Psychologist says these 5 habits are giving us ‘brain rot.’ Here’s how to easily fix them.

“Multitasking is making you dumber.”

Mark Wales

Aug 21, 2025

By Mark Wales

August 21, 2025

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Photo credit: Image via Canva – Lost in thought and walking for inspiration.

The human brain is a complex and capable organ. We put it through many troubling exercises, which might include thinking about work, play, what we have to do, what we can’t get to, and, probably, even thinking about thinking. T. Alexander Puutio, Ph.D., a teacher at Harvard and Columbia, shared with Psychology Today five habits that are making us dumber every day.

One of the first rules of problem-solving is understanding what’s causing the problem. Only then can we uncover the proper solutions. “Brain rot” can be linked to five common offenders that prevent us from reaching our fullest potential.

sleep deprivation, sleep, cognitive performance, decision-making, brain, brain health — A woman deprived of her sleep. Image via Canva – Photo by Prostock-studio

5 major mental mistakes we make and the uncommon solutions:

1. Sleep deprivation

Getting enough sleep is extremely important for our health. Having a good night’s sleep tonight has direct effects on your cognitive abilities tomorrow—and even decades later. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute reported on a study in 2024 that found adults in their ’30s and ’40s who had trouble sleeping showed poorer cognitive performance even a decade later. This decline wasn’t just from poor sleep quality but also the duration of poor sleep. “Skip it, and you degrade performance in measurable ways where our executive function dulls and our decision-making falters,” said Puutio. “Other research shows that even modest nightly sleep restriction impairs attention, working memory, mood, and judgment.”

Solution: Take time to be bored

The brain can restore itself in a ‘default state,’ according to Ashok Seshadri, M.D. of Mayo Clinic Health System. This is the normal way of recuperation, where we can internally reflect and encourage imagination. When the brain is extremely focused and performing an intense activity, it consumes large amounts of energy. The constant stimulation can be extremely hard on our nervous system. Taken in small doses, boredom is a helpful counterbalance to the highly stimulating and intense technological lives we live today. PsyPost shared on the benefits of finding moments for boredom, saying, “We need to embrace the pause. It is a space where creativity can prosper, emotions can be regulated, and the nervous system can reset.”

2. A fixed idea on how smart we are

It’s sometimes easy to get lost in an idea that we are only a certain level of smart. Even though we may learn new things, we think we have a limited bandwidth. Puutio writes, “By far the most performance-reducing habit is treating the brain as if it’s a fixed fixture. Psychologists call this the entity theory of intelligence, which is simply the belief that ability is innate and unchangeable.” We have a lifetime of learning behind us that suggests these thoughts just aren’t true.

Solution: The frustration zone

Proving this “fixed intelligence” idea wrong can be as simple as basic puzzle solving. The brain can reorganize and strengthen connections in response to hard tasks. Stepping just a little bit out of your intellectual comfort zone can have dramatic, positive effects. Occupational Therapist Sarah Bence wrote for Verywell Health, “Long-term brain-training activities can improve your working memory, verbal memory, and global functioning. Challenging yourself to try new activities can also improve brain functioning through a process called neuroplasticity.”

Science Direct published a study in July of 2025 about neuroplastic brain breakthroughs. It found that, “A deeper understanding of neuroplasticity—encompassing synaptic, structural, and functional adaptations—has dramatically expanded therapeutic possibilities.” And that, “… neuroplasticity-based interventions offer unprecedented opportunities for recovery, learning, and even cognitive enhancement…”

3. Our brains are lacking structure

You might have heard the term scatterbrained. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as, “Having or showing a forgetful, disorganized, or unfocused mind.” The brain prefers and flourishes doing the exact opposite of this. Puutio writes, “Our brains thrive on structure, purpose, and deadlines. Without them, we drift unfocused, sabotaging any spark of creativity we hoped to ignite.” He continues, “… even the most brilliant thinkers need disciplined structure to function at full capacity.”

