes at a time vs. seconds at a time and your brain had to actively decipher something, not just passively perceive.
-You had to read and couldn't do it while also doing something else, which meant you were more focused.
-You couldn't swipe in a split-second and have another equally stimulating thing that might be completely different, which meant you were more intentional about your mental context.
The medium in which we consume something absolutely matters, independent of what we decide to consume.
I mean, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of the populous is not doing physical activity as they should. Even in a future with gym “for the mind”, I also assume attendance to be low.
As someone who started their software engineering career in 1988 and is at the tail end of it, I can report that my peers and I have experienced the same thing, even as we start retiring.
What we didn’t have was constant dopamine hits. It took effort to get dopamine. A lot. I’ve struggle with doomscrolling in my 50’s, just like teenagers, except I remember a time when it didn’t exist. I think that’s the key: if all you’ve ever had is velveeta, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to unlock the pleasure some stinky washed rind raw milk French cheese.
I agree with the author, I think reading books is the only way out, and extend that to analog activities. An analogy is fast-twitch muscles: they respond quickly, but burn their ATP faster. You have to operate at an oxygen deficit for about 10 minutes before your analog/aerobic system kicks in. Same thing with any analog activity like reading, you have to put the monkey-brain to sleep.
Same happening for me. The fog clears when I do breath meditation - I think (hope) going deeper into mindfullness will be even more effective than reading at clearing the mind and breaking the dopamine addiction.
A couple of times now I have walked a stretch of the Camino de Santiago (each time it was just a small bit near the end; sadly don't have the time off to do a full route which can take a month or longer). I find the simplicity of it super rewarding and enjoyable compared to my busy life back home. Just, for the most part, miles and miles of peaceful countryside.
It's kind of the opposite of what is described in the article, where the author is using his time off to improve his knowledge in other areas. Personally, I find that back home I am constantly thinking, both at work and in my time off, so much so that I forget what the end goal of all that thinking actually is. So doing these long walks helps me take a break from that and put it in perspective. No laptop, as little smartphone use as possible, I will maybe read a book or two in the evenings but nothing too heavy, etc.
As an aside, I am in a non-tech field, and programming is my hobby (and nothing like my day job). I enjoy it and I think it helps me stay sharp, but it has its drawbacks as a hobby. Being a solo hobby, and not one that many people in my field are into, it's not really something I can easily bond with others over (unlike, say, golf or chess). And sometimes it can be the opposite of relaxing when you encounter a bug that you can't seem to diagnose or fix.
A number of years ago I had a period of my life where I decided to shut my laptop for a while.
I was working as a line cook and trying to find time and energy to code study so I could land a role in software (no degree). I was really struggling with my mental health and was having issues making or maintaining progress in pretty much any area of my life.
I got a new job, cooking breakfast in a small mountain town at a bakery. Before I left I sold my laptop and borrowed a bunch of books from some friends.
I really did feel much better a few months later. Taking the time to decompress allowed me to get my priorities in order and surface some biases / blind spots I had. I ended up re-enrolling in school the next spring and am now happily employed in software.
I don’t think the modality is particularly important - coding vs reading vs anything else - but taking the time to put your goals away for a little while and decompress can make you more effective in actually reaching them
Lots of thinkers throughout history have pointed this out (David Hume and Seneca are the first 2 that spring to mind, but I'm sure there are hundreds more). Our mind doesn't work correctly when it's constantly focused, and as much as we think scrolling is not focusing, it is. The part of your brain that lights up and pays attention is active when you're zooming through content. There's nothing wrong with it, but like everything the dose makes the poison. You have to take breaks and balance it against other mental modes.
One formulation I like is the Kethledge and Erwin definition of solitude. They say that solitude is not so much physical isolation as it is a lack of input from other minds. What electronic media do (among many other effects) is flood your consciousness with the presence of other minds. Even if that mind is deranged, anti-social, or even pleasant, your own thought gets crowded out. I'm a huge reader, and I realize even books do this, although less oppressively than electronic media, which is why I think people imagine them as antidotes to this problem. But I think maybe the most important thing is to take a rest and don't let anyone else talk to you for a time, either in person or via media.
