My Anti-Brainrot Strategy

Do things that are hard! Even if you suck... especially if you suck.

Have you heard of brainrot? It’s being used increasingly to describe the effect on our brain of almost constantly consuming (or being barraged by) low quality, low effort content. Especially if it’s fast paced. The algorithm contributes greatly to brainrot. 

Picking up your phone right after waking up: brainrot. Scrolling mindlessly for hours: brainrot. Children on iPads watching Cocomelon at the dinner table so that their parents don’t need to pay attention to them: brainrot.

I think you get the picture. So what’s good for our brain? How do we combat the ubiquitous bombardment of the algorithm and its consequences on our brain? Here’s my strategy:

• Eat well

  • Eat plenty of whole plant foods. Legumes, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices. Whole plant foods are much lower energy density (harder to overeat) and contain phytonutrients and fiber, both of which are incredibly important for the health of our cognitive health.

  • Color is key. Purple/blue, green, yellow, red/orange, white. 

  • Don’t overeat. Try to stay in energy balance, chronic overeating leads to insulin resistance in the brain which is linked to neurodegenerative diseases and cognitive impairment. Do your best to stay close to your energy balance. Establish a baseline for how many calories you need to maintain every day and only adjust within a small margin. If you want to lose weight, subtract 100-500 calories from this (depending on how much you have to lose). If you want to gain weight, add 100-200 calories a day to this. It doesn’t have to be perfect but do your best to stay in the range for your goals!

  • Eat less ultra processed hyper-palatable foods which are linked to overeating.

• Sleep well

  • Keep good sleep hygiene, which means go to bed and wake up at around the same time every day.

  • Put your phone in another room. Don't keep it on your nightstand, don't keep it on the floor by your bed, don't keep it in your bedroom. Find somewhere out of sight and out of mind and keep it there.

  • Have a sleep ritual before you go to sleep. Turn off electronics, meditate, read, pray, stretch, have a cup of herbal tea; whatever you like to do to relax, that’s a good sleep ritual.

  • Keep your sleep environment cool, dark, and quiet. I keep my bedroom in the 60s, I use a sleep mask, and I always have white noise going to drown out acute noises from the street or inside the house that might wake me up.

  • Move your body during the day and try to get outside and in the sun (regardless of weather) for at least a half hour every day. This’ll help your circadian rhythm.

• Do things that are hard

  • Learn an instrument

    • Buy instruments and keep them out and accessible so they’re impossible to avoid messing with for fun. I keep a guitar, a violin, and a keyboard visible and easily accessible in the common areas of my house at basically all times. I suck at violin and piano but I don’t care, they’re really fun to play. If you don’t have access to an instrument then just sing. It doesn’t matter if you suck! Put on a good song and just go for it. Lots of singers suck at singing and they didn’t let that stop them.

  • Learn a language

    • Ditch Duolingo (which doesn't work and just gamifies your attention rather than teaching you a language) and start watching, listening, and reading content in other languages. We have easy access to this stuff for the first time in human history, take advantage of it. I basically went from zero to decent at Spanish in like a year and a half just by listening and watching Spanish content. Now I just prefer to listen to Spanish podcasts and watch YouTube videos in Spanish. Shoutout Robotitus Noticias.

• Read physical books

  • Read fiction, nonfiction, whatever the hell you want, but engage with a physical book. Don’t read on your phone or a tablet. Even reading braindead romantasy in physical form is better than engaging with your phone. Reading a book is like having a conversation with yourself and the conversation is about whatever is happening in the book, even if the book totally sucks you’ll be having a conversation with yourself about how the book sucks! Plus you’re massively developing your attention span by doing some longform reading. Great job!

• Move your body

  • Lift weights, go for a run, go for a walk, play tennis, soccer, learn to juggle, dance like a dummy, whatever! Just start moving your body.

  • Basically I feel my absolute best when I’m running on a trail in the forest. There’s no better feeling, but hitting some nasty weights on a bulgarian split squat feels pretty good too.

• Do something creative or expressive

  • Write, draw, paint, journal, sketch, sew, knit. You don’t have to be good, you just have to do it. Give it a shot, go buy a notebook or sketchbook and have at it, start journaling or sketching. I promise it feels good. I like to answer these questions in my journal almost every day, “What gave me energy today? What drained me? What did I learn? What am I excited about?”

• Meditate

  • Whenever I’m feeling seriously weird or burnt out because I’ve been on my phone or just because I’ve been a bit of a doomer I try to ask myself, “What is here? What is now?” That just immediately drops me into the present moment. A lot of the stuff on this list is really just a way to get you to cultivate presence, and meditation is no different. We’re all so amazingly un-present these days, our attention is destroyed, we’re disconnected from our own bodily experience, etc etc. Just take 5 minutes and ask yourself those questions, “What is here? What is now?” Notice what you see, what you hear, what you feel, notice the colors and the sounds, notice the feeling of your feet on the ground or your hands in your lap. Just notice. Dropping into Presence like that is a huge relief for me from the onslaught of mindlessness. I’m a big fan of a free meditation app called Healthy Minds, give it a shot if you a) don’t think you can meditate or b) want a curriculum to follow.

• Do something social

  • Call your friends, play a board game, join a club. Go be with people in real life. That’s the whole piece of advice. Just go be with people. It’s not a secret that we’re social animals and we need each other. Easy right? Just hang out with people. If you don’t have anyone to hang out with then call someone. If you don’t have anyone to call then just get out there into the world and interact with people.

• Make digital fasting a part of your life

  • Leave your phone in the other room for as much as you can. Put blockers on it. Delete social media apps. Create as much friction as you can with yourself and technology. I know, I know. They’ve built this world in which it’s impossible to be totally without, but just do your best to reduce your usage as much as possible. I know that you already know it’s good for you, so figure out how you can go without. Figure out the things that are stopping you from using it less then change those things. Maybe you’re more likely to use your phone if you have it in your pocket all the time. Okay, keep it in your backpack. Maybe you’re less likely to doomscroll if you install an app that turns off social media apps after 8:00pm. I use an app called ScreenZen that limits my time on certain apps and makes me pause for 20 seconds when I open them. Whatever the case, do what works for you to spend less time looking at a screen.

• Conclusion

  • Okay, that’s my anti-brainrot strategy. If you have a massive case of brainrot and you want to pull out the big guns to really give yourself a huge dose of presence then here’s what I recommend: 

    • 1) Go outside 

    • 2) Bring friends 

    • 3) Leave your phone at home or in your car or just out of reach/sight somewhere

    • 4) Move your body

  • If you do all four of those things at the same time it’s going to be awesome, you’re going to feel awesome, you’re going to wonder why the hell you ever spend any time doing other stuff. And this isn’t that hard to do, go on a hike with your friends and leave your phone at home. Boom, there ya go. Instant relief from brainrot. 

    
    
    
    

    May you be happy, may you be healthy, and may your brain be at peace. Peace!