Things to do to 'unrot' your brain

Do you feel like a man? (upbeat music) Hello beautiful beans and welcome to the podcast episode of today. This is kind of like a part two of the most recent episode that I did and it was all about cognitive fatigue or just fatigue in general and how that is a form of mental fatigue and how this concept of brain rot is also mental fatigue. So if you haven't yet listed to that episode and you want to kind of truly understand what is going on and how brain rot is mental fatigue and how mental fatigue kind of affects almost every area of your life. Then go check that out because it's going to give you some really good ideas and just a better understanding of where you're at and what you can do. And if that even is you or if what you're going through is something completely different to that. So that's a really good episode to give you some insight into your brain, your mind and your life. Anyway, this episode we're going to be talking about things you can do about your quote unquote brain rot and how you're going to and I say this with inverted commas unrot your brain. That's not a scientific term at all. And I'm going to explain why because I'll give you I'll explain all of that in a second. But before we do get into it, if you haven't already go check out my sub stack. It's notes on the mind dot sub stack dot com. There I have written work that I put out every week. There is also a paid tier. If you are part of that paid tier, you get extra paid content, different articles that I put out, different, you know, sub stack articles that I'm putting out. You also get access to the hotel mindset and memberships. So that's affirmations, challenges, fucking guided statements, meditations, soundscape, sleep stories, absolutely everything on there as part of the membership. OK, so that's all wrapped up into one membership. So anyone who joins my paid sub stack to get access and direct membership into a hotel mindset. So let's talk about what we're talking about in today's episode, which is the idea of unrotting your brain. Now, is I had a listener question recently. I might even play that right now if I remember to slot it in LOL. Hi, Lexus, long time listener from Sydney here. And I have an interesting brain question for you. I want to know how real is brain rot and is it reversible? I am what I would call a self-inflicted victim of brain rot. After living on my own for a very long time, I have become too reliant on my phone for not only entertainment, but also social connection. And I know it's not real connection. Basically, doom scrolling, spending too much time on social media, checking my phone way too many times a day, all of that good stuff that's not good at all. Now, I would like to know, I have recently gotten into the habit of reading before bed instead of scrolling. And my sleep quality has exponentially improved. I feel better in general. And I feel like my brain power is increasing, which is fantastic. And I'm going to keep going down this road. However, after years and years of over lines on my phone, I want to know if I've actually done permanent damage to my brain, can you heal brain rot, fragmented attention, brain fuzz, overstimulation? Can you heal that? That's what I'd like to know. Love you so much. Thank you. This idea of brain rot. What exactly is happening in your brain? Is it reversible? And is it like a kind of rotting? No, your brain is not rotting. Obviously, that's just a term because it's kind of what it feels. It feels like everything's falling apart. Our cognitive abilities just don't seem that sharp as what we know they're capable of being. We feel flat. We feel unmotivated. And the more we lean into behaviors that we feel are causing more of brain rot, like doom scrolling and rotting on the bed rot and all of that, it feels like it's just getting worse and worse. So the beauty of it is, is no, you're not causing technically, you're not causing permanent damage. But I want you to take that with a grain of salt. You're not causing permanent damage if it's something that you're willing to kind of stop and do something about intercept and change it. However, permanent damage is a really difficult term to talk about when we talk about the brain because the brain is very adaptable and very plastic. But I don't want you to think, oh, well, if I'm not causing permanent damage, then I can kind of do this for a while now and then I can reverse it. The issue is, when do we know when is the sweet spot to intercept and make a change in the brain? Yes, the brain is super dynamic. It is plastic. You can do a lot of self-directed neuroplasticity through behavior and thought patterns and CBT and all of that. But the problem is, at what point am I, am I behaviors so detrimental to me that I don't have it in me to want to change, that I bring on other conditions that make it harder and harder and harder for me to change, that it gets to a point where yes, technically, I could change my behavior, but I have zero drive left. I have zero motivation. Also, it's affecting every area in my life, all my relationships start to fail. I have no more creativity, no more drive. I'm suffering professionally. I'm suffering in my mind. At what point do you call something irreversible, if that makes sense? So while your brain isn't technically rotting, you aren't contributing to a buffer in your brain. And what I talk about a buffer is, when you're doing cognitive