Mental Noise

Have you ever noticed the constant noise inside your head?

Lately, I've been paying closer attention to my thoughts. I've always had a lot of noise inside my head. Over time, I developed a few strategies to silence it—running, gaming, and meditating. But recently, this task feels a bit more difficult. Meditation became harder. Gaming is just numbing. Running seems to increase the volume of the noise.

Back in my early twenties, my mind was calmer. At least, I could calm it down more easily. Even though I had a lot of energy, I could close my eyes and hear a single thread of my internal voice. It was easy to silence any other thread going around my head. Now, there are thousands and silencing them is tough. Almost impossible. I refuse to think that this is just a natural effect of age. Everything indicates that the fault is the bombardment of information and how I'm dealing with it.

Digital Overload and Mental Clutter

I'm always searching for more information. I check HackerNews too often. I'm opening my RSS feed every hour. I'm going through LinkedIn, X or Bluesky searching for some "relevant" information. My bookmark list grows, yet I rarely revisit it. I allowed the online world to invade my mental space, and it's now chaos. I want to take it back.

Constantly consuming so much information makes me feel like I'm always behind. That I should be doing that last thing I saw online, that I should experiment with X technology. Imagine a garden with multiple stems, but no real tree. All the stems are competing against each other and consuming all energy, causing all of them to die before any leaf gets to feel the sun.

Digital Detox

As I was going through this mental investigation, I remembered the book Digital Minimalism and started reading immediately. Before New Year's Eve, my girlfriend and I decided to do a January Digital Detox. We both needed a break. We cut the noise. No TV, no Social Media, no news.

It lasted two weeks before we both slipped, for reasons outside the scope of this post. But it was enough time for us to notice the difference in our minds after two weeks of less input and noise.

Slowly, my old habits crept back in. Like a tick, I would grab my phone, unlock it, and open my browser. All in search of some "relevant and useful" information. Something interesting to read or think about. At first, every time I unlocked my phone, I heard a voice saying, 'Why am I doing this?' After a few days, that voice faded away.

The external noise silenced and numbed my headspace. Luckily, there was still a bit of energy left to realize what was happening.

Taking Control

Whenever I found something interesting, I'd throw it in a Read-It-Later App or bookmark it, hoping that I would do something with it later. What will I do with all those hoarded bookmarks and articles? Will I even read them? It is a mix of FOMO and some sort of collector's (if not accumulator's) syndrome.

The problem is, I never do anything with it. I'm replacing doing my own things with accumulating others' content. It's like watching others go to the gym while your muscles atrophy - except that it's your brain. You lose your brain power, you lose any momentum you had, you lose your creativity and your will to do anything on your own.

As Cory wrote in his post, "Headspace is Perishable". That's it. If you don't take care of it, it goes bad quickly.

For the weeks I didn't consume as much information, I've managed to cultivate my headspace. Once I started neglecting it, it started rotting again. Just like that piece of pizza forgotten in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

For me, It's time to start cleaning up. In the following days I'll be reviewing my triggers and my motivations. I'll limit the number of times I use my phone or browse the internet with no clear go in mind.

At this point, you should already know that most of the apps and platforms are designed to capture your attention¹, invade your headspace. Take control of your digital habits. Set boundaries, be intentional, and protect your mental space. Start small: Delete your social media apps, avoid screens in bed. Small steps like these made it easier to reclaim my focus and creativity. Be careful with what and who you let in.