Bettering Me

Tag: downstate

  • Information Overload Produces Real Fatigue – Not Because Thinking Is Tiring, but Because Not Deciding Is

    Written by

    Unpaid Intern

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    The standard explanation for information fatigue is cognitive overload. The idea is that your brain has a limited processing capacity and that excessive information exhausts it. That explanation sounds intuitive, but it misses the actual mechanism. The fatigue from information overload is not primarily cognitive – it is decisional.

    Roy Baumeister’s research on ego depletion established that making choices depletes self-regulatory resources more than performing cognitively demanding tasks without a choice component. [1] In the classic paradigm, participants who made a series of choices showed significantly reduced persistence on subsequent tasks compared to participants who performed equally demanding tasks without making choices. The implication is that the act of deciding – not the act of processing – is what taxes the system.

    A follow-up study by Vohs and colleagues sharpened this distinction. Participants who made repeated choices in a consumer context showed reduced self-control and physical stamina compared to participants who merely considered the same options without choosing. [2] The cognitive exposure was identical. The only difference was the decision. And that difference produced measurable depletion.

    This distinction explains why modern information work produces fatigue that feels disproportionate to the mental effort involved. Reading a dense document is cognitively demanding but rarely fatiguing in the same way that triaging fifty emails is. The document requires processing – sustained attention, comprehension, and integration. The emails require decisions – respond, archive, delegate, flag, delete. Each email is a micro-decision, and micro-decisions accumulate into macro-fatigue. By the end of an hour of inbox triage, you have made dozens of low-stakes decisions that have consumed the same resource pool used for high-stakes decisions later in the day.

    The mechanism has a somatic dimension that is often overlooked. Indecision and micro-decision accumulation produce measurable physical tension. The furrowed brow, the held breath, the forward-leaning posture – these are the somatic correlates of being in a perpetual evaluation state without committing to action. The body registers indecision as incomplete motor output, and incomplete motor output maintains sympathetic activation. [3] The fatigue you feel after a day of information triage is not just mental. It is the accumulated tension of dozens of decisions that were evaluated but never closed.

    The practical fix is not more recovery time. It is reducing the number of decisions that require evaluation in the first place.

    The highest-leverage interventions are structural rather than behavioral. Close channels that produce decisions without producing value. Mute notifications that interrupt flow without urgency. Define information intake windows – two fifteen-minute blocks per day for inbox processing rather than continuous triage. Each of these moves the decision burden from real-time to batched, and batching reduces the fixed cost of task-switching. [4] The fatigue lifts not because you rested, but because you plugged the leak.

    The “default to no” heuristic is the simplest operational tool. Most incoming information does not require a response. Treating it as though it does is the primary source of decisional fatigue. If every email is a decision, every email is cost. Defaulting to “no action required unless this meets explicit criteria” converts a continuous stream of decisions into a small number of deliberate ones. It is not rude. It is resource management.

    There is an important counterpoint. The ego depletion literature has faced replication challenges. A 2017 study by Lurquin and Miyake failed to replicate the classic choice-depletion effect, suggesting the phenomenon may be smaller or more context-dependent than originally claimed. [4] The replication debate is ongoing, and the effect size is probably smaller than Baumeister’s early work suggested. However, even if the effect is modest, the practical direction is consistent: decisions cost something, and reducing unnecessary decisions preserves resources. The mechanism may be smaller than advertised, but the intervention still works.

    The bottom line is that the fatigue you attribute to “too much information” is often “too many decisions about that information.” The fix is not better information management. It is fewer decisions. Stop triaging. Start batching. Default to no. The tiredness will tell you which approach was right.

    Disclaimer: This post is for inspiration and education, not medical advice. Everyone’s body is different, so please check with your doctor before changing your diet, exercise, or lifestyle routine. By using these tips, you agree to do so at your own risk.