Turns out t-breaks works for social media too if you admit it's an addiction that it is. When you are in it day in and day out you don't realize how much time it's costing you without the benefits that you signed up for at the beginning.
This is something I've felt very deeply intuitively. (It's also something that it feels like my life actively optimizes against to prevent me being able to do it.)
I spend a big chunk of my summers in nowhere cow-ville France (la Creuse). No Michelin star restaurants, no art galleries, no shopping worth note. Just landscapes, hiking, lakes and slower life. BUT what surprises me most is how often I describe this to people, even the French, and they’re like “why / pourquoi ?!” Is it not obvious? There’s a reason people say they need a vacation after their vacation. I think it’s that people are expecting too much of their vacations.
Having a family, the best rest for me is the 2-3 days when I'm back at work after vacation. No kids running around, no need to plan anything, just slowly going through hundreds of already irrelevant emails, pretending to do something productive, sipping coffee while telling everyone that I'm "catching up, sorry, can't help ya".
I quit paris to work on the coast to sail at least every two weekends (and took up foiling for the evenings), I'd say I now need way, way less vacations than I used to.
Sounds like there's two kinds of vacations, the one to relax, decompress, slow down and go offline for a bit, and the one where you explore the world and experience new things. Both are valid, and combining the two is great.
I'm now thinking of USAmericans taking a eurotrip and visiting a different city every day. I hope some of them mix it up and stay in cowville, France for a few days.
Was lucky enough to spend a week in Rome this summer, and even that was not enough time (and I've been before, still not enough combined time). It's wild when I hear about people hitting 4 different EU cities in the same time period, sounds exhausting.
I used to read fairly voraciously as a child; nothing like the kids who could devour a Harry Potter book between sunrises, but a respectable "novel every 2-3 weeks", somewhat above my grade level.
I can remember almost the exact instant I fell off: being dissatisfied with a particular turn in a YA novel in 9th grade, and the odd moments that had been filled with page-turning suddenly became designated for sketching and doodling (at the height of deviantArt's power).
I don't think I finished a single class-read novel in high school; hated Wuthering Heights and beloved (on vibes) L'Etranger alike are a blur. (Still aced the AP exams.) I knew it was really over when I had to drop a classical literature course in college because I couldn't keep up with the readings.
I've a few dozen unfinished books in the ~15 years since, and less than a dozen finished ones. 1Q84 has been a multi-year odyssey.
I've introspected about what's gone "wrong". My reading speed is quite slow, and has never progressed, which I think is a major part of it. I often become distracted, stopping a little too frequently to mull things over - really, squaring the reading with my preconceived notions, which was not as much of an issue when I was younger and had fewer of them.
I also stress over finding time to begin reading in the first place, and about being disconnected from reality when I'm in a book's headspace.
I'd love to know if anyone's had a similar experience and can boast a "recovery" (and how they managed).
I read a ton so I can’t really relate directly; but I will say to try out thrillers. Most are written to keep you reading, because you want to see what happens next.
Personally this usually means 20th century detective fiction (Chandler, Hammett, etc.) but there are a lot of modern writers that fit the same bill. Harlan Coben is a good example, if a bit “generic thriller.”
I’m no expert on self improvement, but my ambitions tend to be a lot lower on vacation. Instead of trying to cultivate better habits, I mostly just try to interrupt the old dumb ones. Instead of phone in bed, it’s a huge win if I’m in a hammock with a fun book. Instead of checking email over coffee, maybe I can sit outside with that coffee and listen to birds. Etc etc.
Thanks for this post, I can truly relate. Some thoughts from a 50+ year old genx guy (EE/CS) who’s worked to stay current and keep a sharp mind in the face of these challenges plus the inevitable age-related decline:
- regular exercise has incredible benefits for the body+ mind (and the attitude that directs it). Biggest impact of everything on this list.
