It could happen to you.

Recently, when stumbling across my screentime statistics for different apps on my phone, I was both pleased and shocked to discover where all those hours had been going. The constant carousel of Shorts, Reels, memes, ads, Stories, and sundries doubtless flows as freely through your phone as it does mine, an endless cornucopia of content for us to consume.

The weird thing is, I couldn’t remember any of it.

Maybe instances or snatches, like whispers in dreams. There are flavours of remembrance: cooking content, LoTR lore, GRRM rumblings, science stuff, past histories, and news from the present. But anything specific? Anything sticky?

Not really.

Which is strange, because the behaviour itself is extremely sticky. The ceaseless scroll that eats our free time and snacks on our productivity works remarkably well.

Average global screen time now hovers around six hours and forty-five minutes a day, with Gen Z regularly crossing nine. According to some sources, that “deep engagement” costs the world up to a trillion dollars a year. The economic toll of this weaponized engagement is staggering, with lost productivity and mental health-related absences costing the global economy an estimated $1 trillion annually

The global economy may be paying a price for this. But hey, social media platforms and big tech have had some great quarters.

While it could easily be dismissed as a personal discipline problem, the truth is that these companies are designed to capture as much time and attention as possible, because time and attention are what turn you into the product.

The more alarming thing I noticed, however, was personal. I couldn’t write anymore.

After going through the customary five stages of procrastination: denial, anger (or arousal as the case may be, don’t ask), compromise, depression, and acceptance, I found I simply couldn’t write creatively.

Journalism and reporting are the butter to my bread, if I ate any, and still butter the bread I don’t eat. But creative writing, creating something new, is more a low-key flex, expressed totally subtly. Sustenance for the soul, as it were, though I remain unsure of both the gluten levels of manna and the existence of the soul itself.

The problem was that I couldn’t think.

Executive functioning was fine, decisioning all there (totally not aided by any LLMs), but I couldn’t think of things. Not new ones. Not make new associations, not new connections, and most concerningly, I couldn’t sit long enough to try and force them out. And there are no fiber supplements for creativity. Well, there are, but we’ll come back to that.

Like an anti-vaxxer in flu season, I’d been hit by the bug, a far more insidious one: brainrot. So, I couldn’t think of interesting thoughts, or make cool connections, or form new ideas, or think of creative wordplays.

Which, when you’re tiptoeing to the threshold of a new content platform mean to showcase your professional work and personal portfolio, is, you know, fucking great.

And what was the most annoying thing was that it was this endless barrage of content that I was watching so passively that was causing my own lack of my own agency when it came to creating some of my own.

And it ain’t just me.

. In the workplace, the cost of a single notification is higher than it appears: some research from 2025-end suggests it takes a worker an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain deep focus after a digital interruption, leading to an average loss of 2.3 workdays per month per employee. The crisis is particularly acute in India, where the 2025–26 Economic Survey warned of a “lethal mix” of high-intensity screen use, social media addiction, and sedentary habits. While India’s digital economy is a powerhouse (projected to contribute over 13% of national income by FY25) the government has flagged “compulsive” usage as a direct risk to the nation’s “demographic dividend.”

So I started a purge, not a great one that extinguished millions of presumably promising careers in the Soviet Union, but a smaller one. Cognitive retraining, or, supplementing, if you will.

It helped me. It might work for you too.

Walking (without media)

As bizarre as it felt not to have the velvet tones of Hugh Fraser narrating another Poirot audiobook (the little grey cells crave comfort as much as novelty, mon ami) the point was to stop filling every quiet moment with someone else’s voice.

So I walked.

Without music. Without podcasts. Without audiobooks.

And so, forced to look outward, I began to observe my surroundings, ready for the boredom that would entail in a suburban city park, even if it was located in an urban conglomerate with a higher population than all of Canada.

After the initial self-indulgence in the pathos of my lot in life, and the excruciating first 10 minutes, where I had only my commentary ringing in my head rather than the muzak of content, the bathos of my surroundings began to sink in.

Life, it turns out, Dear Reader, has its own stream. And you don’t even have to subscribe or comment.

Over time I got to know the players in this sun-zapped leafy theatre. I watched the daily geopolitical disagreements of the two factions of dogs that share the one park, and the one glorious moment they became a united front when a cat wandered in.

I observed the machinations of the squirrels, largely ignored unless one of the canine cartel was feeling particularly peacockish that morning.

I began to notice the rich internal lives of my fellow walkers. The two couples who always chatted merrily together. The husbands who walked apart in silence when not accompanied by their cheerier halves.

I see three very different men, who really deserve an essay of their own, but in that made me realise they had one.

Observation, it turns out, returns surprisingly quickly once you give boredom a chance.

Reading

Watching something is the easiest thing you can do.

You just have to sit there and watch. What did you watch? Who gives a shit. At least you didn’t have to do something that would cause pause, or force you to think.

In 2024 alone, Indians collectively spent a massive 110 billion hours on smartphones, a surge that is now linked to a rise in “sleep debt,” anxiety, and a measurable decline in professional employability and cognitive development.

Reading though. That takes time, effort, and concentration. Which is only fair. Authors have a most thankless job. They’re mired in the present, scrabbling through the past, to build a future.

The worlds they build then surely deserve as much attention.

That’s not to say audiovisual content isn’t art, it totally is. But it’s a lot less demanding. And that’s not always a good thing. Books kick slumbering imaginations awake, and force lazy thought and idle speculation from their bunks, back into active duty, instead of letting the magic glowing rectangle cater to those particular needs of the brain.

Reading brought back attention.

Cooking (without media)

The parentheses in this particular one may apply to fewer people, who maybe don’t have an auditory (read background noise) fixation, but I know there are plenty of you out there, who tune in to worlds outside (fictional or our own) rather than be present inside at home.

Try doing it the way your grandmother did. Or hopefully, still does.

Listen to the sizzle of the meat in the pan instead of meat in the romantasy audiobook. It’ll give you all the spice you need for the moment. Harken the bubbling of the gravy and its thickening rather than the speciousness of the podcast bros’ arguments. And for the people who don’t cook. Try it.

Use your hands.

Feel the springiness of a bunch of a spinach as you slice into it, enjoy the amiability of the dough around your fingers as you knead it just right, bringing together disparate elements into a bread you may or may not eat.

And enjoy the tactile sensations of cutting through lush heads of cabbage, as vital as it is to making smoothies (to answer for a misspent youth) as it is to making you go outside and enjoy some much needed fresh air.

Cooking reminds you that the world still exists outside the glowing rectangle.

And that the simple act of making something, whether a meal, a loaf of bread you can be smug about either way, even a badly chopped salad, is far more memorable than the thousand pieces of content you scrolled past before breakfast.

The strange thing about boredom is that it doesn’t last very long.

Once the noise stops, the mind begins filling the silence again.

Ideas return slowly at first, then all at once. Connections begin forming again. Observations sharpen. Words come back.

It turns out the brain wasn’t broken.

It was just crowded.

And sometimes the quietest rebellion against the attention economy is simply this:

turn off the stream,

go outside,

and let your own thoughts come back online.