tasks, where you're always challenging your brain, you've got something called a cognitive reserve. You're really building out all these networks. You're keeping all these networks really rich in your brain because you're using them. And if you don't use it, you lose it. And because you're using your brain so much, even when you do have atrophy, whether it's through injury or whether it's through just cognitive decline through older age, you're going to have a bit of a reserve there because you spend all this time physically moving your body, paying attention to your relationships in your life, also paying attention to creative tasks, to focus tasks. You're working on every aspect of your brain, and you're focusing on growing, growing, growing, challenging, challenging, challenging, challenging yourself. Kind of look at it like a muscle, okay? If you have strong muscles and strong bones, and you're always working on your bone density and your muscle density and all of that, and you have an injury, there's going to be a level of atrophy. Your bone density might go down a little bit because you're not able to move. Your muscles are going to atrophy a little bit because you're not able to move. But because you've got that buffer of denser bones and more muscle, the atrophy is nowhere near as bad, and it's not going to affect you nowhere near as bad as if you were someone that was maybe really underweight with weak bones and weak muscles to start with who then has an injury. So you want to look at the brain in that sense. So when we talk about brain rot, it's hard to say, at what point it becomes irreversible, if that analogy that I just spoke about makes sense. So I don't say that to scare you, but I say that to say that, yes, the brain is very malleable and yes, there's so much that can be done, but I wouldn't take it for granted either. Because there's many things that affect us in our life and blows that come our way that we need to be able to deal with. If you are setting your brain up to be one that is resilient, adaptable, always can work well under pressure and does well with challenges and is cognitively capable, then if you are dealt a blow that you have no control over, your ability to deal with that is going to be a lot better. It would be a shame if you take your brain for granted and you're constantly engaging in things that cause brain rot and you're not doing things to try and pull yourself out of that. And then you are dealt with a blow, like maybe crazy grief, some mental health disorder or something that you've got to overcome and you don't feel like you have the cognitive resources to tackle it the way someone would if they were always working on their strengthening their brain. So I'm going to talk about this episode if you're not in that position of like, "I'm just going to let it get too far gone and I'm going to talk about things that you can really do to turn this brain rot around." And to feel like you are really in control cognitively of your brain, there's so many things that you can do and the beauty of it is every single thing that I mentioned here, I would say all of it, if not 99.9% is something that every single one if you can do with the resources that you have. I'm not trying to make something cost too much money or take way too much time. These are all things that if you want to, you can implement this into your day. They're trying to set it up in a way that you have no excuse. And I once heard this dentist talk about only floss around the teeth that you want to keep. And I was like, "That's such a good way of putting it because when people are like, "I don't floss this." And that's like, "That's fine. Just floss around the teeth that you want to keep." You obviously want to keep all your fucking teeth. So that's like, you have to floss every tooth. So I want to talk about looking at your brain is only work your brain if you want to keep it. And if you don't want to keep it, don't. It's like if he wanted to, he would. You've got to act that way when it comes to your brain, to your mental health, to your overall enjoyment of life. You have to do what you can with the things that are within your control because there is so much shit that's not within our control in our lives that we really need to harness what is and maximize every opportunity. Number one. So I've got 16 points here. I wouldn't be surprised if I then rattle off another fucking 50 after this. But number one. Find a time, ideally once a day, but if not once every second day, to eat in peace. Sounds so basic and so boring, but you will be amazed at what you can do by taking one thing like eating, something that we have to do. And it's normally quite enjoyable when we eat. And eat in peace. I just want you to focus on the food that you're eating. Just No TV, no podcast, no music, no one talking to you, just sit and eat in peace. If it's your lunch break, you can have half the lunch break to have your coffee and chat with someone, but maybe you take 15 minutes out or however long it takes you to eat your meal and just be. Maybe it's your breakfast. You wake up super early because you're going to do all these other stuff before you start work and that's your moment to eat in peace. Okay. I want you to have a task where you are focusing on every sensation, on the taste, on chewing, and just eat in peace. Okay. Slow consumption, paying attention. This is really, really good for the brain. These