- Side projects that involve actual doing and not just study. e.g. I spent some money on gear for embedded development and am doing things that involve physical things and using my hands and making gadgets … phone is out of the picture while in the lab.
- Ironically, using LLMs for reviewing and refreshing knowledge you once had but now has gaps is amazing. I spend a bunch of my phone time now having in-depth chats where I know what I’m talking about to a large degree, but the LLM is helping me fill in gaps and then quizzing me on concepts and I know that the things it’s telling me are solid due to my background, then I go check, etc. A really good way to do super focused study to reload a field back into your brain. Might as well take advantage of the fact that they stole all of the world books.
- Write things down! After reviewing, do some problems with pencil and pad. After studying, doing a problem on pencil and paper is actually daunting, but then grooving through a few problems actually makes you realize you know the stuff again! And using an expensive Ampad notebook and nice mech pencil is a great sensory experience.
> Add to that the usage of AI. While I know I’m way more productive than during those first months, my thoughts are getting slower, less profound, lazier.
I have mostly stayed away from LLM usage, I think I am better for it. I use it just to offload things I wouldn't have had time for. I get more stuff done, but I am still doing what I did before.
> Plus, dopamine is available at just a tap on my phone. There’s a ton of content in shorts that interest me and require little to no investment on my end, both time and effort-wise.
If you have and Android phone, enable Developer Options and flick through to Simulated Color Space - set it to Monochrome. I only wish it was possible to automate colour space switching based on time, like is done for redshift.
And also readers not using it. So far I’ve gotten no legit webmention on any post. But I keep it hoping that some day someone will make a reply post and it will be magical
The best de-brain rot vacation I had so far was on a remote island in Raja Ampat: it wasn't about the island being remote, but about spotty internet access.
It was just the correct amount of spotty: enough for text to load and IMs to go through, but not enough for any serious photo or video content. I was able to get YouTube to download videos in 240p on one end of the island, but I had to be picky about what I select.
After two weeks I felt like my old self again, but unfortunately, it popped like a bubble after just a few days.
Yes. This is my favorite way to vacation, and I'm glad someone has found a better name for it. I do not enjoy simply sitting around idle and occasionally going on a trip, I end my time off feeling drained and need a vacation from my vacation.
One year, I had an itch to try my hand at Godot and game programming, and I saved it for my next vacation. I'd never felt more relaxed after a vacation, it's the same as what the author describes: I like being intellectually stimulated, I just needed a break from work, not from trying new things.
This article has helped me figure out some of what made that work, and has given me some ideas of how to try to capture that again.
I find staycations to be the same thing as a vacation but at home. Especially if you liv in more touristy places (NYC for instance), there's plenty of vacationy things you can take while not leaving more than 10 miles from your house. I like going to the beach or to my parents or what not (even going on trips), but I still need something to keep my mind busy. I hope that sums up the difference well.
I suggest things such as building an "offline room" like an 80s/90s living room setup complete with a thrifted CRT TV, old game consoles, VCRs, shag carpets, old lamps, woodgrain walls, physical books, instruction manuals, etc.
Just take Baby Rudin and a serious stack of paper with you on these holidays and you should be set.
My two experiences of de-brainrotting:
1. Doing a pilgrimage walk in Japan with a cleared phone home screen. Only the Gaia GPS app on there with the route, and some other local weather and mapping applications. No consumption of anything external during the day. Just steady walking and eating and looking around. It was excellent. You can probably do this anywhere given the right context and commitment.
2. We slept several nights in a hut at 2100m altitude in the Austrian Alps just out of range of cell reception so the icon on my phone was "satellite" all the time. It turns out that without the possibility of communication or fresh input, you can read a bit on your kindle in the evening and then go KO at around 22:00 sleeping like a rock until 06:30. Such an amazing amount of rest and refreshment just from a simple accident of geography.