Solution: Engaged in “single tasking”

It is a common belief that multitasking is not only an important ability but a true sign of intelligence. However, your brain cannot engage two cognitive tasks at once. It shifts focus back and forth between the two subjects. Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Ph.D., shared in Psychology Today that many modern techniques center around concentrating on one task at a time. Multitaskers are way less productive. A 2024 study in the National Library of Medicine found significant cognitive costs when people were task-switching. Tackling one obstacle at a time optimizes human performance and leads to improved cognitive function.

4. Filling our brains with low-grade distractions

Puutio writes, “It’s the mental equivalent of leaving candy on your desk when you’re on a diet.” He continues, “Place it in a steady drip of bad inputs, gossip, outrage, and low-grade distraction, and it will inevitably adapt downward.” Your brain is adaptive and will shift toward exactly where you send it. Scrolling through unhealthy images and engaging with toxic trolls on the Internet will inevitably cause you problems. Stimulating your mind with images just because you can, or you’re feeling lazy, can be a real energy drain.

Solution: Take a thought walk

think walks, low-grade distractions, rhythmic stride, inhibitory control, walking, Alzheimer's disease, Looney Tunes — A Looney Tunes classic. media3.giphy.com

Mindful walking has important, positive effects on the brain. One specific technique can be establishing a rhythmic stride. A study in 2021 in the National Library of Medicine found that establishing a consistent pace supported short and long-term cognitive benefits. Participants in the study showed improvements in inhibitory control, selective attention, and overall executive function. Science Daily reported a 2023 study on walking that found regular walks strengthened the connections “in and between” brain networks. Taking a “thought walk” has also been shown to slow the onset of Alzheimer’s disease in older adults.

5. Alcohol

If you’ve had more than a few glasses of alcohol, you know exactly how it can change your thought patterns. Heavy drinking causes literal damage to the brain. Alzheimer’s disease is 41% more common in heavy drinkers, according to an autopsy-based study referenced by Puutio in his aforementioned Psychology Today article. Heavy drinkers were shown to have significantly higher odds of developing vascular brain lesions (as much as 133% higher probability). “Alcohol is perhaps the most obvious form of self-sabotage,” said Puutio. “[People] consuming eight or more alcoholic drinks per week is linked to clear markers of brain injury.”

Solution: Have a mocktail instead

The habit of not drinking has been a growing trend since the pandemic. A 2025 Gallup Poll shared by NPR found that only 50% of Americans aged 18 to 34 say they drink alcohol. And, 66% believe drinking even in moderation has harmful effects. According to the World Health Organization, scientists believe ‘any’ amount of alcohol can increase the risk of cancer, lead to depression and anxiety, and show negative effects on general health.

According to a story in the Houston Chronicle, restaurant franchises like Taco Bell are implementing a mocktail menu. The company hopes to boost its beverage sales to five billion dollars by the year 2030 by offering energy drinks and agua frescas of strawberry passion fruit, dragon fruit, berry, and mango peach. Business Insider reported that traditional bars will have to serve non alcoholic options to remain competitive. With more people consuming fewer alcoholic drinks or stopping completely, restaurants looking to maintain sales margins will have to adapt.

complex organ, alcohol, mocktails, brain function, positive habits, age related disease, anxiety, depression — Artist's rendering of a brain overlaid a woman's head. Image via Canva – Photo by geralt

The brain is a very complex organ that requires attention and positive habits to maintain healthy function. Many of the diseases that afflict the brain as we get older can be avoided or more successfully navigated through positive actions today. Every person has their own experiences when it comes to mental health and brain function, but the professionals seem to agree: treat yourself well or face the consequences.

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Photo credit: Canva – A woman intensely exercises, left, and a morning stretch, right.

Care, Health

More women are rejecting ‘optimization culture’ for realistic wellness plans

Feel great and be happy.

Mark Wales

5/16/2026

Being fit used to mean getting enough sleep, drinking more water, and moving your body, perhaps in a daily walk. With the explosion of social media and digital self-help trends, finding an acceptable level of wellness can feel like stepping into a full-time job with daily performance reviews.

