I think the „my brain isn’t the same anymore“ sensation is pretty universal.

Between addictive online media in our personal lives and AI at work, I think we’ve made mental effort largely optional.

That must be a horrible thing.

One of my favorite theories is the physical activity transition.

In my grandparents‘ generation, physical movement became more optional as work shifted from manual labor to knowledge work or operating machines and transportation became motorized.

Exercise was an ambient byproduct of daily life. Then it disappeared (exercise as a hobby was viewed as extremely weird, runners used to be arrested!) and a few decades later heart disease, diabetes, and so on became deadly epidemics.

We now know exercise is not optional for health. And we’ve reintroduced it via gyms, clubs, etc.

But that took decades. And I believe we’re now in the Mental Activity Transition.

We’ve stripped away ambient mental effort so we practice it much less.

I don’t know what the decades-long consequences of that may be, but they can’t be good.

I hope it won’t take decades for societies to rediscover its value and figure out how to reintroduce it.

As someone who started their software engineering career in 1988 and is at the tail end of it, I can report that my peers and I have experienced the same thing, even as we start retiring.

What we didn’t have was constant dopamine hits. It took effort to get dopamine. A lot. I’ve struggle with doomscrolling in my 50’s, just like teenagers, except I remember a time when it didn’t exist. I think that’s the key: if all you’ve ever had is velveeta, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to unlock the pleasure some stinky washed rind raw milk French cheese.

I agree with the author, I think reading books is the only way out, and extend that to analog activities. An analogy is fast-twitch muscles: they respond quickly, but burn their ATP faster. You have to operate at an oxygen deficit for about 10 minutes before your analog/aerobic system kicks in. Same thing with any analog activity like reading, you have to put the monkey-brain to sleep.

"Fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet." https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-internet-wants-to-be-fragm...

A number of years ago I had a period of my life where I decided to shut my laptop for a while.

I was working as a line cook and trying to find time and energy to code study so I could land a role in software (no degree). I was really struggling with my mental health and was having issues making or maintaining progress in pretty much any area of my life.

I got a new job, cooking breakfast in a small mountain town at a bakery. Before I left I sold my laptop and borrowed a bunch of books from some friends.

I really did feel much better a few months later. Taking the time to decompress allowed me to get my priorities in order and surface some biases / blind spots I had. I ended up re-enrolling in school the next spring and am now happily employed in software.

I don’t think the modality is particularly important - coding vs reading vs anything else - but taking the time to put your goals away for a little while and decompress can make you more effective in actually reaching them

A couple of times now I have walked a stretch of the Camino de Santiago (each time it was just a small bit near the end; sadly don't have the time off to do a full route which can take a month or longer). I find the simplicity of it super rewarding and enjoyable compared to my busy life back home. Just, for the most part, miles and miles of peaceful countryside.

It's kind of the opposite of what is described in the article, where the author is using his time off to improve his knowledge in other areas. Personally, I find that back home I am constantly thinking, both at work and in my time off, so much so that I forget what the end goal of all that thinking actually is. So doing these long walks helps me take a break from that and put it in perspective. No laptop, as little smartphone use as possible, I will maybe read a book or two in the evenings but nothing too heavy, etc.

As an aside, I am in a non-tech field, and programming is my hobby (and nothing like my day job). I enjoy it and I think it helps me stay sharp, but it has its drawbacks as a hobby. Being a solo hobby, and not one that many people in my field are into, it's not really something I can easily bond with others over (unlike, say, golf or chess). And sometimes it can be the opposite of relaxing when you encounter a bug that you can't seem to diagnose or fix.

I used to read fairly voraciously as a child; nothing like the kids who could devour a Harry Potter book between sunrises, but a respectable "novel every 2-3 weeks", somewhat above my grade level.

I can remember almost the exact instant I fell off: being dissatisfied with a particular turn in a YA novel in 9th grade, and the odd moments that had been filled with page-turning suddenly became designated for sketching and doodling (at the height of deviantArt's power).

I don't think I finished a single class-read novel in high school; hated Wuthering Heights and beloved (on vibes) L'Etranger alike are a blur. (Still aced the AP exams.) I knew it was really over when I had to drop a classical literature course in college because I couldn't keep up with the readings.

