The Operating System You Can't Upgrade

Your brain wasn't designed for 2025.

It evolved to notice faces, track the weather, and remember where the good berries grow.

Not to process 200 texts, scroll past 1,000 images, hold opinions on twelve different crises, remember what you saw on three streaming services, and still figure out what's for dinner.

We keep adding inputs because we can. Because we're told we must. Because everyone else does.

But your prefrontal cortex—the part doing the heavy lifting—can only juggle about four things before it starts dropping them.

Four. Not forty.

Every notification is a tap on the shoulder. Every headline is a claim on your attention. Every auto-playing video wants a moment.

And while the inputs keep multiplying, your attention doesn't.

You're not broken because you can't keep up. The system is designed to exceed your capacity.

Getting your stuff done—the stuff that actually matters to you—isn't about keeping up. It's about protecting the space where clear thinking happens. Where you can hear yourself. Where you remember what you wanted to do with your one short life.

The inbox in your head has a capacity.

What deserves to be there?