For many women, what started as self-care has slowly become another exhausting form of self-optimization. And increasingly, they’re pretty much done with it. According to Women’s Business Daily, one of the biggest wellness shifts happening right now is a move away from extreme routines. Women want habits that actually fit into real life.

An intense workout.
Photo credit: Canva

Wellness feels like a full-time job

Instead of chasing perfection, more women are choosing what can be described as a more realistic approach to wellness, incorporating sustainable routines built around balance and emotional well-being rather than climbing a never-ending ladder of constant improvement.

The shift comes after a solid decade of what many refer to online as “optimization culture.” This exhausting idea assumes that every part of life needs to be carefully measured, improved, and optimized.

Experts believe this mindset is not only making people miserable; it’s unsustainable.

An exhausting routine.
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A backlash against the “always improve yourself” culture

A recent article in Psychology Today found that “wellnessmaxxing” trends turn self-care into another form of anxiety. This is especially true when routines become so demanding that people feel more guilt than relief. As creators post TikToks showing themselves “maxing out” in some kind of self-congratulation, they spread unhelpful expectations that no longer promote self-care.

Verywell Health explains that these influencers broadcast an all-consuming performance metric. People now face a painful realization that they can never do enough. It’s hard to miss the irony that wellness has begun to feel unhealthy.

Women are increasingly embracing low-pressure routines instead of overly aspirational ones. Think walks instead of cross-training, and a morning meditation instead of a week-long stay at a Tibetan monastery. It’s okay to just eat more vegetables instead of a perfectly balanced daily nutrition plan of 150 grams of protein, wheatgrass smoothies, and specifically rated pH-balanced alkaline water.

After all the extreme exercises, self-help books, and sophisticated meal plans, it’s time to get back to basics. Here’s one version of a realistic plan: drink some water, get outside, and try to sleep a little better.

A casual walk with a dog.
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Getting back to the basics

A beauty editor writing for Who What Wear documented her attempt to follow a social-media-inspired wellness reset. With all the expensive and complicated habits she hoped would unlock the “incredibly high-functioning, ultra-productive version” of herself, she came away understanding that she should stick with the basics.

Modern life already asks women to juggle careers, caregiving, appearance standards, finances, and relationships. Somewhere along the journey, wellness became just one more category to add to the pile.

Maintaining a perfect life balance.
Photo credit: Canva

Women are choosing simple, sustainable routines

Finding realistic wellness is a trend that reflects a growing desire for community-centered wellness rather than isolated self-improvement. Instead of wellness looking like a solo pursuit for an achievement award, many women are leaning toward connection: walking groups, shared meals, accountability with friends, and being honest about feeling burned out on all of it.

The Times reports that people feel walking groups are less intimidating and more emotionally supportive. People don’t just want fitness; they want to belong to something.

A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology focused on the benefits of women finding social support groups. Programs that incorporated women’s preferences into their daily lives were more likely to be enjoyed and maintained.

Wellness cultures have told women the answer is to do more: more discipline, more self-reflection, more perfect sleep, more work dedication, more family direction, more effort.

Making life more enjoyable and realistic can help well-being feel easier to maintain. A joyful life is better lived “in” than constantly measured “against” unrealistic expectations.

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Photo credit: MoMo Productions/DigitalVision via Getty Images – Emphasizing the sounds of certain words to young children can help them retain language, not confuse them about speaking properly.

Health, Research

Is baby talk bad? Why ‘parentese’ actually helps babies learn language

Sing-song speech can support early language growth.

Good Partner

5/15/2026

Karen Stollznow

Many parents have heard the warning: Don’t use baby talk with babies and toddlers. Instead, caregivers are often encouraged to speak properly and use adultlike language, out of concern that simplified speech could confuse children or delay language development.

But my research, which I highlighted in in my new book, “Beyond Words,” suggests the opposite is true. The sing-song voice many adults instinctively use with infants, sometimes called “baby talk” but more accurately known as “parentese” or infant-directed speech, actually helps children learn language.