I've a few dozen unfinished books in the ~15 years since, and less than a dozen finished ones. 1Q84 has been a multi-year odyssey.

I've introspected about what's gone "wrong". My reading speed is quite slow, and has never progressed, which I think is a major part of it. I often become distracted, stopping a little too frequently to mull things over - really, squaring the reading with my preconceived notions, which was not as much of an issue when I was younger and had fewer of them.

I also stress over finding time to begin reading in the first place, and about being disconnected from reality when I'm in a book's headspace.

I'd love to know if anyone's had a similar experience and can boast a "recovery" (and how they managed).

Thanks for this post, I can truly relate. Some thoughts from a 50+ year old genx guy (EE/CS) who’s worked to stay current and keep a sharp mind in the face of these challenges plus the inevitable age-related decline:

- regular exercise has incredible benefits for the body+ mind (and the attitude that directs it). Biggest impact of everything on this list.

- Side projects that involve actual doing and not just study. e.g. I spent some money on gear for embedded development and am doing things that involve physical things and using my hands and making gadgets … phone is out of the picture while in the lab.

- Ironically, using LLMs for reviewing and refreshing knowledge you once had but now has gaps is amazing. I spend a bunch of my phone time now having in-depth chats where I know what I’m talking about to a large degree, but the LLM is helping me fill in gaps and then quizzing me on concepts and I know that the things it’s telling me are solid due to my background, then I go check, etc. A really good way to do super focused study to reload a field back into your brain. Might as well take advantage of the fact that they stole all of the world books.

- Write things down! After reviewing, do some problems with pencil and pad. After studying, doing a problem on pencil and paper is actually daunting, but then grooving through a few problems actually makes you realize you know the stuff again! And using an expensive Ampad notebook and nice mech pencil is a great sensory experience.

I spend a big chunk of my summers in nowhere cow-ville France (la Creuse). No Michelin star restaurants, no art galleries, no shopping worth note. Just landscapes, hiking, lakes and slower life. BUT what surprises me most is how often I describe this to people, even the French, and they’re like “why / pourquoi ?!” Is it not obvious? There’s a reason people say they need a vacation after their vacation. I think it’s that people are expecting too much of their vacations.

I was a university student around the time the iPhone came out. I stuck with a motorola razor until I graduated. I think back on the DAILY grind of university amd the consistent context switching between challenging studies that were so varied: analog circuits, aeronautical engineering, practicing foreign language, along with the other demands of working and ask how did I manage that cognitive load?

I think the brainrot is less noticeable when I fill my schedule, but when I have time off my brain atrophies IFF I emable brainrot.

Reading books, picking solid podcasts, or journaling leaves my brain feeling refreshed.

I feel this is the next wave of 'clean your processed diet up' or 'mind the tobacco'

Just take Baby Rudin and a serious stack of paper with you on these holidays and you should be set.

My two experiences of de-brainrotting:

1. Doing a pilgrimage walk in Japan with a cleared phone home screen. Only the Gaia GPS app on there with the route, and some other local weather and mapping applications. No consumption of anything external during the day. Just steady walking and eating and looking around. It was excellent. You can probably do this anywhere given the right context and commitment.

2. We slept several nights in a hut at 2100m altitude in the Austrian Alps just out of range of cell reception so the icon on my phone was "satellite" all the time. It turns out that without the possibility of communication or fresh input, you can read a bit on your kindle in the evening and then go KO at around 22:00 sleeping like a rock until 06:30. Such an amazing amount of rest and refreshment just from a simple accident of geography.

I can't find a PDF version of Francisco Claro’s “De Newton a Einstein y algo más”, anyone's got a link?

I’m married and have kids so there’s always something going on in my life and I don’t get many opportunities for “peace and quiet”.

What works wonders for me is swimming. I only do front crawl so I’m basically staring at the bottom of the pool for the entire duration of the swim. It’s incredibly boring. But something happens in my head, I can just think better. I will often take a problem from work and mull it over in the water, and very often I come up with either a solution or otherwise put it in perspective or some other strategy to deal with it.

Highly recommend. Also at my age (mid-40s), some form of movement that is gentle on the joints is appreciated.

For a more truly "web-native" treatment of math, see https://www.mathacademy.com/. I've also heard good stuff about https://physicsgraph.com/ for physics.

