Mental Hygiene. Mindful Techniques for Dealing with Infoxication

Are you constantly turning to your smartphone, your attention is dissipated in ten minutes, and you spend at least a couple of hours a day aimlessly scrolling through social networks? You are not alone: information noise, or so-called “infoxication,” is the scourge of modern society. It damages our work and rest: we forget how to relax and don’t know how to restart our mental processes.

Let us tell you in detail what infoxication is and how to keep your mind clean.

The era of accessible data

There is an information revolution going on right now. The rate of data accumulation is constantly increasing by about a third each year. The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, claims that in just two days, we create as much information as mankind has accumulated from the birth of civilization to 2003.

On the one hand, this is good for progress. On the other hand, information loses its value. It used to be that to buy a good book, you had to stand in line. Cooking recipes were handed down by inheritance. Any skill was passed from mouth to mouth, from teacher to student.

Now you can learn the basics of marketing analysis in one click, find out 15 recipes for pumpkin pie and dive into conspiracy theories. Spice it up with an alarming news backdrop, spam emails, blogs of former partners, and waiting for likes on your latest Instagram post.

Among the things that get us hooked on the information needle is dopamine, the satisfaction hormone. The brain reads each processed news item as a completed action and injects us with a small dose of pleasure. As a result, our motivation to take real action is drastically reduced. Why, when you can get dopamine just by clicking random links on the Web?

But, unfortunately, all this entails a snowball effect, which is impossible not to notice.

Infoxication meaning

Information noise is an unfiltered flow in which the usefulness of the received data decreases directly to the amount of that data. Knowledge ceases to be the basis and becomes a disturbance.

Information consumption is increasingly being compared to food consumption. A healthy person’s stomach cannot take in everything and any quantity. In the same way, the brain cannot cope with an excessive flow of information, especially emotionally charged ones.

Another problem is that there is never enough information in the digital world. The dopamine loop causes us to seek news repeatedly to be rewarded. We get pleasure from it, which makes us search for even more. The dopamine surges again, and so on, in a circle. You constantly feel like missing out on something, leading to mental and physical health problems.

The stress of being unable to process information as quickly as it arrives affects our condition in many ways. But the most common indications are impaired concentration, fatigue, nervousness, and aggressiveness.

What can you do to help yourself?

Well, it’s time to share the most effective ways to reduce the volume of information noise.

Dedicate your morning to ideas

Dr. Ron Friedman, psychologist and author of the book on the ideal workplace, advises not to clog your brain in the first three hours after awakening. That is, in his opinion, the most productive time. So before plunging into the routine of reading emails or browsing the news feed in the morning, perhaps it makes sense to let your brain “float in the clouds.” Indeed many people have experienced a situation where bright ideas and solutions come to mind on the way to the office or during the first working hours.

Less news, more books

While we hear about the harmful effects of news, it’s a different story with books. Researchers at the University of Sussex have proven that just six minutes of reading a book can reduce stress levels by 68 percent. But that’s not all.

Unlike news and memes, a book involves a deeper and more structured dive into a topic. It asks “How?” and “Why?” questions more often, whereas short formats usually just talk about “What?” The news reflects only the current moment, and books written hundreds of years ago are still relevant. So, try reading less news and more books.

Sleep separately with your phone

One of the best-known advocates for healthy sleep, Huffington Post founder and former publisher Arianna Huffington, believes that the best thing we can do for our bodies is to leave our phones out of our bedrooms at night.

When we wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep right away, most of us get on the phone to check messages or even fall into the social media rabbit hole, all of which can’t help but affect our productivity during the day.

Practice delayed reading

When you see an interesting article or video, don’t try to watch it right away. Bookmark it and then watch them all in one sitting. You’ll be surprised that much of what seemed so exciting won’t evoke any emotion after a couple of days.

Wear a wristwatch

Then whenever you want to check the time, you don’t risk falling to inspect who’s viewed your Instagram story.

And, as we at Inite like to say, meditate

Our brain is a computer. And like any laptop, even the most advanced one, it slows down when running too many programs simultaneously.

More often than not, when we feel that the processor inside our head is already buzzing alarmingly, and we can’t do or think anything, we try to go to bed early. It may seem that this is the only effective way to press the internal restart button.

But sleep (the importance of which should not be underestimated) takes up a good part of the day. And if your goal is not to rest but simply to take a break from mental noise, then similar results can be achieved in just a few minutes of meditation. But the task you will have to accomplish in these few minutes will be much more difficult at first than it seems: you will have to unbind your consciousness from the inner noise yourself.

Read our meditation tips to facilitate the process

What will happen to your mind during the first practices? You will most likely feel as if the information noise has not gone away but has only grown louder. The news headlines will float before your closed eyes, and the voice from the live stream will ring in your ears. If you meditate during work, you may feel an unbearable urge to check your e-mail immediately.

But if every time you catch your mind wandering chaotically, you bring it back to the object of concentration, the noise will begin to subside. No, it won’t disappear completely: brain activity doesn’t stop even in sleep, and it certainly can’t be achieved while you’re awake. But it will fade into the background, and the here and now will come to the forefront.

When the meditation is over, you may want to go back to scrolling through the news again. But this time, it will be much easier for you to schedule that rush for later and get on with the business at hand.

After a week of constant practice, you will notice that your brain is more and more willing to enter silence mode. After another two weeks, you will no longer have to force yourself to practice: you will perceive it as a natural way to relieve mental overload and be eager to apply it.

And after three or four weeks, you will notice that you are no longer interested in drowning in news feeds. First, practicing mindfulness allows you to control your impulsive reflexes easily. It will be natural to ask yourself: “Why would I want to be distracted now from an interesting task to check the dollar index?” And, failing to find an argument for this action, go back to your business.

Second, regular practice will induce a natural dopamine rush, the loop we get when we learn chaotic information. The dopamine hunger will go away, and scrolling through the news will no longer be a need.

And third (but not least), the clearer the mind, the easier it is to prioritize. It will be more effortless for you to create your life without being distracted by nervous addictions. That alone is worth the effort to start!

And a reminder: Inite provides you with convenient tools for meditation and rewards you with cryptocurrency for the time you spend without your phone in your hand. Why not take advantage of it to create new neural connections?