like tasks that don't require high focus where you're just allowing yourself to be. Number two, do a little brain training game for yourself at the start of every day. No mind, you can write all this down or you can just really listen to this episode. But number two, it's like do a little brain training game for yourself. So a good one, and this is really good to do with somebody else. It's good to do it with someone else because you're hitting the social aspect of things that I think is super important every day, like real social connection. And it's also really good because it's great for your working memory and your recall. So what you're going to do, you can do this on your own but maybe do it with your partner, your best friend or your sibling or whatever. But I want you to get a list of five words in the morning. You cannot write it down. So this is where maybe you call your, and it's obviously going to be said verbally. You can't be sent like written. It's going to be a verbal recall. So your partner can say five words. It could be like light, happiness, book, chair, tomato, light, happiness, book, chair, tomato, whatever. So there's five things, okay? And it could be a verb. It could be an object. It doesn't matter. Then you are going to just hear that list once and the goal is for you to then be able to repeat that list at the end of the day. Obviously no cheating. You can't write this down. You have to try and recall that in your mind. And it triggers multiple times throughout the day to be like, fuck what's that list? Okay, tomato, cherry. Then it starts to teach you how to try and make links between those five words in order for you to retain those five words by the end of the day. So there's going to be many times where you don't actually remember all five words and it's really not the end of the end of the world. It's just a good way to exercise the brain to get you focusing and working on your recall. This is something that we are getting worse and worse and worse at doing because things are too accessible. What was I doing last Sunday? I'm going to look at my phone and look at what photos I have of that day and it will trigger like it would be that hook. Okay, we lean way too heavily on hooks. What was I doing? May last year. If I don't have any heavy significant thing, I'm not going to sit and be like, recall, recall, recall, what could it be? What could it be? I'm straightaway going into asking someone else or photo albums or whatever. Every time we need to remember a fact about something or a movie before we sit and really work out brain, that's like, what could it be? What could it be? You know that feeling of effort in the brain? We're Googling it. We're going on chat, JVT and asking, it's fine to reach out for these resources, but I think it's good to before you reach for the resource, first, really try, really sit there and try to remember because that's a workout for your brain and you will get better and better and better, but you have to practice and at the start, you're going to feel like a failure, especially if you're someone that's like, no, I've got the worst recall. I've got the worst recall. Yeah, because you never leaning on it, but you can work that and it can get better. So try that game, do it with your partner, do it with a friend, call each other, it could be a five minute call that you have with your best friend. Like quick five words of the day, bang, bang, bang, bang, you do it to your friend and then at the end of the day, you can either text each other what the five words were as they fuck, I forgot I only remembered one or whatever. Number three, make all social interactions a phone free zone from now on forever, unless the phone is an active part of the interaction. So for example, if you're taking a photo together, if you're filming something together, if you're filming a story that you want to upload where you're both doing something, that's active interactions. If you're like, fuck, oh my god, I've got to show you this photo, it's the funny. Of course, you're pulling out your phone. So the phone absolutely can be a part of it. It is, if it's relevant to the interaction or the conversation, what I mean is don't ever again be that person who hangs out with a friend and all you do is sit together and start doing scrolling. Last me, you will regret that later on in life. It is not worth it. Don't do it. Just don't do it. You've got your alone time to do the scroll. If you need to do the scroll, we sometimes look at certain behaviors that we get into. And I'm like, this is actually unhinged that we will meet up with a friend when we complain that we don't have enough time with our friends, that we don't have enough friends that we want to make friends. And then we behave like these fucking idiots, doing scrolling when we're with our friends. Like what on what planet? Okay, so don't do that again. Yes, use your phone. Whip it out if it's relevant. If you want to film stories, if you want to film stuff together, if you want to show your friends and photos that you took, if you, whatever. Even on Instagram, you could be like, I saw the funniest video ever. Look, pull out the video, show them. Ha, ha, ha. Commentary. Put your phone away. You should never have your phone face up or down really when you're at a restaurant unless you're like, I'm sorry, I have to have my phone here because I'm expecting a call. In which case you flagged it and