This is the first time I see webmention used anywhere. Idea seems to be good, but it is not used for some reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmention

My suggestion is to get a plain old bicycle (not an electric or stationary bike). One hour outdoors on a bike clears away at least a day’s worth of mental detritus for me.

When I got fired a few months ago—which I'd somewhat anticipated since the CTO was becoming ever more temperamental—I took the money I'd aggressively not spent and decided to spend the summer doing things I enjoyed, letting the stages of grief subside, and letting myself get bored, instead of trying to force myself to AI this or that or even apply to more than a few jobs. I turned off my website that I wasn't doing anything with anyway, and I've been letting my brain churn on the prospect of leaving software entirely. I still don't feel confident that if I do spend the time trying to land another contract, that it'll be a fruitful endeavor, nor if I pursue something else, but I've got some great hiking done, spent lots of time with family and friends, and I'm glad I haven't wasted it while being mired in the swamp of anxiety that I presume a more Type A person would. It was cheap to buy this time, and it's better to buy it back when it can be spent doing physically adventurous things.

I may go back to applying for the few jobs around, or I might decide it's such an unlikely venture that I'll just see if I can meet someone on a hiring team at a climbing gym or something. Either way, I don't really care to spend much of it behind a screen until winter rolls around.

> Nothing is that novel anymore, and solving day to day problems, more than requiring mental exhaustion, mostly require spending some time at them

I felt this too recently and I linked it to excessive passive information grazing exacerbated by AI. Symptoms of this are being in a daze or mental fog, and not being in touch with the feeling of curiosity. Reading doesnt help since for me, reading is passive process of meme gathering. What helps in my view is effortful creation in the form of writing code, hand writing essays, creating music etc.

I don’t and never have particularly enjoyed reading. I am a fast consumer of information and data, as that has tickled my brain ever since I was a small child which looking back, completely explains my career path.

That said, I enjoy going deep on things by learning and playing around, a very much hands on learner. My other issue I have is that with hobbies or interests, because I strive to become an “expert” in terms of knowledge as quickly as possible and am very good at it, I often lose interest in hobbies as I quickly realize that the difference between an expert in something and a Master in that thing is usually simply time/decades and I don’t have that kind of patience.

Two hobbies that I’ve found in the past few years that have been extremely beneficial to helping me decompress while still holding my attention.

1/ Deciding to finally learn Guitar. It’s a common one for sure, but I approach it from a pure enjoyment standpoint and put zero pressure on actually getting better. It’s something I usually pick up a couple of times a week and play, I’ll find videos of tutorials and give them a try, just kind of random exploring while getting slowly better. It’s been nice

2) Growing rare Cacti, Succulents and Caudex plants in my basement. They require very little attention, most needing water every 2 weeks or so and leaving them for vacations or other activities is of zero concern. After only a year or two I only grow from seed, focusing on extremely rare, newly discovered, or under researched species as that scratches my itch of continuing to learn. Though again, I keep it purely an enjoyment activity and find myself just sitting there looking at my plants, enjoying them and appreciating their weird nature.

I suggest things such as building an "offline room" like an 80s/90s living room setup complete with a thrifted CRT TV, old game consoles, VCRs, shag carpets, old lamps, woodgrain walls, physical books, instruction manuals, etc.

The best de-brain rot vacation I had so far was on a remote island in Raja Ampat: it wasn't about the island being remote, but about spotty internet access. It was just the correct amount of spotty: enough for text to load and IMs to go through, but not enough for any serious photo or video content. I was able to get YouTube to download videos in 240p on one end of the island, but I had to be picky about what I select. After two weeks I felt like my old self again, but unfortunately, it popped like a bubble after just a few days.

Yes. This is my favorite way to vacation, and I'm glad someone has found a better name for it. I do not enjoy simply sitting around idle and occasionally going on a trip, I end my time off feeling drained and need a vacation from my vacation. One year, I had an itch to try my hand at Godot and game programming, and I saved it for my next vacation. I'd never felt more relaxed after a vacation, it's the same as what the author describes: I like being intellectually stimulated, I just needed a break from work, not from trying new things.

This article has helped me figure out some of what made that work, and has given me some ideas of how to try to capture that again.

