How to Stem 'Brain-Rot' and Reclaim Your Attention for Well-Being

Have you ever wondered about the power of attention and its connection to your well-being? Here is a simple thought experiment before you read further. Sit comfortably and take a moment to bring your attention to any one sensation in your body for a few seconds. Resist the urge to move and just pay attention to this sensation and watch what happens next. Most likely you would have observed that the very process of paying attention to the sensation brought some change to the sensation. Perhaps it intensified, moved to a different part of the body, or evoked some other image or emotion in your mind.

What we pay attention to and how we pay attention to it to has a significant impact on our sense of well-being in life.

Science of Attention

The “observer effect" is a key concept in quantum physics. It means the very act of observing something can alter the very thing being observed. To put simply, the observer changes the observed. “Whatever we pay attention to is amplified," writes Amishi Jha, a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, in her 2021 book, Peak Mind. “What you focus on becomes most prominent in your present-moment reality: you see the corresponding emotions, you view the world through that lens," writes Jha.

Her team’s years-long research into how the human brain pays attention revealed that attention can also be fragile and deplete rapidly under certain circumstances. On the positive side, her team also made a critical discovery that our attention is trainable, i.e., we can train our attention system to fully experience and enjoy the moments we encounter in life to help navigate life’s challenges more effectively.

If attention and one’s sense of well-being are so inter-connected, what is the quality of attention in our daily living? Are we really paying to what matters? Apparently, this is not the case.

Rise of “Brain Rot"

Oxford University Press (OUP) had announced ‘brain rot’ as the word of the year for 2024 after its usage frequency surged by 230% in the preceding year. According to OUP, the term refers to the “supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially because of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging."

The concern around brain rot is, however, not new. Henry David Thoreau wrote in his book Walden, “Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?....While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?"

Over 170 years after its first recorded usage, brain rot has taken on a new significance as an expression of the concerns over what we are paying attention to in the digital age and its impact on our well-being. What is leading to this crisis of attention?

Health Impact of the New Attention Economy

“Modern office life and an increasingly common condition called attention deficit trait, are already turning steady executives into frenzied under achievers," writes Edward Hallowell, an American psychiatrist, in a Harvard Business Review article titled, Overloaded Circuits: Why Smart People Underperform.

The widespread use of social media has changed the way content is created and consumed in the digital age. The rise of bite-sized short-form content ranges from ‘breaking news’ headlines to TikTok videos or Instagram reels. And attention fragmentation due to constant exposure to such short-form, low-quality content has made focusing on long-form, complex or nuanced content challenging for most people.

Information overload from the barrage of short-form content creates mental fatigue and numbing, reducing one’s ability to process information meaningfully. In this sea of distraction around us, how often do we then pay attention that which really matters?

Mind Wandering & Well-Being

“People spend 46.9% of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they are doing in the moment," a 2010 research study published by Harvard psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert found. The neuroscientists describe the brain regions involved in mind-wandering as the “default network", because one's mind is usually humming along, shutting down only when something demands conscious attention.

Killingsworth and Gilbert’s research estimated that only 4.6% of a person’s happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing. The person’s mind-wandering status accounted for 10.8% of his or her happiness. Further, time-lag analyses conducted by them suggested that mind-wandering was generally the cause, and not the consequence, of their happiness. So, one’s ability to pay attention to the here and now moment has a direct bearing on one’s sense of happiness and well-being over and above productivity metrics.

Practices to Reclaim Your Attention

The state of mind wandering is captured in the Yogic texts as citta v?tti or a ‘mind full of disturbances’. Mindless consumption patterns (food, news, etc.) strengthen one’s compulsive patterns of rāga (repetition) for what is pleasurable and dve?a (aversion) for what is uncomfortable or painful. Rāga-Dve?a gives rise to distortions of the mind leading to fragmenting of attention through mindless habits.

Yoga Sūtra delves deep into how a distracted mind (vyuttita citta) can be transformed into a focused, attentive mind (ekāgrata citta). The practices of pratyāhāra (looking inwards, introspection) and dhāra?a (centering the mind on one point) helps one to return to a space of mindful attention and awareness of the present moment. Practices of āsana (postures) and prā?āyāma (conscious regulated breathing) help bring restful awareness to body and breath and return to the present moment. They help one move beyond the compulsive pull to act out of conditioned responses to both external triggers and inner narratives.

“I’ve been working with a college student who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Through the practices of āsana and prā?āyāma, she has learned to direct her attention to her breath and body, which has helped her manage her emotions and stay present during challenging situations," says Shravanthi, a Dubai-based yoga therapist in the Kri??amachārya tradition of yoga.

Prof. Jha recommends certain set of practices in Peak Mind that capture some aspects of these yogic practices. For instance, practices to strengthen concentrative focus through “attentional reps" where you direct your attention to a specific object and maintain it there for a period of time closely co-relate to the dhāra?a practice in yoga. Antara?ga yoga practices which involve reflecting upon one’s meaning-aking processes help build what Jha refers to as building of the meta-awareness of the mind, i.e, “a heightened awareness of the rising and passing away of the contents and processes of the consciousness, such as thinking, feeling, and perceiving."

In any moment or situation, here are three reflective questions that can help you shift your attention to what really matters. Ask yourself:

• Who am I being right now?
• How am I feeling in my body right now?
• In doing what I am doing, what am I really doing?

What is your relationship with your attention? What practices have helped you reclaim your attention? I’d love to hear from you.

P.S.: This article was originally published in the Mint Lounge on 2nd February 2025.

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