By Emily Tissot
In order to integrate knowledge, creativity, or emotional processing, your brain needs this kind of real, unstructured rest.
Noise With Glitter
“Whaa, whaa, whaaaaa… screens are ruining your brain!” yells a congresswoman on some random news cycle I’ve flicked on as part of my intentional brain-dead “fun time” for the day. She sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and I mimic her: “Wha, wha, whaaaaaa…” as I simultaneously open Instagram and let Cowboy Carter blare from Alexa in the next room. Mission accomplished. My brain is so distracted, so full, so occupied, that there’s no way I can comprehend a single thought—let alone a cohesive one.
I’ve entered my “hour of insanity,” as my wife calls it. It’s the time of day when I completely check out and pretend there’s nothing in the world besides the cat videos rolling across my screen. This hour is my half of a negotiated settlement with my hostile, punitive mind. Every day, I offer myself “fun” screen time as a trade-off for pushing through headaches, heartaches, and apathy.
I’m sure we all have our own version of this story. Pause here and ask yourself: what negotiations do you make with yourself just to keep moving? Write them down. Smile. Then buckle up, because I’m about to launch into the scientific reasoning behind why my strategy isn’t working (big surprise… I know).
Recently, I cracked open Learning How to Learn by Barbara Oakley. I studied under Professor Oakley during undergrad and found her wildly insightful, brilliant, sweet, and kind. Her life story is incredible (highly recommend checking out her work). But what immediately grabbed me in the book was the concept of “your brain at rest.”
According to Oakley and decades of cognitive science, the brain has two main learning modes: focused and diffuse. Focused mode is active—studying, memorizing, solving problems. It’s the grind. Diffuse mode is looser, slower, subconscious. It’s what happens when you aren’t trying. The shower thoughts. The stare-out-the-window moments. The quiet.
And here’s the kicker: in order to integrate knowledge, creativity, or emotional processing, your brain needs this kind of real, unstructured rest.
But here’s what it doesn’t need: fake-idle time. The endless scroll. The algorithmically curated videos of toddlers doing backflips into whipped cream. That kind of “rest” is just noise—noisy enough to silence stress for a second, but not enough to process it.
So while I thought I was buying peace with cat videos and curated chaos, what I was actually doing was feeding a loop. My “fun time” wasn’t rest—it was noise with glitter.
Now, am I going to toss my phone into the Hudson and start meditating under a tree? Probably not. But maybe I’ll start swapping some of my screen dopamine for actual rest. Let my brain go on its version of a walk. Let it wander. And in that wandering, maybe I’ll find a thought that isn’t just a reaction—but actually… mine.
Here’s to renegotiating the treaty with our minds. One scroll-less hour at a time.