Mental rest

Mental fatigue is not a shortage of intelligence. It is a shortage of quiet. Decisions, tabs, half-finished thoughts and the low hum of remembering things all draw from the same account, and the account is not refilled by scrolling.

You know you need it when you read the same paragraph three times, cannot decide what to eat, or lie awake replaying conversations. The mind is still running, just with nothing productive to run on.

Mental rest is not emptiness. It is offloading. Write the open loops down so your head is not the storage system. Take short breaks between cognitive tasks rather than pushing through five hours and collapsing.

Today: park a notebook next to you and empty the open loops onto it once, mid-afternoon. Notice whether the noise drops.