Why Your Brain Feels Like It's Running on 10% Battery

There's this specific kind of tired I've been trying to put a name on.

It's not physical exhaustion. I haven't run anywhere. I slept fine. But my brain feels like it's been chewing on something all day — except I can't remember what. A kind of low-grade fog. Itchy. Unsettled. Like I left the stove on somewhere in my mind and can't find the kitchen.

I used to think this was just adulthood. Or maybe caffeine tolerance. Or "burnout" (the favorite explanation of people who don't want to look closer).

Then I stumbled across this Naval Ravikant quote:

"Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind."

And something clicked. But not in the way I expected.

The obvious interpretation, and why it's incomplete

The first time I read this quote, I thought it was about phones. Notifications. Social media. The usual suspects.

And sure, that's part of it. You know that sensation when you've been scrolling Twitter for thirty minutes and you stop, and suddenly you're aware of this weird… weight? Not tired, exactly. More like your thoughts have turned to mud.

But here's what took me longer to notice: the heaviness often shows up even when I haven't been on my phone at all.

I can be on a walk — no headphones, no apps, just walking — and still feel it. That fog. That sense of dragging something invisible behind me.

Which made me realize: the phone is just the most obvious distraction. The deeper ones don't make noise.

The distractions that don't look like distractions

I started keeping a loose inventory of what was actually running in my mental background. Not apps — thoughts. Open loops. Things I was carrying that I hadn't fully acknowledged.

Here's what I found:

Unmade decisions. The career question I keep deferring. The lease I should probably not renew. The conversation I need to have but keep finding reasons to postpone. These aren't "distractions" in the usual sense — I'm not actively thinking about them. But they're there, requiring some percentage of runtime to keep suppressed.

Commitments I've made but don't actually want. That project I agreed to out of guilt. The social thing I said yes to but am secretly dreading. Every one of these creates a background process: part of my brain is already rehearsing the excuse, already feeling the friction, already resenting the future version of me who has to show up.

Other people's expectations I've absorbed. What my parents think I should be doing. What my peers seem to value. What "someone like me" is supposed to want. I didn't consciously choose to carry these, but they're in my head anyway, constantly comparing my actual life to some imaginary template.

Unprocessed emotions. That thing someone said last week that bothered me more than it should have. The grief I told myself I was "over." The low-grade anxiety about something I can't quite name. These don't go away just because I'm not looking at them. They sit in the body, leaking weight into everything.

Futures I'm anxious about but haven't faced. The money thing. The health thing. The "what happens if this doesn't work out" thing. Each of these is a tab that opens automatically every time my brain has a spare moment — and then minimizes again before I can actually deal with it.

This reframes the whole "put your phone down" conversation

I'm not saying phones don't matter. They absolutely do. But the reason the phone is so magnetic isn't because the content is that compelling. It's because my mind is looking for anything to avoid sitting with the stuff that's actually heavy.

The phone is an escape hatch. The real question is: escape from what?

If the only thing weighing on me was a Twitter timeline, putting down the phone would feel like relief. But often, when I do put it down, the heaviness doesn't lift. It just gets louder. Because now I'm actually in the room with whatever I was running from.

This is why "digital detox" often feels like a scam. You clear your notifications, take a weekend off screens, and… still feel foggy. Maybe even foggier. Because you removed the anesthetic but not the wound.

The weight of things half-done

There's a specific type of distraction that I think deserves its own category: the half-finished thing.

The email you started drafting but never sent. The apology you've been meaning to make. The decision you've been "thinking about" for six months. The book you stopped reading halfway but haven't admitted you're not going to finish.

Each of these has a cost. Not because they're important — sometimes they're not — but because they're open. They're loops your brain can't close.

I think this is partly why doing the dishes feels satisfying beyond any practical benefit. You started something, you finished it, the loop closed. Your brain can let it go.

But how many loops have you opened that can't be closed by washing them? Things that require a harder conversation, a clearer decision, an honest look at yourself?

The heavy mind isn't just overstimulated. It's full of unfinished business.

What's actually heavy: a partial list

The more I pay attention, the more I notice the actual sources of weight. Not necessarily the obvious ones.

• Saying yes when you mean no. Every time. Tiny leak, continuous drain.
• Knowing what you need to do but not doing it. Not because it's hard, but because you're avoiding something. That avoidance itself is the weight.
• Caring about something you simultaneously tell yourself you don't care about. The internal contradiction burns energy.
• Living out of alignment with what you actually value. This one is subtle. You can have a perfectly good life that's somehow not yours. That wrongness accumulates.
• Unspoken things. The gratitude you never expressed. The truth you're hiding. The boundary you haven't set. All of it has mass.

And then, yes, also:

• The notifications. The feeds. The news. The outrage. The endless scroll.

But these are the trivial distractions. The serious ones live in your relationships, your choices, your sense of self. Those are the 50-pound weights in your backpack. The phone is a pebble by comparison.

Why boredom helps (and why it's terrifying)

Here's something I've noticed: when I let myself do nothing — genuinely nothing, no input, no task — the heaviness gets worse before it gets better.

The first few minutes feel itchy. Unbearable. My brain starts scanning for something, anything. The compulsion to check, to scroll, to distract.

But if I stay in it longer, something else happens. The sediment starts to settle. And then the things that were running in the background start surfacing.

Oh right. I'm stressed about that conversation I've been avoiding.

Oh right. I don't actually want to be doing this project.

Oh right. I feel disconnected from the people closest to me and I don't know how to fix it.

This is, I think, why we reach for the phone. Not because Instagram is so captivating. Because stillness is confrontational. Boredom is where you meet yourself — and sometimes you don't want to.

The lightness doesn't come from removing distractions. It comes from letting the stuff beneath them surface, and then actually dealing with it.

What I'm trying (not advice, just notes)

I don't have this figured out. But a few things seem to help:

Name the tabs. When the fog shows up, I try to ask: what's actually running in my background right now? What am I avoiding? Sometimes just naming it takes some of the weight off. Oh, I'm anxious about money. That's the tab. Doesn't fix it, but at least I know what I'm carrying.

Close the closable loops. Not everything can be resolved immediately. But some things can. The email you've been putting off. The decision you already know the answer to. The thing you just need to do. Every closed loop is lighter weight.

Have the conversation. The one you're avoiding. The weight of anticipation is almost always heavier than the reality.

Notice what you're using the phone for. Not "how much screen time" — that's the wrong metric. The question is: what am I escaping from when I reach for it? Sometimes I'm just bored and that's fine. But sometimes I'm burying something. The phone tells me what I don't want to look at.

Get comfortable with the discomfort of stillness. This is the hard one. The practice of sitting with the fog until it clears. It doesn't feel productive. It doesn't feel good. But it's where the weight actually gets processed.

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I keep coming back to Naval's framing: heavy and light.

But now I read it differently than I did at first.

The distractions he's pointing at aren't just pings and feeds. They're anything that fragments your attention — including the internal ones. The unmade decisions. The unlived truths. The things you're carrying that you don't want to look at.

A light mind isn't a mind that consumes less content. It's a mind that's finished its business. Closed its loops. Said the thing. Made the call. Faced the thing.

The fog lifts when there's nothing left to avoid.

I'm not there. But I'm starting to see what the weight is actually made of.