you've got it there so you can hear face down. Okay. So, hopefully you want to have your phone away when you were interacting with someone, when you're meeting up with a friend. You need to make these connections much deeper. And if you listened to the episode I did, I think it was actually in the last episode that I didn't try to use my record now. When I was talking about the brain drain effect and this idea of just having your phone even locked next to you, knowing that it's there, it's pulling your cognitive resources because part of our cognitive resources is this in it, it's trying to inhibit something. So if we're like, don't check our phone, don't check our phone, even if it's subconscious, it might not be a conscious thing at the top of your mind. It is using up part of your cognitive effort. It's draining you because you're really focusing on like, don't check your phone. It's there. Oh, could it be going off? It's actually pulling some attention away from you. Okay. So that's all yet. Number four, and this is a great one. And it doesn't, okay. So number four is carry a book around. Now you can make this a Kindle, but ideally I don't want it to be a book on your phone because it's too easy to switch tasks on your phone and you see notifications come up. Okay. So it's either a book or a Kindle, something that's just an e-reader, okay, or a book. And the moment you could scroll, I want you to pull out the book instead. If you're waiting for a bus, pull out the book. If you're on public transport, pull out the book. If you've arrived somewhere earlier than your friend has, pull out the book and start reading. You could also do this with a notebook if you prefer to take notes. If you're not the biggest reader, but you like to jot down ideas, great. Pull out a notebook or one of those digital notebook things, but don't, you can't be your phone. And I want you to start using that more and more and more. And this is where it gets really good. Like I said in the last one about make social interactions a phone free zone. You can't control your friends. You can't tell them to make it a phone free zone. You can suggest it. But ultimately, if they're going to be pulling out their phone, you're those friends that actually start scrolling while you're talking to them. And it's literally just the two of you and then they get that tune out and they start scrolling, which is in my opinion, wild. But when someone does that or when someone starts responding to a text, but then they get carried away and they're like, oh, yeah, and they keep doing that. This is the perfect time to pull out a physical book and start reading it. Nothing screams. I'm bored. If you're a company, I've got better things to do than pulling out a fucking novella and reading it at a table when someone's on their phone. If that doesn't shut them down and snap them into gear, nothing will. And then you got a good story to read anyway. So that to me, and I've done this before and people will be like, oh, sorry, sorry, I'm just, and I'm like, I'm actually interested in the story. If you're not interested in this conversation, I don't care. I've got a great story. It's a cliffhanger. Okay. So do that and use it and read. And then you don't even get annoyed when someone's doing that. You're like, well, I'm learning more about you than I need to. I don't care if you need to be on your phone. Your problem. I've got a great book. I'm going to finish this coffee and if you're going to be rude, bon voyage, bon fucking voyage. Number five, choose one article a day to read something educational. It could be an article on psychology today, which is a website that publishers really have great stuff about psychology. It could be like a journal article, which is a bit heavier reading in, you know, publishing a journal like science or neuron. It could be something about the political landscape. It could be something on how to improve your writing or how to plant a monsterra. And so it's not going to die. It doesn't matter. But I want you to read something that you are going to learn from any fucking genre that you want, an article. And if you're like, but I don't know where to start, there are so many places to start. I'm looking up blogs that you could follow on anything that interests you. You could want to know the ins and outs of rugby rules. Great. Read an article that teaches you more about that. It doesn't matter. One educational article a day. Number seven. I want you to engage more in cognitive friction. Okay. Now I did mention the five words a day thing that is a form of cognitive friction, but ideally I would like you to do it more than just that one time in the day. So the five words is kind of the basic version of it. But then more cognitive friction is things such as a crossword puzzle. That's a great cognitive friction and it's one that you could do alone. Crossword puzzles require you to really think sometimes abstract thoughts and sometimes if you do those what are those cryptic crosswords? That's hectic. I find those like sometimes really fun. Sometimes I just like I'm like, I'm so annoyed at this thing, but that's good cognitive friction, I guess. And then in any case it teaches you to use your recall. It's very good for people. problem solving and recall. So crosswords, beautiful gold staff, a cognitive friction. If you are not someone that loves crosswords, you could do this. You could play those games as apps that show