Far from confusing babies, exaggerating phrases like “Loooook at the doggie!” capture their attention, help them detect patterns in speech and strengthen social bonding.

And the funny mistakes children make along the way, such as saying “goed,” instead of “went,” or “mouses” instead of “mice,” are not signs that children are learning language incorrectly. They are evidence that children are actively working out the rules of language for themselves.

Speaking ‘parentese’ to a child doesn’t involve nonsense words. BjelicaS/E+ via Getty Images

What parentese really is

When many people think of baby talk, they imagine nonsense phrases like “goo goo ga ga” or made-up words like “num nums.” But that’s not what linguists and developmental psychologists mean by parentese.

Parentese uses real words and grammatically correct sentences, but with exaggerated intonation, a higher pitch, stretched-out vowels and a slower rhythm. Think of the way a caregiver might naturally say: “Hi, baaaaby! Are you huuungry?”

There is little evidence that occasional playful nonsense words harm children’s language development. But studies suggest that parentese in particular helps babies pay attention to speech, recognize patterns and engage socially.

Adults across cultures tend to speak this way to infants instinctively. Even people who swear they never use baby talk often slip into it around babies.

Researchers have found that infants actually prefer listening to parentese over regular adult speech. The exaggerated sounds and slower pacing make language easier to process. Babies are better able to pick out individual sounds, notice word boundaries and recognize patterns. In other words, parentese helps tune babies into language.

It also strengthens emotional connection. Language learning does not happen in isolation. Babies learn through warm, responsive interaction with caregivers during feeding, play, bath time and everyday routines.

Interestingly, humans are not the only ones who respond to this style of communication. Studies have even shown that cats react more positively when people use a baby-talk voice with them.

Babies are not passive learners

Children do not learn language simply by copying adults word for word. They actively test hypotheses about how language works. That is why toddlers make predictable and surprisingly logical mistakes.

One common example is overgeneralization. A child learns that people form the past tense of many verbs by adding “-ed,” so they produce forms like “goed,” “eated” or “comed.”

These are not random errors. In fact, they show that the child has understood a grammatical rule and is trying to apply it consistently. The problem is simply that English is full of irregular exceptions. The same thing happens with plurals. Children may say “foots” instead of “feet” or “mouses” instead of “mice.” Again, the logic behind these errors is sound.

Linguists sometimes say that children are little scientists, constantly testing patterns and revising their understanding as they receive more input from the world around them.

Why toddlers call everything a ‘dog’

Young children also make predictable mistakes with meaning.

A toddler might learn the word “dog” and then use it for every four-legged animal they encounter. Linguists call this overextension. On the flip side, some children use words too narrowly. A child may use “dog” only for the family pet and not recognize that other dogs belong in the same category. Linguists call this tendency underextension.

These mistakes reveal how children organize and categorize the world around them. They are gradually mapping words onto objects, people and experiences.

Pronouns are another tricky area. Small children often confuse “me” and “you” because these words constantly shift depending on who is speaking. If a parent says, “I’ll pick you up,” the child hears themselves called “you.” But when they try to repeat the sentence, they may not yet understand that the labels switch from speaker to speaker.

This is why toddlers sometimes say things that sound unintentionally cute or confusing. But beneath the confusion is a sophisticated learning process.

Even the Cookie Monster gets it wrong

Children’s speech errors are so recognizable that they often appear in popular culture. Sesame Street’s character Cookie Monster famously says things like “Me want cookie,” while Elmo often refers to himself in the third person: “Elmo wants this.” These speech patterns mirror real stages of child language development. Young children commonly confuse pronouns or refer to themselves by name before mastering forms like “I,” “me” and “mine.”

Despite occasional complaints from adults, there is no evidence that hearing this kind of speech harms children’s language development. If anything, it reflects the natural experimentation children go through.

