Unrot Your Brain: A Series
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Because brain rot is curable, start with noticing more.
Humans are creatures of habit. Once a bad habit forms, unlearning it becomes difficult. These habits shape how we move through daily life, often without noticing it.
What is The Art of Noticing?
Actually paying attention. Instead of letting your brain rot by scrolling through Tik Tok or refreshing Instagram, try to train yourself to look up and re-engage with the real world. Practicing noticing can actually help rewire the brain. Constant distraction eats away at focus and can cause anxiety. Practicing awareness can lower stress, spark creativity, and boost memory. Psychologists even say that mindfulness habits like this may strengthen attention span which is the direct opposite of what doomscrolling does.
You probably walk to class following the same path, headphones blasting, eyes glued to your phones, half-aware that you just crossed the street. By the time you get to where you are going, it feels like you have teleported because you do not actually remember the walk. You are tuned out from the world around you. You doomscroll on our phones, becoming desensitized to the life happening outside of them. Phones make it easy to just live on autopilot. This vicious habit can be broken, you may simply just need to notice more.
How to Start
Starting is simple. You do not need to completely change your lifestyle. Just incorporate smaller habits and overtime they will shift the default autopilot setting to being more present. Here are some that may help:
Take a walk without your phone. PUT IT AWAY. Even if it is across campus or to your next class, give your attention to your surroundings. You will be surprised with how much you miss out on everyday.
Choose a sense. It can be sight, sound, smell. Pay attention only to that sense for just a few moments. What do you pay attention to that you normally would not? What new sounds do you hear when you are not blocking them out? Maybe the air smells different, or you come across new people you have never encountered before and give them a smile.
Look for patterns. The way people gesture when they talk, the architecture of the brick building you pass everyday without acknowledging, the clouds in the sky that make familiar images. We are wired to recognize patterns and recognizing them helps build attention span.
Make a note of everything. Whether it is a mental note, on paper, or a photo. Actively engaging with the real world reinforces awareness. Even jotting down three things you observed that day can shift your brain out of autopilot.
Incorporating these practices into your new routine should not be about adding more onto your plate, it should be about waking up to the world around you.
Noticing does not reject technology or romanticize some “simpler time,” when it did not
exist. Noticing is about reclaiming your life from numbness. Everytime you notice something real like the kindness of a stranger, the angle of the light at sunset, the business of a coffee shop, you notice life happening. It reminds you that reality is not something to skim past while waiting for the next notification. When you slow down enough to look, the world will reveal itself to you. It is richer and more beautiful than a session of doomscrolling. The art of noticing is not just a quick fix to an autopilot way of living, it is a practiced habit to live a more fulfilling life.