Your brain is begging you to slow down

Attention shapes your entire experience of the world.

But your attention is not our own. Your uptime is taken up by work that seems to never stop. Your downtime is dominated by attention-grabbing screens of every size and persuasion.

Even though your brain is a marvel of neurobiological engineering, it can’t sustain such a constant onslaught of pixels and data. You simply can’t keep up with today’s attentional demands.

A perpetual state of distraction is not just personally detrimental, but societally devastating. Technology is being constantly and programmatically accelerated and optimized to take your attention away from yourself and sold to the highest bidder.

Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. You need to slow down. Dial down to a different rhythm.

Reconnect your senses to the natural world around you. Follow the threads that bind you to nature. Look, listen, smell, touch, taste.

Simply walking in nature – or, as the Japanese call it, shinrin-yoku – reduces blood pressure and increases relaxation. Attunes you to nature’s rhythm.

Nature replenishes your ability to slow down, to concentrate.

Nature makes your attention your own.

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Reference

“Slow down, it’s what your brain has been begging for” Psyche (2022)