The Cookie Monster saying ‘Me want cookie’ won’t teach babies and young kids to speak incorrectly. Brian Killian/WireImage via Getty Images

‘Pasketti’ and ‘wabbit’

Pronunciation develops gradually too. Young children often simplify difficult sounds and groups of consonants. “Spaghetti” becomes “pasketti,” “rabbit” becomes “wabbit” and “yellow” may come out as “lellow.”

Speech-language specialists call these simplifications phonological processes. They are a normal part of development because some sounds are physically harder to produce than others. Sounds such as r, th, sh and ch tend to develop later because they require more precise control of the tongue and mouth.

Most children naturally outgrow these pronunciation patterns as their speech matures. However, persistent difficulties can sometimes signal a speech or language disorder, which may require professional support.

Children don’t learn language by copying adults word for word. They learn through interaction, experimentation and repetition. DrAfter123/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images

Mistakes are part of learning

Parents are often under enormous pressure to do everything right, including helping their children learn to speak a language. But children do not learn language by avoiding mistakes. They learn through interaction, experimentation and repetition.

Parentese helps babies focus on speech and engage socially. The funny mistakes toddlers make reveal that they are actively piecing together the complex system of language and are often signs of normal development. Language acquisition is messy, creative and remarkably sophisticated.

Speaking in an exaggerated sing-song voice to a baby is not something parents and caregivers need to feel embarrassed about.

Far from harming language acquisition, it may help lay the foundation for it.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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Photo credit: Canva – Women enjoy a short walk.

Health, Well-being

People who dread working out are trying ‘micro walks,’ and the results feel great

Why doing less actually leads to more.

Mark Wales

5/15/2026

For many people, working out isn’t the hard part. It’s everything that comes with it: the time commitment, the pressure of consistency, and the feeling that only full workouts count.

That all-or-nothing mindset keeps a lot of people from even getting started. This might explain why a small idea has been gaining traction. Instead of setting aside an hour or two to exercise, people are taking “micro walks” instead.

Two women enjoy a quick “micro walk.”
Photo credit: Canva

“Micro walks” are simple and still provide the benefits

A loop around the block in the morning. A quick break between meetings or events on the daily schedule. Perhaps another lap after dinner. These short walks sprinkled throughout the day might seem too simple to matter.

For a growing number of people, the simplicity is what makes it really work. Doing less at a time, but more often, is what’s resonating. The barrier to entry suddenly drops. People don’t need much motivation. Just a few minutes is enough to get started.

The hidden appeal behind shorter walks

The appeal of a “micro walk” for people dreading a workout isn’t necessarily about peak optimization. The benefits come from gaining momentum. For individuals who have spent years feeling like they’re either all-in or completely off track, this offers a third option.

Short periods of exercise fit into the structure of real life instead of competing with it. Finding the time to set aside large blocks of time can be difficult for many people. Breaking movement into smaller increments makes it far more manageable.

In the end, consistency matters more than perfection. Getting daily steps in becomes something achievable rather than overwhelming.

Research shows that shorter walks work

A 2024 study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a scientific journal recognized for its rigorous reviews, investigated the benefits of different walking patterns. The findings revealed that short walking bursts use more energy than longer continuous walks. Breaking up exercise is more impactful than it seems.

Harvard Health Publishing reported that even brief walks can boost energy and counteract the effects of prolonged sitting. Getting moving has significant heart health advantages, and walking is extremely accessible.

Physical exercise boosts overall well-being

Turning short walks into a mental reset can boost a person’s emotional well-being. Physical exercise stimulates the body, yet it also increases inner harmony. A 2025 study published in Springer Nature found that even a 10-minute walk can meaningfully improve mood regulation. Finding the time for a brief walk can lessen symptoms of anxiety.

A 2024 study published in Nature demonstrated that short activity breaks increase cognitive performance and elevate mood. There are immediate emotional advantages to activities like “micro walks,” not just long-term fitness gains.

Science demonstrates that walking has both physical and emotional benefits. The most common barriers are time and motivation. Shifting from big goals to showing up in small, repeatable moments is what actually matters. “Micro walks” turn movement from something people have to make time for into something that becomes part of how they live. It’s another small step toward finding happiness.

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