Similar to OP’s new hobby of math and physics, I recently started scratching a long standing itch to teach myself electrical engineering. I’m using books, YouTube and my brain to learn, and it feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to what my day job as a SWE has become since AI took it over. Because I’m not trying to build anything in particular — and since the learning _is_ the goal — I don’t hear that nagging voice saying, “AI could do this so much faster,” that pops in my head when I write code by hand these days.
Last year I took my parents' caravan and put it in bumfuck retirement home nowhere, spent a week just riding my motorcycle through that section of the country, reading, listening to music, and painting Warhammer figurines. Little human contact. It was boring and unstimulating, but also almost the opposite of my usual daily grind.
I struggle w my advanced learning in that much of it I will Never use due to my retirement status.
I attempt screenplays; reading classical electrodynamics by Jackson; studying chess; and learning Spanish. I love to write code but that sucks me back to the computer.
Cooking is always fun.
What do you think about doing LeetCode as an hobby? i really didn't like these type of exercise before, but after the advent of AI i'm more prone to do them. and actually started to enjoy them.
I think it’s great that we’re discussing this more often as time goes on. This is not the first post I’ve read this month about this topic, and that’s a good sign.
I also think it takes a certain level of intelligence to be able to _notice_ these shifts in mental load.
A lot of people are going through this same thing, but their response isn’t “i need to unplug, slow down, and let my mind reset,” it’s quite literally the opposite - they scroll more, binge more, swipe more. Mostly because they aren’t aware of why they feel the way they do.
The more we discuss this issue, openly, the more likely it is we’ll bring attention to it to those people who are currently unaware of why they feel so empty all the time, despite never being more occupied.
And it is a massive problem. The complete overflow of impressions you get from mindless scrolling is really not talked about enough. Before you realize it, you begin forgetting important tasks, rationalizing wasting your time and showing up late to things. Please take back your life
> Add to that videogames, comics/manga, TV shows, etc, and I literally just can’t get bored anymore.
It's a bit strange to me (and I figure I'm just unusual in this respect), but all of those things lead me quickly to boredom these days. It's the brain rottenness of it all that leads me to be bored, and in a way I'm thankful for it. I find that even compared to my childhood, I'm more bored today than I've ever been.
> Nothing is that novel anymore, and solving day to day problems, more than requiring mental exhaustion, mostly require spending some time at them.
You're the largest fish in your bowl, time to move to a larger bowl. It's OK to be comfortable but if you're unhappy there's always another level to aim for.
Thankfully I'm happy where I am for now. Bigger bowls would require life choices that not only would affect me, but also my family. I'm really grateful for the position I'm in currently.
A refreshing read. While not in the same lane as the author re maths/physics/SWE, I empathise.
I think on one hand, things are simply less novel as we get older and more expert in a given lane. That’s age old.
But the dopamine hit/attention deficit issue is altogether new, and it’s troubling from a societal perspective. I suspect it’s fairly universal that adults in 2026 aren’t reading nearly as much as they aspire to, or claim to be.
The intro paragraphs talking about the mental disengagement or decline or whatever we want to call it really resonated with me. It's something I've also taken measures to counter. In fact I'm on vacation right now to Basque Country. I read "A Basque History of the World" to prepare for the trip and that act reassured me I'm not getting less capable of engaging intellectually, I just have different intellectual interests now than the most intimate details of making websites for and serving them to customers at varying scales.
my idea of de-brainrot is by going to destinations where everything is new and experiencing everything there physically & mentally. either going to a new city or drive to a new place. i'm not sure if it's anecdotal but there's a feeling of astonishment when experiencing a new place. i find that when you go back you have this new perspective and you feel refreshed.
I have experienced a similar feeling. Often I will dream of the newly "mapped" area once I arrive home (with cartoonish/dreamlike elements that are far from perfect). After I awake from this dream I feel likewise refreshed.
