Your engine is overheating

I took this photo in 2016 because the scene just seemed worth capturing: a street-facing door packed floor to ceiling with books and stuff. I had just arrived in Santiago and everything felt fascinating. I didn't know what I'd use it for, but I kept it anyway. Looking at it today, besides being reminded of Monica Geller's door from Friends, I notice that even if I wanted to, I couldn't get in. It's full.

A door that technically invites you in and practically slaps you in the face. Santiago de Chile, 2016.

Books, books, and more books stacked to the ceiling, no order, no air, no room to squeeze through.

An excess of devalued information. The door technically invites you in and practically slaps you in the face.

Sometimes I notice my head feels like that, and every now and then I look into why. One thing I've learned is that when you overexpose yourself to too many creative stimuli at once, your thoughts get jammed up and your body reacts, sometimes with mental blocks, overwhelm, the urge to throw everything out.

But it's not that your creativity turns off. It's that your engine overheats.

Pinterest, Instagram, references, trends, tutorials, screenshots, accounts you follow for no real reason, content you consume without knowing why. It all gets in, and at some point your brain says enough, and what felt like inspiration turns into noise. You want to make everything you see and end up making nothing. The block didn't come from inside. It came from outside, disguised as inspiration. Bold move.

I read in Las Olas, by El Gato y la Caja*, that anxiety lives in the gap between what you want to do and what you feel you can do. And that's exactly what happens: it's not that you don't have ideas. It's that you have too many, all at once, and you want to do all of them, right now.

The problem isn't absorbing. It's losing track of why you absorb. At some point you stop searching for what you need and start grabbing whatever the algorithm throws at you. And right there, in that exact moment, you lose contact with what's yours.

Ever been to the supermarket and walked out with your brain fried just from staring at too many similar products, when buying the same thing online, no distractions, takes five minutes and zero stress? You go straight for what you want and that's it. I think it's the same thing. Barry Schwartz (The Paradox of Choice) studied exactly this: when we have too many options, the brain doesn't expand, it freezes. Multiplicity doesn't free us, it stresses us out. We do better with less to choose from and more to go deep on.

Dropping that load lowers the saturation. Lowers the anxiety. And as a result, lowers the cortisol your body was producing on permanent alert mode. Being a Marie Kondo of the visual and audiovisual content you consume, cleaning up your resources, unsubscribing, muting, letting go, clears your mind in a way that feels physical.

Moving forward on concrete ideas weighs less than carrying every idea in the world competing for space in your head. You don't need all of them. Drop the ones that don't belong as soon as you can.

*I really recommend this book. It'll hit close to home in ways you might not expect.