you just the outline of a country, and you have to remember the name of the country. You've got to learn what does that outline mean for the country, or maybe it's just the flag, and you've got to know the name of the country that corresponds to the flag, or it's the flag, and you've got to know the name of the country and the capital. Shit like that is just really good for recall. So that's number seven, number eight. You guys are going to kill me for saying this, he's going to kill me, and even I falter on this often, but I have started putting it into practice. Not every time I'll be so honest with you, I don't do it every time, but when I do, I feel like offensively, like overly proud, and I'd be so annoying if you were in my presence, because I boast about it. But when you're going to hate me, when you're watching a show, watch one episode, do not binge the show. Now, what you could do is you could have five shows on rotation, but you, but the aim is to administer some level of self control. This is one of the things that we are challenged with. We, we, I feel in this day and age, we administer less and less and less and less self control, because things are too easy. Things are a little bit too accessible, but it doesn't make us happier. That's the problem. We think that instant and accessible means happier, and it doesn't always, sometimes, but a lot of the time it doesn't. So let's say you're watching a, like a show that you're like, this is fucking unbelievable. That was what was so good about the 90s and the early 2000s. When you had TV and that's the only form of kind of media that you had, and even when we did Brent videos at Blockbuster, it was like you get one, maybe three, but even then you've got those three for the whole week. And so you would, you wouldn't have to, you know, you'd have that thing and you're like, oh, I can't wait for the next one. I can't wait for the next one. And then maybe you'd, you'd troll through the channels and you'd just be more interested in things because you don't really have an option. So you would lean, you would like, lend your interest to watch something. If I'm at a hotel and there's no way you can link it to a streaming service, then I'm stuck with free to air TV. And I'm scrolling scrolling and before I know what I actually end up finding a show that I would have never landed on and never paid attention to. And then I'm actually really interested in, you could be a gardening show for fuck's sake and I'm, I kill all my plans, but I'll be like, oh, I'm actually, I'm invested because I gave it a chance. I gave it a chance and I spent some time and I'm now invested. So I think instead of thinking, what's, you know, I've got to watch this season and I've got to watch seven episodes in one night until it's one a.m. in the morning and now let's learn to get excited about another episode again. So watch one episode and you could have five shows on rotation when you watch one episode every night and you guys all like, fuck off Alexa, so watch four episodes in a.m. Well, try not to if possible. Maybe read a book instead, maybe go for a walk. I don't know, maybe do two episodes max if you normally do four. And it's that self control of I need to switch this off and I need to now watch either a different show or mainstream TV or do a different activity altogether. But you're just working on that self control aspect of, you know, what is the opposite of brain running? Because the typical brain, what would be like, I'm going to watch this series until it's finished and then I'm going to go to bed at some ungodly hour way later than I said I was going to go to bed. That's the typical thing and that contributes to brain rot. So this is just one of the things that we're undoing when it comes to brain rot. Just pretend that you're living in 1999 pretty much. Now, number nine, before using AI, try to do some of the task yourself, depending on what the kind of task is, but especially if it's one that requires the formation of an idea or a brainstorm. So what I would recommend, let's say you normally lean into AI for every idea generation. Before you do that, use your fucking brain and sit down and brainstorm at least 20 points, at least 20 points on something. So you go in bang, bang, bang, bang, and then you've done that, then you can grab those 20 points and chuck it into AI, charge every tea, chord, whatever and say feed me more ideas based on this. Okay. So that's, you've used your brain, you've tried to, and you'll realize that the more you do this, the quicker those 20 points are going to come to you. You'll be bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, generating ideas. And then yes, okay, you can lean in for assistance here and there. But I don't want you to substitute your own ability to generate novel ideas and creative ideas and give it to something else because that is a sure way of reducing your ability to produce that information on your own. Now, if it's something like I could not care less about this thing, I don't need to develop this girl, then who cares? Like if I'm trying to develop a website and I need code, do you think I'm going to go and loan code when I'm someone who has no interest in loaning code because it's not my forte? I can go into a chat to me like, give me whatever code for this. Fine. If I'm trying to simplify something for my finances straight to chat to a BT, like there's certain things that I'm like, I