Habits to make sure you don't go insane

[nyxtom]

*Attention Discipline*: Protect your ability to hold a single thought. Constant context-switching and dopamine-drip content degrades capacity to think clearly and erosion of this can surface as anxiety or depression before realizing what is actually root cause.

*Know and Be known*: Be in regular proximity with people who know you and care about you and you care about them. Reciprocal care and community.

*Prepare and eat real food*: Not just basic nutrition, but the act of cooking. This ritual is grounding and hands on and removing this entirely separates something so fundamental to life.

*Hydrate*: Cognitive function rapidly degrades with something that can be so simply addressed.

*Sleep rhythm* Constant circadian disruption can often induce symptoms that look like psychiatric disorders.

*Physical exertion*: Your body needs to be physically tired regularly or your nervous system will start misfiring. Anxiety, restlessness, racing thoughts is a lot of just an under-used body.

*Sunlight* Light exposure regulates so much downstream biology that being indoors for days starts warping your sense of time and mood in subtle ways.

*Use your hands* Build something, fix something, cook, play an instrument, do something tangible so you aren't fixated on knowledge work.

*Silence and stillness* Walk, sit, pray, meditate, - make this unstructured processing time without constant signal and input.