Occupied mind and information poisoning

Firstly, I would like to talk about the concept of the occupied mind. 

In today’s world, we are constantly bombarded with various information from all angles of life. If you are a student or work somewhere in the developed world, there is a high chance you have to handle a lot of information. More so, when you take a break or once you come home, you are given even more information to digest from your smartphone or tablet. While that quantity of information is necessary to run today’s world, our brain simply isn’t developed to process all of it at once. 

Evolution equipped us with radar-like tools (eyes, ears, sense of touch, and proprioception) to collect information necessary for survival. After some time, we were able to expand our senses by developing language and mathematics.  Suddenly, there were so many of us, and we built our civilization at such speed that our brains didn’t have the means to comprehend and follow our technological progress.

It is a false statement, however, to say that we are still “cavemen” in the world we built, because our brain developed significantly in the past few hundred thousand years, but not significantly enough to keep pace with our sudden progress.

Simply put, our minds are too occupied. 

There is even an argument that one of the reasons for the rising trend of mental illnesses in the developed world is handling too much information.

"Multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media use and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts." 

The argument makes sense if we think about it. When you are at work and have to concentrate on a task at hand, your mind wants to wander around with different ideas and concepts, but you keep those thoughts at bay until you finish your shift. Once your shift is over, and your mind gets filled with a lot of information, you come home and fill your mind with even more information instead of just stopping and thinking about everything. You actively suppress some of your thoughts to have space for information at work and finish what you are working on at the time. 

Most of the thoughts that you keep in the back of your mind are your brain’s attempts to emotionally comprehend the complex situations you find yourself in, in your everyday life. 

Whether those situations are big or small, positive or negative. Maybe you got a promotion at work or your sister is getting engaged. Maybe one of your loved ones died, or you missed a bus on the way home. All of those thoughts require proper understanding from yourself and enough time to accept the inevitability of some of them.

You fail to give yourself enough time to process all of the emotions that desperately need to be processed. You probably heard that keeping emotions to yourself is unhealthy and that you will only make it worse if you don’t do anything about them.

Ignoring those thoughts and feelings eventually builds up, and a relatively small inconvenience can be a spark that will light the flame and lead to damage to your mental health and possibly a mental breakdown in the future. It might sound pessimistic, but it is usually the truth that must be faced early on.

So what can you do about it? How to prevent the information you must handle every day from getting the best of you? The most important principle I learned is to take some time in your busy schedule and just do nothing. No television, no video games, no social interactions with your friends and family, and most importantly, no social media. At that specific time you choose, you must be all by yourself in a comfortable place and just think about all of your problems and thoughts that first come to your mind. 

At first, it will be hard and maybe no thoughts will come to your mind, but with practice, you will realize that you have a lot of stuff going on in your mind and a lot of undigested emotions you kept hidden. You can think of this method as a sort of planning out your work week, but with your emotions instead of countless meetings, information, and other office gibberish.

Following this method, you will be able to finally comprehend and understand yourself much better and will be able to make a plan for how to fix some of the problems you have been avoiding.

If you follow these steps correctly, you get one of the key principles of meditation.

For me, the breathing techniques in meditation didn’t offer much but I realized that if I simply sit down and close my eyes, I felt much more confident at handling my emotions properly and organizing them instead of letting them lie in the back of my mind waiting to cause havoc sometime in the near future. If you are like me and despise the idea of just sitting on your bedroom floor, you can take a walk, a swim, or do any other form of physical activity that will let you free your mind and give you the energy to face your buried emotions.

The other way of expressing your thoughts and emotions (that I prefer) is to start writing.

I have to admit that this blog is exactly the product of my thoughts trying to resurface and me trying to reorganize them in my mind. In the past, I regularly wrote something but never dared to share it with people on the internet. But even then, I figured out that by simply writing my thoughts and emotions on a piece of paper or a Word document, there was a dramatic increase in the likelihood that I would act on my thoughts and flesh out my emotions accordingly.

In the end, do you know what the two essential things to bring on a deserted island, excluding food and clean water?

That’s right, a pen and a blank sheet of paper. 

Since we are social beings and are forced to communicate to survive, a person stranded on a deserted island will experience real mental challenges after a couple of months. We are aware of exactly how much social isolation can be detrimental to our mental health. Some of the symptoms of prolonged social isolation include an increase in depressive mood and anxiety levels, but also hallucinations in some extreme cases. Although a piece of paper cannot replace actual human contact, it can provide a temporary replacement.

You can share everything with a piece of paper or a Word document; they are the best listeners, and if you are careful, your secrets will be well-kept. 

Summary: 

In today's fast-paced, information-heavy world, our minds are overwhelmed. We're constantly exposed to data—at work, at home, and online—which overloads our brains, originally designed for survival, not endless input. Though human brains have evolved, they still struggle to keep up with the pace of modern civilization.

This mental overload can lead to emotional suppression, unprocessed feelings, and eventually, mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and burnout. Social media plays a significant role in amplifying these effects.

To counter this, I suggest intentionally creating space for reflection. Whether through quiet time alone, physical activity, or writing, the goal is to process buried emotions and thoughts. Writing, in particular, I would argue, is a powerful tool for emotional clarity and self-understanding.

Ultimately, managing information overload requires conscious effort—disconnecting, slowing down, and tuning into our inner world, much like meditation, but on our own terms.