don't want to come across as an as a total, you know, again, I use chat to a BT often. And it's great. I will transcribe one of my episodes and be like, I wonder if I already said this point, bang, punch it into chat to a BT. Here's my transcribed episode. I want you to summarize this in 10 key points. And based on those 10 key and I say and only use my language, you're not at anything else into this bang. I've got my own 10 key points in my own language that I can summarize and be like, okay, now I can do a part two of this episode. So I use it as ethically as I possibly can as far as my own work. I try my best not to use it for idea generation. So think about what is it like? I don't want to replace something. I don't want to replace the skill with technology. Cool. Number 11. Have magnesium, creatine and electrolytes. Magnesium, creatine electrolytes. Try and have that every single day. It's brain food. And also when we talk about brain food, try and have, unless you have an allergy, try and have a balanced diet. We want carbohydrates, we want fats and we want proteins. So we need all the macronutrients for the brain to work properly. If you, if there is no reason for you to be on a diet that cuts out one of those macronutrients, don't, okay, because all those things are important for brain function. There is a reason they're called macronutrients, okay. Now with, with creatine, I haven't mentioned this earlier, but they say that five milligrams of creatine is kind of the maximum that you need. And once you hit that point muscle wise, you've kind of reached maximum absorption and any more than that is just going to be peed out. However, they say that five milligrams is what you need for muscles, but sometimes 10 or more is what you need to get actual cognitive benefits from that creatine. So if you're looking for more cognitive benefits, I would look into creatine. Magnesium is great, especially if you're like on the tail end of the day, is really helpful for good sleep and you need the good quality magnesium, not the oxide one. The oxide one is really good if you want to shit, okay. And electrolytes, of course, because they help you stay hydrated. So 11 movement in between tasks. One of the biggest predictors of all cause mortality is having a set entry lifestyle. It's obviously not good for your mental health either. So if you are someone that's going to be on your computer all day, then if you are like, oh, I need a rest from my work and you stay in your seat and then grab your phone and do a bit of scrolling just to tune out from that exercise to another. That's still going to contribute to brain frog fog. And I'm not going to be some like I'm not some other treasure. I know that we all want to scroll and sometimes you want to have a fuck off a lexas. I just want 15 minutes of scrolling. Fine, fine. But stand up and walk as you do it. We need to break up this set entry lifestyle and that's going to help ideally. Don't be doing scrolling the whole time. But if you're like, I need my job scroll. Fine, but don't sit in your fucking chair and work, work, work, work, work, pause, do you scroll, do you scroll, do you scroll, stop, work, work, work, work, and you're in your chair the whole time and the only time you got up is to eat, pee or drink a glass of water, not good enough. I want you walking. I want you to when we talk about those 10,000 steps a day, people are like, oh, that's a fucking myth because walking is such like a waste of time. I think, yeah, fine. That's fine. But what I like about the 10,000 steps a day is not I have to go on a walk to hit 10,000 steps. It's more so how much interim movement am I doing between jobs? Okay. I've clocked up on some days 12,000 steps in my own home. Because I've got kids. Okay. And so I've got back. I forgot this beer. I've got to wash that all day around the house. And I've done, I think my record in the home is 12,000 steps, which is fucking hectic. But anyway, that's what I want you to focus on breaking it up with movement, movement, movement, movement, movement. If you're at your desk and you're like, well, there's nowhere really to walk, stand up, do 20 squats, 20, fucking up and down, hold a plank, whatever. Just move your body, get your heart rate up. Number 12, boredom. I want you to factor in at least. I wrote 15 minutes here, but let's start with 10 if you need to. 10 to 15 minutes of boredom in the day. You do not need constant input into your brain. If you always have constant input into your brain, it's going to be harder and harder to generate quality output. We have to give ourselves time to create thoughts and ideas that aren't just our thinking about the past or thinking about the future and what needs to be done. Just give yourself time. If you are only this background player, I'm like, oh, I've got to do this thing. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, God. That was really embarrassing. What I did the other day, if you only have tiny pockets here and there, yeah, you're only going to think about the past and the future and maybe it's something that was good or something that you're stressing about. But if you give yourself boredom time, which is longer than those little flading moments of thoughts in there. Then you have to sit for your thoughts and then this is where daydreaming comes in. This is where you start imagining, well what if I did this thing and imagine if I did this and what would be this what if an imagine if is really good for the brain. You start getting quite creative with concepts and ideas and brainstorming. You can play games with yourself. So one of the dreams that I have, I'm not sure if I've shared this with you before. I think I have, but I really want to write, I've shared it definitely on my sub stack, but I really want to write a romcom as a book first and then I want like to turn into a romcom. That's my dream. And I think about character development, ideas and concepts for this romcom all the time. And it's been so good for idea generation that I've already reaped the benefits from it. Even if not whatever wants to pick up the book, it's been such a good brain exercise for me and really good for my creative outlet that it's when I'm having this quote unquote, boredom time, I'm really putting my mind to use when I'm thinking, but what could another same thing be? And then how could I have this character development and how could it's just great? And I only do that when I have my quote unquote boredom time. Number 13, of course, and this kind of slots in with number four. So that's kind of good. But it's read more read, read, read, read, read, read. One of the best things you can do to regulate your emotions, to regulate everything and to improve your intelligence and your vocabulary is to read. So do more of it. It could be fiction. It could be nonfiction. Just read even reading fiction. If you're like, I don't like nonfiction, I just want to read fiction. That still improves your intelligence. Read, read, read, read. Okay. And audiobooks are good, but they do say now the literature is a little bit split here. So if you're someone that's like, no, no, no, I have to have an audiobook. Then by all means have the audiobook that's fine. But there are some studies, although there's been some counter studies as well. I'll be honest with that. But there are some studies that do say that reading a book does use more areas of the brain, which is true. But does that actually benefit you from the actual retention of the book or not? Some studies say, yes, it does. Some studies say, it's kind of negligible, the difference. But they say that because the pacing is slower when reading, you are more likely to retain it. It requires more working memory. And you kind of have to decode that visual input that enters your brain into language and context, which is a bit easier than decoding audio input when it comes to the brain. Now personally, I feel that from like an anecdotal standpoint, I do feel that that's the case for me. If I'm reading a book, I retain way more than if I have an audiobook. The amount of times I have to go back on an audiobook because I'm too distracted. Whereas reading a book, I'm way more focused on the words. And it's, and if I miss something because I've like thought about something else, and you know, when you're reading with your eyes and not your brain, I know exactly what I missed. I'm not like, oh, do I go back 15? Was it 30 seconds? I don't know. I've been. So for me personally, that does ring true. But at the end of the day, if you just want an audiobook, that's great to have that number 14, engage in physically challenging tasks. This is not necessarily exercise, but something that your body must learn. So it could be dancing. It could be rock climbing. It could be yoga, juggling, juggling a soccer ball, playing a racket sport, just shooting hoops, anything. Something that you physically want to get good at. An instrument as well is good, but I think a bit more of the body ideally would be really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really good. And this is great to combat brain rot. So get into a physical sport. You don't ever have to get good at it. It's not about that. It's about challenging your brain. As long as it's semi-interoable and you feel the challenge, great. I don't care if you're shit every single day that you do that thing. It doesn't matter. Okay. Go and do jujitsu. Got whatever it is. This is so good. What do you call it? Pad work, like boxing, but just against pads. That stuff. So fucking good. So it can be a workout or not up to you. Second last one, number 15, get outside often throughout the day whenever possible. Even if you got a little balcony, get outside, get some fresh air, but ideally go walk around the block. If you've got a dog perfect, excuse, go take that dog out in out in out, you know, but this is very good if you get outside, natural sunlight into the eyes is so good. It's good for your mood. It's good for your motivation. It's good for cortisol to get back like cortisol high in the morning. It's good for you. Just feel better. It's just great for your mental health. Literally, I've spoken about it so many times about seasonal effective disorder in places where it's like a dark and gloomy. So if you have sunlight or even if it's overcast, getting outside is going to bring that sunlight into your eyes. It's going to really help set that's getting rhythm. It's just good for you and very good for your brain. And lastly, number 16, set a time limit on passive consumption of social media and what does that time limit look like? And I think a good idea of what that time limits should look like. It's obviously dependent on each individual. Look at how much you're spending now and think what's a reasonable reduction that I could make. So I feel like it's achievable. So if you're someone that like