Leaving the phone charging out of the bedroom (or unreachable without getting up) during night and having a kindle in bed did the 80% Pareto De-Brainroting me every day and changed my life
Something I noticed from this post is that the immediate go-to hobby for the author when forgoing time-swallowing brainrot is learning. This has been the exact same for me. After I actively started reducing my screen time, I have seen an almost unconscious kneejerk reaction consisting in me simply learning new things. Learning for fun is awesome. Never stop.
Just this this weekend got a cabin on the Mississippi and went totally no phones or tv. Wife and I spent the weekend reading, doing yoga and playing checkers.
Yeah, we're watching AI obsolete intellectual work in real time. Human brains simply won't be able to compete. We're not going to have to toil, we just ask for results.
This is no longer skilled labor. It's massively more productive when machines take over the thinking, but you need to look elsewhere for intellectual stimulation.
I spent my vacation reading From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew.
And I have a couple of university textbooks (Physics and Biology) lying about, waiting for me to keep working on them.
I concur with the general feeling of it being difficult to plan much ahead. I think that learning and reading is good, and has been good basically always (just because someone else knows something doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn it too, even if this someone else is an LLM).
Anyway, I enjoyed your post and mostly feel the same (and funnily I have similar interests).
Reflecting on my life, I think there is a mind body connection. And your brain doesn't work properly unless you also exercise. The best shape (post university) and sharpest I felt is when I played tennis daily. It just seems to be a sport that improves everything; reflexes, strength, cardio, speed. And I just felt very sharp physically and mentally during period.
Hiking, and especially kayaking are like the antidote to brain rot for me now. Sitting in a kayak, watching a sunset on lake, surrounded by birds and wildlife and nature, it just kind clears your mind. Kayaking seems to have just the right amount of effort (you can go at your pace) and relaxation (provided you're in calm water) and nature and novelty, that it seems to connect you back to the world.
Interestingly, many of the former US presidents where also big fitness buffs.
Indulging in musicianship works very well, too. As in, learning a musical instrument, say classical piano, with some external guidance.
You'll have to activate parts of brain you might never had to previously, it's quite some mental gymnastics but also an immersive mind + body + aural connection. You may feel exhausted after an intensive practice session but in a very rewarding way. You'll have to learn to learn differently.
My daily de-brainrot vacation is .. playing with synthesizers. Nothing gets the webs cleared out faster than a quick jam, maybe laying down a couple loops, getting some ideas fleashed out into a bigger structure.
Music-making and musicianship in general is great de-brainrot.
Starting to learn to play the keyboard was an awesome experience for me. Unfortunately I was learning on my brother's and I don't have it anymore. I think I'll gift myself one on christmas.
For fuck sake nerds why do you overcomplicated everything.
Go to the hardware store, buy some tools and fix something on your car or house, or build a new wall or stairs or something... Or even simpler. Get a shovel Go dig a ditch and plant some trees...
When I'm on vacation I like nothing more than reading history books; it really helps transport you to another time and place, helping you to disconnect from the present and immerse yourself in your vacation.
Closer to home, surely there are work books that can teach you something new? I just picked up a fantastic academic tome called Experimental Economics by John List, to learn more about running experiments. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo250610...
Between addictive online media in our personal lives and AI at work, I think we’ve made mental effort largely optional.
That must be a horrible thing.
One of my favorite theories is the physical activity transition.
In my grandparents‘ generation, physical movement became more optional as work shifted from manual labor to knowledge work or operating machines and transportation became motorized.
Exercise was an ambient byproduct of daily life. Then it disappeared (exercise as a hobby was viewed as extremely weird, runners used to be arrested!) and a few decades later heart disease, diabetes, and so on became deadly epidemics.
We now know exercise is not optional for health. And we’ve reintroduced it via gyms, clubs, etc.
But that took decades. And I believe we’re now in the Mental Activity Transition.
We’ve stripped away ambient mental effort so we practice it much less.
I don’t know what the decades-long consequences of that may be, but they can’t be good.
I hope it won’t take decades for societies to rediscover its value and figure out how to reintroduce it.
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