Why Sensory Womb? Your Mind Is like a Kanban Sheet.

For instance, why do some people chronically feel fatigued at work, while others work around the clock without ever getting tired? The key to maintaining stamina and mental health in the professional world of 2024 is understanding the difference between being *overworked* and *overstimulated.*

Your working memory is like a kanban sheet — only a limited number of stimuli can be processed at a time. This means that you can only handle juggling a limited number of projects.

So, if you feel chronic fatigue despite taking rest regularly, try the following. Create yourself a “sensory womb” while working: a sensory deprivation chamber that will help you focus on the essentials of your work. In this article, we will briefly list the best practices to create a sensory womb at home. This kind of approach is really at the heart of cognitive debt and the future of work, since so much of modern fatigue comes from constant overstimulation rather than physical effort.

1. Decrease Luminance on Your Screen.

The blue light luminance on your device has a major impact on your well-being, as it affects your mood, sleep, and general health. For this reason, it is better to decrease the luminance on screen. To further decrease sensory input of blue light to your senses, it is a good idea to switch the color palette to black-and-white on your phone by putting on a color filter.

2. Separate Yourself from Bright Lights.

Also bright lights from the outer world can be distractive during deep work, especially when you suffer from sensory overload. You can use curtains or blinds on sunny days, and additionally tune down the artificial lighting during the evenings.

What More Habits Can Reduce Sensory Overload?

3. Put on Complete Silence.

While in the deep work mode, you can use earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones to silence your environment entirely, or play some music gently massaging your brain such as binaural beats.

4. Clean Your Plate.

Remove all the unnecessary items from your workstation; moreover, declutter the area. Declutter your desk and, for example, remove anything except your laptop, a desk lamp, and a coffee cup. A clean workstation like this is one of the simplest self-development tools for professionals looking to protect their focus.

5. Focus.

Our minds work sequentially. Even if it feels like you can engage in another activity — for example, listening to a podcast — while working, it will still slow you down.

So, always focus on just one activity at a time, despite it feeling less productive for the time being.

What Habits Help You Avoid Overstimulation?

6. Limit Access to Interactive Electronic Devices.

Switch off your phone for most of the day; similarly, limit background notifications. Switch off sound notifications completely. Small changes like this show exactly how cognitive debt affects productivity long before anyone feels truly exhausted.

7. Create To-Do-Lists.

Don’t keep any to-do lists in your working memory, for it will slow down your work. Move all the to-do points to a physical notebook, or onto your personal computer. Also, create a separate list for little, non-essential tasks. A written system like this doubles as one of the simplest personal development tools for self-reflection.

How Can You Build Better Focus Habits Over Time?

8. Include Procrastination in your Schedule.

Creativity and inspiration often come from boredom. Furthermore, schedule blocks of time for doing absolutely nothing—no particular plan, no expectations of results. Boredom does miracles. Protecting space for boredom is an underrated way to guard against cognitive debt and career burnout.

9. Focus On One Sense.

Additionally, schedule blocks of time for focusing on one sense at a time. For instance, close your eyes and listen to sounds of a forest or close your eyes, eat a piece of fruit, and fully focus on its taste. Exercises like this are a good reminder of how cognitive debt impacts career choices long before people notice the toll.

10. Eliminate Caffeine.

Caffeine is an addictive psychostimulant. Therefore, try to exchange psychoactive substances such as black coffee or black tea with their healthy counterparts such as decaf coffee and herbal tea to avoid caffeine.

Protecting Your Energy and Attention

11. Be Picky about People and Projects.

Be selective about projects and people to work with; learn to say “no” to new projects and others dropping their tasks onto your desk. Try to limit business trips and loud meetings, or block them in time, and schedule some time for relaxing afterwards.

12. Cut Yourself From Negativity.

Limit the load of (negative) news about the areas of politics and economy that do not personally affect you or your business. For instance, it might be a good idea to stop watching evening news entirely. At first, it sounds like cutting yourself away from the world but once you spend some time away from mainstream media, you will experience the positive benefits.

13. Cut Yourself From Advertisements.

Yes, we all need to use the Internet for work; consequently, there is no way around it. But, what wastes your mind is not the content you seek online; it’s the myriad of advertisements, banners, and other distractions that pop in front of your eyes. So, use ad banners when possible, and use clean ad-free AI solutions such as GPT or Perplexity for online search instead of the “traditional” Google search.

What If Sensory Womb Doesn’t Help You? On the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Did you try to create  sensory womb at your (home) office and feel that you are still distracted? If none of advice listed above helps you to get into the state of focus, you might actually suffer from a chronic fatigue syndrome — according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Translational Medicine, its prevalence among adults worldwide ranges between 0.4% and 2.5%, and it is growing year by year. In that case, therefore, seek professional medical help as it’s a serious medical condition.