Why Do 'Awakening' and 'Inspiration' Never Come? — The True Nature of the Brain Bug That Makes Work and Study 'Spin Their Wheels'

In my previous post, I explained the 'synchronization of 5% and 95%.' If you can achieve that, life becomes a series of 'awakenings' and 'aha moments.'

However, what is the reality? You sit at your desk, but within minutes you are thinking about your smartphone, and only during important tasks do distractions like 'Did I reply to that email?' intrude. Even when you get into bed at night, your brain continues to calculate 'tomorrow's anxieties,' and you wake up in the morning with a chronic lack of resources...

This is not because you lack willpower. It is because modern society itself is designed as the 'worst kind of malware' that devours your 5% sanctuary.

I will elucidate the fatal bug that causes our brain's OS to fall into a 'spinning state' where it cannot move forward even an inch.

1. 'Interrupt': Forced Termination of the Awakening Process

Last time, I stated that 'awakening (the zone)' is a state where the 5% and 95% are connected by a single high-speed highway. However, what is happening in the brains of modern people is a situation where a 'giant wall' called smartphone notifications is dropped onto this highway every few minutes.

There is a fatal bug here that many people misunderstand. It is the assumption that 'if I don't pick up my smartphone, my concentration is maintained.'

Let me state the conclusion. Even if you don't pick up your smartphone, the moment it makes a sound or vibrates, your concentration is 'physically' broken.

According to a 2008 study by Professor Gloria Mark and her colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, it has been revealed that once an 'interrupt' occurs during work, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to the original state of deep concentration.

Even if you don't check the notification, why does the system force a termination?

● The high-load task of 'ignoring':
The moment a sound is made, 95% of your brain (survival instinct) reacts forcibly, asking 'What is that sound?' Even if you decide with your 5% (consciousness) to 'ignore it,' a new task is launched in your brain that consumes energy to 'keep ignoring the notification.' At this point, 100% immersion in the work becomes impossible, and the synchronization is physically severed.

● The hell of 'context switching':
Every time the brain switches its OS from 'work settings' to 'smartphone settings (ignore settings),' it consumes a massive amount of energy. Even if the time spent looking at the smartphone is zero seconds, the predictive calculation of 'who is contacting me?' remains in the back of the brain like a resident app that cannot be terminated, and it wanders for 23 minutes looking for the 'correct entrance' to return to the original task.

● Battery depletion:
By the time you finally return to the original task, more than half of your 5% battery (willpower) has already been drained. The feeling you have in the evening of 'being exhausted for no reason even though nothing has progressed.' The true nature of this is system fatigue caused by this 'all-out sprint for an invisible reboot.'

In other words, your smartphone is a vampire (taker) that keeps sucking away your 5% resources just by existing.

2. 'Zombie Processes': Unfinished Tasks That Devour the 5%

What happens after this 'forced termination' of the system is the occupation of resources by the most troublesome 'unresolved zombies.'

Even if the time spent looking at the smartphone is zero seconds, the moment a notification sound rings, a predictive calculation starts in the back of the brain: 'Who is contacting me?', 'Is it an urgent matter?', 'Is it a reply to that issue?'. This continues to reside as a 'zombie process' that cannot be terminated unless the task is closed.

The reason why the OS of modern people is heavy is none other than because these 'unprocessed packets' are filling up the memory.

● The fear of memory leaks:
Even if you think you are concentrating on your current work, the anxiety calculation of 'what should I do about that?' is eating up resources in the corner of your brain.

● The disappearance of the aha moment:
As I mentioned last time, inspiration requires 5% of 'free space.' However, the 5% of modern people is always packed (it is no exaggeration to say that usage is 99%) with these zombie processes. Even if the 95% throws the 'best answer,' it is all dropped (discarded) as an error because there is no buffer to receive it.

3. The Infinite Loop of 'Comparison Operations': Overheating Your CPU with Other People's Lives

The heaviest process in modern society. That is 'comparison with others through social media and educational systems.' Not only numerical values like academic background and annual income, but in the modern age, even external factors like 'facial attractiveness,' 'physique,' and 'fashion' consume 5% of our resources as a 24-hour operating comparison engine.

The root of this curse lies in the evaluation settings that education and social environments have spent years writing into our OS: 'Fill the gap between yourself and the correct answer (the average).' This setting does not disappear even when we become adults; we constantly compare ourselves with ideal forms and trendy styles, and we become unable to stop the calculations meant to fill that 'difference.'

Why do we care so much about appearance and ranking? It is nothing more than a malfunction of the 'survival instinct' deep within the brain. In primitive times, physical attractiveness and high status within a group were directly linked to priority for food and reproduction—in other words, 'life.' Therefore, for the modern brain, falling behind trends or having one's body shape change is processed not as a mere matter of preference, but as a serious error signal: 'the risk of being excluded from the group (= death).'

As a result, the worst kind of algorithm, one that can never produce an answer, begins an infinite loop inside our brains.

“That person is earning so much and succeeding, yet I am...”
“That person is so beautiful and youthful, yet I am...”
“That person has such a fulfilling holiday (or family), yet I am...”

Once these questions start running, they do not stop. This is because data of people 'above you' exists infinitely on social media, and no matter how much you update yourself, the system immediately finds 'even higher-level data' and forces you to perform difference calculations (comparisons) all over again.

In other words, you are dedicating 5% of your precious resources entirely to the simulation of the noise known as 'other people's gazes.' At that moment, the CPU overheats from the overload, and the system meant to operate your true self freezes completely.

Comparison is the least cost-effective operation, using your own OS to endlessly run uncertain simulations of 'how others evaluate me.'

Conclusion: You are not 'out of gas,' you are 'system down'

Modern people do not lack ability. It is just that they are not utilizing their high-performance 95% of resources at all because of trivial noise that occupies their meager 5% of memory.

The highway is congested, the memory is leaking, and the CPU is overheating from other people's calculations. Trying to 'do your best' in this state is as meaningless as hitting a frozen PC to try and fix it.

(I was born in the Showa era, so I often used to hit CRT TVs with poor reception to fix them, but...)

So, how can we remove this bug and reclaim the 'sanctuary' I spoke of last time? In the next post, I want to expose the true nature of the 'Resource Takers' who manipulate your 5% from behind the scenes and plunder your resources entirely.