    References

    [1] Baumeister RF, et al. Ego depletion: is the active self a limited resource? *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 1998. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1252

    [2] Vohs KD, et al. Making choices impairs subsequent self-control: a limited-resource account. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 2008. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012633

    [3] Hagger MS, et al. Ego depletion and the strength model of self-control: a meta-analysis. *Psychological Bulletin*, 2010. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0019486

    [4] Lurquin JH, Miyake A. A meta-analysis of the choice-depletion effect. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 2017. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000071

  • Calling Rest a Biohack Misses the Point – Rest Is the Default State That Hacks Are Trying to Restore

    Written by

    Unpaid Intern

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    The word “biohack” applied to rest reveals how far the wellness culture has drifted from physiology. Rest is not an intervention. It is the default state of a human nervous system that is not being actively disrupted. The “hack” is not adding something that produces rest. It is removing what prevents rest from happening on its own.

    This reframing matters because the additive approach to rest – buy the supplement, use the device, follow the protocol – keeps you in an active, optimizing relationship with rest, which is the opposite of what rest requires. Rest is not something you do. It is something you allow.

    The evidence for the subtractive approach is scattered across separate literatures that rarely get connected. Light exposure after sunset suppresses melatonin production, delaying sleep onset and reducing sleep quality. [1] Late-night eating disrupts the body temperature regulation that supports deep sleep. [2] Alcohol consumption before bed fragments sleep architecture, reducing slow-wave and REM sleep. [3] Cognitive load in the hour before bed elevates cortisol, which directly antagonizes the sleep-initiation system. [4] Each of these is a blocker, not a missing ingredient. Remove the blocker, and rest returns.

    The most common counterargument is that some people genuinely need help sleeping and that supplements or devices provide that help. That is true for clinical populations – chronic insomnia, shift workers, people with specific medical conditions. For those groups, melatonin, magnesium, or even prescription sleep aids are appropriate tools. But the person who falls asleep easily on vacation and struggles at home does not have a sleep disorder. They have an environment that is preventing rest.

    The data on sleep disruptions supports the environmental theory. Room light before bedtime suppresses melatonin by about 50% compared to dim light. [1] Alcohol consumption before bed, even at moderate levels, measurably reduces time spent in restorative sleep stages. [3] Using a phone or tablet in bed delays sleep onset by an average of 30 minutes per hour of use. [5] The cumulative effect is that the typical evening routine – bright lights, snacks, alcohol, screens – creates a physiological state that is incompatible with the rest people are trying to achieve with supplements.

    The practical implication is uncomfortable for people who want protocols: the most effective intervention is stopping. Stop using screens 90 minutes before bed. Stop eating within three hours of bedtime. Stop drinking alcohol within four hours of sleep. Stop working or engaging in emotionally demanding content within two hours of sleep. Each of these is a removal of a barrier, not an addition of a tool.

    The “subtraction” approach is harder to sell than the “addition” approach because it requires discipline that is invisible. Buying a supplement feels like progress. Turning off the TV early feels like deprivation. But the physiological logic is clear: if your evening environment is configured to block rest, the most efficient intervention is to reconfigure the environment. No supplement can overcome a brightly lit room, a full stomach, and an active mind.

    A useful heuristic: if you slept well on your last vacation without any supplements or devices, the problem is not your ability to rest. It is your home environment. Replicate the vacation conditions – darkness, cool temperature, full stomach from hours ago, no screens – and see whether rest returns. If it does, you do not need a protocol. You need to remove the obstacles.

    Disclaimer: This post is for inspiration and education, not medical advice. Everyone’s body is different, so please check with your doctor before changing your diet, exercise, or lifestyle routine. By using these tips, you agree to do so at your own risk.

