7 Ways To Un-Rot Your Brain

Why your motivation, creativity, and intuition are on the line

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Listen up, Ballerina Cappucina, you’re too online.

But you already know this! That’s why you clicked on this article.

You wake up: screen.
You go to work: screen.
You unwind after work by watching a big screen and scrolling a tiny screen.

You know it’s a problem. You know it’s making you feel like a little rat. But you can’t figure out how to fix it!!!

I first noticed the problem with my phone back in 2018.

Instagram stories had just come out, and I noticed that picking up my phone to watch Stories was way more interesting than my boring desk job. I mean, of course it was— but it was all starting to feel compulsive.

I actually came across an Instagram story from 2018 of little old me talking about how much it sucks to feel like you are addicted to your phone. So… I have been thinking about brain rot since before we had a name for it, long before we could see any of the decay.

I see a lot of gorgeous little creative souls who are rotting away in front of their phones, and I want you to want better for yourself.

The seven practices I’m going to share today have helped me un-rot my brain, restore my creativity, motivation, focus, and reconnect with my intuition — because that's really what's at stake when you are rotting away in front of your phone.

I think it's helpful to acknowledge what all of the doom scrolling and brain rotting is taking away from us:

🐑 It’s putting you in a dissociative state, freeze mode, making you apathetic about the world and your life

🫗 It’s destroying your intrinsic motivation, robbing you of your creativity, and severing your connection to your intuition

🚬 It’s spiking your cortisol levels, making you feel stressed, hopeless, anxious, and disconnected

⛓️‍💥 It’s giving you a counterfeit sense of connection with people that will never quite replace power of face-to-face interactions and relationships

But if all of this is true, then why do we keep doing it? Can't we just stop?

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. We're addicted, and as the saying goes, the system is doing exactly what the system was designed to do. And (not to go all tinfoil hat on you, but) that's how they want it.

Zucky and Jeffy and all the other billionaires make more money when you are hooked and apathetic about the fact that your screen time keeps climbing higher and higher.

Your brain rot isn't just this silly little thing that’s happening— it's actually impacting the rest of your life.

But rather than go down that esoteric rabbit hole, I think it's far more effective to focus on the things that you can control, most notably:

How do you want to feel about your life?

That was the big turning point for me: realizing that nobody is coming to save me from that hollow, nauseous shame spiral of spending too much time on my phone.

All of that screen time was an attempt to meet a need like connection, meaning, a sense of purpose or contribution in life, but that hit never lands.

You're just constantly edging. You're almost there, but you're never gonna quite get to that feeling you're after.

That's the real cost.

It's not just the time. It's not just the fracturing of your attention. It's your life on the line. Imagine spending your one wild and precious life scrolling on your phone.

We are missing out on the real, sensory experiences of life because we're overstimulated and addicted to our screens.

As far as I know, we have one chance to drink up all that this world has to offer, and I am not about to lose mine to a glowing box in my hand.

You deserve a big, sexy life and doom scrolling is not how you're gonna get it.

Here are 7 ways to un-rot your brain…

📱 Put a screentime widget on your Home Screen

I did this a few years ago and it made me really uncomfortable to look at that number, because my screen time was 9+ hours a day. That made me feel really ick about myself. But you can't change something that you're unwilling to look at. And, you can’t have self control without self-compassion.

I now know that if my screen time goes over five or six hours a day, I'm going to be overstimulated. I am going to need time to recover simply because I have spent too much time on my phone.

This is gonna be different for everybody depending on how much time you spend on your phone for work. As a content creator, I have to be on my phone a lot, but I know that 5+ hours a day puts me into the point of diminishing returns, and I know it's time to create some distance between me and my phone.

🪷 Replace your morning scroll with Sit and Stare time

Sit and Stare time in the morning has revolutionized my relationship with my motivation, intuition, and the way that I spend my time in the morning.

Rather than opening my phone and scrolling on Instagram first thing int the morning, I get up, I make my coffee, and then I go sit on my sofa and just hang out while my phone is in another room.