and you can do this, go on Instagram, for example, and you can actually look at how much time you spend spend on the app. Let's say you spend and this is going to sound dramatic, but it's actually quite common. Let's say you spend four hours a day. And I'm not talking if you work on like social media, whatever, and you have to be uploading stuff constantly. Obviously, it's going to be skewed if that's your job. But say you spend four hours a day on Instagram specifically. What do you think is a reasonable reduction of that time? Would it be 50% reduction? Are you horrified by four hours and you think, oh my god, two hours is more than enough? And you're like, no, that's fucked. I should, there should never be a time when I'm spending more than one hour. Like whatever it is, but you have to make a reasonable reduction and then stick to that and how are you going to stick to it. So one thing that I did for myself and now I don't really need to do it because I think it's become now automatic. And I'm also just less inclined to scroll as much as I used to because of set days parameters. And now it's like, I'm just over it. I'm over scrolling a little bit. It's almost like, I don't know. It's good though. But I would set like 20 minutes and mind you, I did have like exceptions to the rule. So I've just passive consumption, which is just scrolling. I would allow 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon because I had a time limit and it was only to passively scroll. I was like, oh, I don't really need to passively scroll because I was aware that that's what I was going to do. So I was like, well, do I need to scroll right now? Not really. Not really. No. But what I do say is if I want to respond to a DM, that doesn't count. I can go in a respond. If I want to upload a story, that also doesn't count. And if I want to watch my friend's stories, that doesn't count as long as I don't go from stories into doom scrolling as well. So passive consumption is limited. So for me, it was 20 minutes and morning, 20 minutes in the evening. Now at the moment, I'm probably doing 20 minutes in one a day if that. So yeah, that's, that's it. Guys, those are the 16 things that you can do to unrot your brain. So I'll go over them very quickly again. Number one, even piece once a day, maybe once every two days. Number two, do a little brain training game where you find the list of five words that maybe your partner or a friend gives you every day and you recall that at the end of the day, you are not allowed to write them down at any point. Number three, make all social interactions a phone free zone unless the phone is an active part of that interaction. Number four, carry a book around or a Kindle. And every time you could scroll, I want you to read that book instead. Number five, choose one article a day, something educational in anything that interests you. Number six, oh my god, I didn't do number six. Well, I'm going to tell you right now, you want to do a top and tail of the day. I missed out number six altogether. And what your top and tail of the day is you want to have your first hour of the day and the last hour of the day sacred as far as distractions go. You are giving your life your full attention, whether it's interacting with your family members, making breakfast, washing your face, we're not checking what other people are doing with their lives on social media. We're done. This is the top and tail of the day is sacred. Number seven, cognitive friction games. So this is where I like crosswords or those flag games that I was referring to. Number eight, when you're watching a show, watch one episode, even if you have to watch multiple series at a time, just one episode at a time. So you administer a bit of self control. Number nine, before using AI to do some tasks that you don't want to completely lose the ability of doing, make sure that you generate at least 20 dot points first before you go in for that assistance in generating more creative ideas. Number 10, have magnesium, creatine and electrolytes. Number 11, move in between your tasks. Number 12, allow for 15 minutes of boredom every day with no entertainment input. Number 13, read, read, read, read, read, ideally a physical book. But if you prefer audio books, who might have stopped you? Number 14, engage in physically challenging tasks where your body has to learn how to do something and it doesn't have to be a workout. You could be like juggling or whatever. Number 15, get outside often, get some fresh air, get some sunlight. And number 16, set a daily time limit on passive consumption. And what would that look like? And how does it compare to your current time usage on social media? So try one, try them all. And if you listen to this podcast on Spotify comment on which ones you're like, that's the one that I need to do. Or I'm going to do all of them. Or I'm maybe after a week of doing it, come back to this episode and say, this is, I did the challenge because my challenges do them all for a week. So I did the challenge. And after one week, this is what I noticed. This is what changed for me. This is what I felt a bit better in this is whatever, what I learned about myself, okay? So that's what you're going to do. Guys, thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. As always, remember be kind to yourself, be kind to your brain. Don't take shit from anyone and especially don't take shit from yourself. Don't care.