    References

    [1] Gooley JJ, et al. Exposure to room light before bedtime suppresses melatonin onset and shortens melatonin duration in humans. *Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism*, 2011. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2010-2098

    [2] Crispim CA, et al. The influence of sleep and sleep loss upon food intake and metabolism. *Sleep Science*, 2011. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.slsci.2011.10.001

    [3] Ebrahim IO, et al. Alcohol and sleep I: effects on normal sleep. *Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research*, 2013. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.12054

    [4] Harvey AG, et al. Pre-sleep cognitive arousal: a systematic review. *Clinical Psychology Review*, 2002. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/s0272-7358(01)00117-4

    [5] Chang AM, et al. Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*, 2015. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418490112

  • “Soft Wellness” Sounds Passive. It Requires Stopping, Not Doing

    Written by

    Unpaid Intern

    –

    The phrase “soft wellness” entered the cultural conversation in 2024 and was immediately misunderstood. Critics dismissed it as laziness dressed in wellness language. Supporters embraced it as permission to do less. Both readings miss the point. Soft wellness is not easier than biohacking. It is harder, because it requires discipline that is invisible: the discipline of not acting.

    Biohacking is additive. Buy the supplement. Follow the protocol. Track the metric. Get the dopamine hit of seeing the number improve. Each addition produces a sense of forward motion, even if the direction is wrong. The biohacker is never inactive – there is always another variable to optimize, another stack to refine, another wearable to deploy. The activity itself feels like progress.

    Soft wellness is subtractive. Not buying the supplement. Not optimizing the protocol. Not adding another variable. The discipline is invisible because the action is the absence of action. No one applauds you for not buying something. No metric tracks the supplement you did not purchase. The progress is not just slow – it is undetectable.

    This matters because the nervous system does not need more inputs to regulate. It needs fewer inputs that activate it. Allostatic load theory describes the cumulative cost of repeated activation and the metabolic wear and tear that results from chronic stress responding. [1] Each biohack, each notification, each optimization is an input. Most of these inputs activate rather than calm. The nervous system reclaims its equilibrium not through addition but through removal – the absence of the inputs that were keeping it activated.

    The hardest thing for a high-performer to do is nothing. The productivity mindset treats inactivity as waste. But the nervous system does not optimize on a productivity schedule. Rest is productive at the physiological level even when it looks unproductive at the behavioral level. During true rest – not scrolling, not “active recovery,” but the absence of goal-directed behavior – the parasympathetic system takes over, cellular repair accelerates, and metabolic byproducts are cleared. [2] None of this happens while you are optimizing.

    The soft wellness revolution is about the uncomfortable discipline of stopping. Stopping the habit of reaching for your phone. Stopping the impulse to optimize your morning routine. Stopping the late-night research session on the latest longevity protocol. Each stop is a decision against action, and each decision against action is harder than the corresponding decision for action because it produces no visible outcome.

    A practical test: pick one wellness intervention you are currently doing – tracking, supplementing, optimizing – and stop it for two weeks. The intervention that you are afraid to drop is the one you are using as a proxy for control. The probability that dropping it will produce harm is near zero. The probability that it will reveal how much mental overhead the intervention was consuming is high. [OPINION]

    The objection is that some interventions are genuinely beneficial. That is true. The goal is not to eliminate all wellness practices. It is to distinguish between practices that are earning their keep and practices that are maintained by the addiction to activity. If tracking your sleep makes you sleep better, keep it. If tracking your sleep makes you anxious about numbers you cannot change, drop it. The test is not efficacy in the abstract – it is whether the practice reduces or increases your baseline activation.

    Soft wellness, properly understood, is not about doing nothing. It is about doing less of what does not need doing. That requires more discipline than doing more ever did.

    The cultural pressure to optimize creates a specific kind of blindness: the belief that if you are not actively intervening, you are falling behind. This is the core insight that soft wellness challenges. The nervous system does not operate on a competitive optimization schedule. It operates on a homeostatic one. It seeks balance, not peak performance. The interventions that feel most productive are often the ones that keep the system from finding its own equilibrium. The discipline of stopping is harder than the discipline of adding, but it is the discipline that rest leads to.

    Disclaimer: This post is for inspiration and education, not medical advice. Everyone’s body is different, so please check with your doctor before changing your diet, exercise, or lifestyle routine. By using these tips, you agree to do so at your own risk.

    References

    [1] McEwen BS. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. *New England Journal of Medicine*, 1998. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199801153380307

    [2] Vyazovskiy VV, et al. Local sleep in awake rats. *Nature*, 2011. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10009