> Add to that videogames, comics/manga, TV shows, etc, and I literally just can’t get bored anymore.

It's a bit strange to me (and I figure I'm just unusual in this respect), but all of those things lead me quickly to boredom these days. It's the brain rottenness of it all that leads me to be bored, and in a way I'm thankful for it. I find that even compared to my childhood, I'm more bored today than I've ever been.

Wipes screen

Oh, it's just the blog's theme...

> Add to that the usage of AI. While I know I’m way more productive than during those first months, my thoughts are getting slower, less profound, lazier.

I have mostly stayed away from LLM usage, I think I am better for it. I use it just to offload things I wouldn't have had time for. I get more stuff done, but I am still doing what I did before.

> Plus, dopamine is available at just a tap on my phone. There’s a ton of content in shorts that interest me and require little to no investment on my end, both time and effort-wise.

If you have and Android phone, enable Developer Options and flick through to Simulated Color Space - set it to Monochrome. I only wish it was possible to automate colour space switching based on time, like is done for redshift.

I recognize myself in the first paragraph (except being totally exhausted to the point having to sleep). And I started working as a SWE 4 years ago (so full dopamine brainrot access). Maybe it is because I have a reasonable usage of LLMs?

Last year I took my parents' caravan and put it in bumfuck retirement home nowhere, spent a week just riding my motorcycle through that section of the country, reading, listening to music, and painting Warhammer figurines. Little human contact. It was boring and unstimulating, but also almost the opposite of my usual daily grind.

> Nothing is that novel anymore, and solving day to day problems, more than requiring mental exhaustion, mostly require spending some time at them.

You're the largest fish in your bowl, time to move to a larger bowl. It's OK to be comfortable but if you're unhappy there's always another level to aim for.

I think it’s great that we’re discussing this more often as time goes on. This is not the first post I’ve read this month about this topic, and that’s a good sign.

I also think it takes a certain level of intelligence to be able to _notice_ these shifts in mental load.

A lot of people are going through this same thing, but their response isn’t “i need to unplug, slow down, and let my mind reset,” it’s quite literally the opposite - they scroll more, binge more, swipe more. Mostly because they aren’t aware of why they feel the way they do.

The more we discuss this issue, openly, the more likely it is we’ll bring attention to it to those people who are currently unaware of why they feel so empty all the time, despite never being more occupied.

I’m no expert on self improvement, but my ambitions tend to be a lot lower on vacation. Instead of trying to cultivate better habits, I mostly just try to interrupt the old dumb ones. Instead of phone in bed, it’s a huge win if I’m in a hammock with a fun book. Instead of checking email over coffee, maybe I can sit outside with that coffee and listen to birds. Etc etc.

Similar to OP’s new hobby of math and physics, I recently started scratching a long standing itch to teach myself electrical engineering. I’m using books, YouTube and my brain to learn, and it feels like such a breath of fresh air compared to what my day job as a SWE has become since AI took it over. Because I’m not trying to build anything in particular — and since the learning _is_ the goal — I don’t hear that nagging voice saying, “AI could do this so much faster,” that pops in my head when I write code by hand these days.

The intro paragraphs talking about the mental disengagement or decline or whatever we want to call it really resonated with me. It's something I've also taken measures to counter. In fact I'm on vacation right now to Basque Country. I read "A Basque History of the World" to prepare for the trip and that act reassured me I'm not getting less capable of engaging intellectually, I just have different intellectual interests now than the most intimate details of making websites for and serving them to customers at varying scales.

A refreshing read. While not in the same lane as the author re maths/physics/SWE, I empathise.

I think on one hand, things are simply less novel as we get older and more expert in a given lane. That’s age old.

But the dopamine hit/attention deficit issue is altogether new, and it’s troubling from a societal perspective. I suspect it’s fairly universal that adults in 2026 aren’t reading nearly as much as they aspire to, or claim to be.

Can someone please recommend a good English version of "De Newton a Einstein y algo más eBook" (the book mentioned in the blog post) or a similar book?

Same happening for me. The fog clears when I do breath meditation - I think (hope) going deeper into mindfullness will be even more effective than reading at clearing the mind and breaking the dopamine addiction.