I’ll think about my day, my mood, my goals, and let my brain make the connections that it can't make when I'm distracting myself with my phone. Sometimes I’ll read or journal, but anything other than injecting cortisol into my system first thing in the morning automatically puts me in a better head space to start the day.

🌿 Take headphone free walks

Taking walks, getting out of the house and not looking at a screen is one of the best tips I can give you.

If you are not in the habit of taking walks, you might need some music or a podcast to get you motivated. I certainly do sometimes! But at some point, I think you should try just raw dogging a walk.

I take headphone free walks every day, and they are where I get my best ideas.

They help me solve problems that I can't figure out while I'm sitting at my desk. I get to interact casually with the people in my neighborhood. I actually notice the flowers that are blooming and the dogs that I'm walking past. It's like refilling the sensory tank of your life.

I think that headphone free walks are one of the easiest and most underrated ways to start restoring your motivation and sense of connection to yourself.

🛁 Take silent showers

Showers have a reputation for delivering some of the best ideas you’ve ever had, because that's one of the few places that you don't have much stimulation.

Or, at least in the past they were. Now you can take your Bluetooth speaker into the shower with you.

And, I get it! It's fun to listen to something in the shower! But, taking quiet showers is a really great way to downshift your overstimulation, and reconnect with the sensory pleasure of feeling the warm water on your skin, actually feeling yourself lathering the shampoo in your hair.

If you start doing this with your showers, I promise you, you will get your next great idea (if you don't already get it on the headphone free walk).

🪁 Get some screen-free hobbies

This one seems so obvious, and yet when it comes to identifying a screen-free hobby, a lot of our minds will go blank, because screens have been a key part of our unwinding for so long.

But you need hobbies that don't have screens attached to them: reading, studying French in a workbook, playing Scrabble, doing a cross stitch, doing a puzzle. Start knitting or crocheting. Go for a hike. Join a community kickball team.

Think about what would be really fun for you, and don't just think about it, get off your butt and go do it.

📚 Prioritize downtime away from your phone

Find a place where you can leave your phone in another room and go do something else. “Out of sight, out of mind,” works really well for your phone.

If you're trying to read more, you will make it infinitely harder for yourself by keeping your phone next to you, because you will end up scrolling on your phone instead.

Try leaving it in another room or somewhere where there's a physical distance between you and the thing.

When I'm actually trying to get deep work done at my desk, I slide my phone behind my laptop where I can't even see it, and suddenly it's much easier to slip into focus.

Create a designated space to hide or store your phone when you actually wanna be more present or more connected with the thing that you're trying to do.

🎟️ Take a Tech Rest every week

A few years ago, I started deleting social media off my phone every single weekend. On Friday night, I would take it off my phone and then download it again the next week.

This is undoubtedly one of the most important things that I've done to start un-rotting my brain. When I'm not distracted by Instagram or TikTok on the weekend, I can actually get a lot done. I clean my apartment. I work out. I take walks. I spend time with friends. I go out into the world and actually enjoy myself. I read books.

Even if you only do this one day a week, this will totally flip your perception of time and your motivation upside down, and you will feel like a completely different person.

You cannot have self-control with self-compassion.

This is a whole lifestyle change, a rewiring of your consciousness, and it’s not easy but it is rewarding. Give yourself an enormous amount of grace when it comes to making changes with your relationship with your phone.

I think finding neutrality around your screen time is really important. Your screen time just is what it is right now, and in order to make any improvements, you can't change something that you're unwilling to look at.

Too many of us are anxious and disconnected and unfulfilled and can find a lot of relief when we develop a better relationship with our phones.

As much as I would love to throw my phone in the river and go be a fairy in the forest, it's not gonna happen. I love the internet. I want to be on the internet. I want to continue creating content, so I'm the one who needs to have a more responsible relationship with my technology.

And this is so much bigger than screen time. This is about your life and your vitality coming back online. And unfortunately, we have to go offline a bit more to reconnect with that.

You deserve a big, sexy life, and doom scrolling is not how you're gonna get it.

Let me know in the comments which of these you want to try and if there’s anything you’ve discovered that helps you, I’d love to hear about it!

xo, Anna