I struggle w my advanced learning in that much of it I will Never use due to my retirement status. I attempt screenplays; reading classical electrodynamics by Jackson; studying chess; and learning Spanish. I love to write code but that sucks me back to the computer. Cooking is always fun.

What do you think about doing LeetCode as an hobby? i really didn't like these type of exercise before, but after the advent of AI i'm more prone to do them. and actually started to enjoy them.

One of those rare HN occasions when I can safely drive-by upvote every single commenter :)

I’ve experienced it more as dramatically shorter attention span rather than brain fog.

Leaving the phone charging out of the bedroom (or unreachable without getting up) during night and having a kindle in bed did the 80% Pareto De-Brainroting me every day and changed my life

I wonder if the author is missing an opportunity to step further away by learning physics on this vacation. I usually follow the same playbook- little phone use, slow vacation, hiking in nature, phyical books (carefully selected beforehand- nothing work related, nothing technical), even used to spend a fair bit of time selecting the music i was going to listen to while driving to avoid radio or incar spotify. If lucky, i get these moments of inspiration. if not i return refreshed with slightly altered goals. Like everyone i have a chimp on my shoulder questioning me: could i have been more productive, maybe learn something useful?

my idea of de-brainrot is by going to destinations where everything is new and experiencing everything there physically & mentally. either going to a new city or drive to a new place. i'm not sure if it's anecdotal but there's a feeling of astonishment when experiencing a new place. i find that when you go back you have this new perspective and you feel refreshed.

I’ll assume the complaint is that the desktop is his space and shouldn’t be real estate for ads.

Around 2005 it became obvious that consumer software licensing for operating systems was no longer profitable. Nothing like Windows 95 sold again. Apple coupled the OS cost with the high margin hardware. The “profitable” Linux distros catered to high margin enterprise contracts. Windows pivoted toward ads.

When consumers complain about ads on software products, are they offering a viable alternative? Would you pay $250 for Windows Pro Ads Free? To Microsoft’s credit they’ve tried many different ways to package the software, and settled on the ads model.

A couple of books and a cabine in the woods for a few days sound like the dream right now.

Just this this weekend got a cabin on the Mississippi and went totally no phones or tv. Wife and I spent the weekend reading, doing yoga and playing checkers.

Something I noticed from this post is that the immediate go-to hobby for the author when forgoing time-swallowing brainrot is learning. This has been the exact same for me. After I actively started reducing my screen time, I have seen an almost unconscious kneejerk reaction consisting in me simply learning new things. Learning for fun is awesome. Never stop.

i've spent this summer vacation in portugal with no news websites & no socials.

As I never plan to read but know on some point i will want to read - I took the e-reader.

I ended up reading two books.

The result: I feel much more balanced and my opinion on topics and discussion habits calmed down a lot.

I hope I can keep the detox of those every more present redical views up for longer, it is really relaxing.

I have no idea how I didn't get sucked into doomscroll culture.

Facebook was the center of my life back in college (2005-2009) and for a few years after graduating. What is now my diary started its life in Facebook Notes! I had Snapchat and Instagram accounts when those came out and used MySpace and even Friendster (a bit) prior.

All of those accounts have been deleted within the last three years. Aside from me arriving to closed businesses sometimes because they announced a change of hours on Instagram instead of Google Maps or (gasp!) a website, I miss nothing.

Maybe it was me trying to build a "things to do" service and seeing how locked down, not-open and not user friendly Facebook's Graph API was (in 2014).

Or maybe it's me having grown up a sort-of computer addict (on my computer all of the time when I wasn't in school) then, during college, seeing people get sucked all the way into World of Warcraft when that was new and connecting the dots.

What I do know is that these apps are extremely good --- casino-level good --- at sucking people into their portals and keeping them there.

Consequently, this has made going about my day in modern life difficult in some ways.

Playing music off of phones used to be verboten and socially enforced. These days, blasting 1, 2, 5, 10 second blips of nonsense every few seconds is "normal."

Walking around pretty much anywhere knowing that at any moment I can get hit by someone who overran the crosswalk so they could whip out their phone and scroll is a real possibility.

Driving around --- when I choose to do so --- is equally frustrating since people will tailgate me or cut me off so they can park 30 seconds faster and spend 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes FUCKING SCROLLING.

I keep my email inbox empty, thus turning it into a to-do list of sorts. But because most people have surrendered to their 90k unread email inboxes, doing things via email can be slow and frustrating.

Then there's the double standard of criticizing AI services while (sometimes within the same breath!) citing Google AI Answers as fact or spending hours and hours building whatever with Claude or Codex or whatever, whose web crawlers continue to descend on the web like ants onto a piece of bread and make everything I used to love using (Reddit, random blogs, this fucking site) increasingly inaccessible.

i've moved away from smartphones. i carry a burner keypad phone with essential contacts everywhere, and my screen time is at most an hour a day.

now, when i'm tired from work or need some recreation, i read books.

i used to scroll on my phone, and it was really hard for me to find even a few minutes to read books.

Brain fog? This might be a legitimate symptom worth seeing a doctor for

Good post!

I spent my vacation reading From Third World to First by Lee Kuan Yew.

And I have a couple of university textbooks (Physics and Biology) lying about, waiting for me to keep working on them.

I concur with the general feeling of it being difficult to plan much ahead. I think that learning and reading is good, and has been good basically always (just because someone else knows something doesn't mean that you shouldn't learn it too, even if this someone else is an LLM).

Anyway, I enjoyed your post and mostly feel the same (and funnily I have similar interests).

Thirty five upvotes, only one comment. It's like everybody read it, and immediately got off HN. Which sounds like people really took it to heart.

Plenty of places to de-brainrot in Chile. I miss it very dearly tbqh

Personally, I've removed all apps that feature algorithmic short form video from my phone and used an extension to block shorts from YouTube.

I also made it a point to read more books agan instead of random articles and blogs online.

I can feel my attention span getting longer and my anxiety decreasing. I'd highly recommend trying it out if you've been experiencing similar issues!

Reflecting on my life, I think there is a mind body connection. And your brain doesn't work properly unless you also exercise. The best shape (post university) and sharpest I felt is when I played tennis daily. It just seems to be a sport that improves everything; reflexes, strength, cardio, speed. And I just felt very sharp physically and mentally during period. Hiking, and especially kayaking are like the antidote to brain rot for me now. Sitting in a kayak, watching a sunset on lake, surrounded by birds and wildlife and nature, it just kind clears your mind. Kayaking seems to have just the right amount of effort (you can go at your pace) and relaxation (provided you're in calm water) and nature and novelty, that it seems to connect you back to the world. Interestingly, many of the former US presidents where also big fitness buffs.

Indulging in musicianship works very well, too. As in, learning a musical instrument, say classical piano, with some external guidance.

You'll have to activate parts of brain you might never had to previously, it's quite some mental gymnastics but also an immersive mind + body + aural connection. You may feel exhausted after an intensive practice session but in a very rewarding way. You'll have to learn to learn differently.

My daily de-brainrot vacation is .. playing with synthesizers. Nothing gets the webs cleared out faster than a quick jam, maybe laying down a couple loops, getting some ideas fleashed out into a bigger structure.

Music-making and musicianship in general is great de-brainrot.

One thing that is working for me is simply getting a handheld and playing good old video games like in old days.

It is something I look forward to everyday because I can be anywhere and play anytime.

It is simply best hack I came up with.

Any games with "online" element is slop and avoid that toxicity.

When I'm on vacation I like nothing more than reading history books; it really helps transport you to another time and place, helping you to disconnect from the present and immerse yourself in your vacation.

Closer to home, surely there are work books that can teach you something new? I just picked up a fantastic academic tome called Experimental Economics by John List, to learn more about running experiments. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/E/bo250610...

I need De-Brainrot Vacation.

For a second I thought this was another Dutch last name like De Bruijn.

For fuck sake nerds why do you overcomplicated everything.

Go to the hardware store, buy some tools and fix something on your car or house, or build a new wall or stairs or something... Or even simpler. Get a shovel Go dig a ditch and plant some trees...

Brainrot solved

Yeah, we're watching AI obsolete intellectual work in real time. Human brains simply won't be able to compete. We're not going to have to toil, we just ask for results.

This is no longer skilled labor. It's massively more productive when machines take over the thinking, but you need to look elsewhere for intellectual stimulation.