To Regain the Power of Thought, Step Down from Thinking: Clearing the Mind and Restoring Cognitive Resources

Sometimes, I feel my mind clear when I am tidying up a room.

I pick up items scattered on the floor or desk one by one and return them to where they belong. As things decrease, the space opens up, and order is gradually restored to what was once chaotic.

I experience a similar sensation when washing dishes after a meal.

I wash the plates, wipe them dry, and put them back on the shelf. I process the items in front of me one by one, and finally, the sink is empty. The beginning and end are clear, and with every movement of my hands, I am steadily approaching completion.

At the golf driving range, my mind clears in a slightly different way.
I set up, swing, listen to the sound of the ball being struck, and watch its trajectory.
I repeat the same motion while focusing on my physical sensations, trying to recreate the beautiful trajectory I have envisioned.

During that time, work problems, emails I haven't replied to yet, and tomorrow's schedule all seem to drift away.

Until now, I thought of these moments as time to 'turn off the switch of thought'.

However, when I think about it carefully, can people really stop thinking?

When I am tidying up, I am judging where to put things. When I am washing dishes, I am looking at the dirt and deciding the order. In golf, I am reading the relationship between my physical state and the ball's trajectory, and adjusting for the next shot.

Thinking has not stopped.

What has changed is not the thinking itself, but how I use my thoughts.

I have shifted from the abstract and diffuse thinking using words that I used for work, to a concrete and limited process centered on the body and senses.

When the mind clears, it is not that we are not thinking about anything.

We have stepped down from the ever-expanding thoughts and returned our attention to the body and actions right in front of us.

Why is it necessary to regain the 'power of thought' now?

After finishing work, there are times when I feel I don't want to think anymore.

I read sentences, but they don't sink in. I cannot hold multiple points of argument at the same time. Options that I should be able to see normally become invisible. I get stuck on one idea and cannot switch to other possibilities.

At such times, I feel as if my power of thought itself has declined.

However, has my ability really been lost?

I suspect that is often not the case.

It is not that the power to think has been lost, but that the surplus of attention, memory, and judgment available for thinking is being continuously consumed by other things.

In other words, the resources for thinking are being occupied by something else.

This problem will become even more important in the future.

Generative AI has become capable of gathering information, organizing it, creating text, and presenting multiple options in a short amount of time.

AI will begin to take on some of the tasks that humans have spent a great deal of time on until now.

However, being able to generate answers is not the same as deciding what should be asked.

In what context should the presented information be received?
What should be trusted, and what should be doubted?
What should be chosen from multiple options?
Who will take responsibility for the consequences of that decision?

The more AI generates answers, the more humans will be required to have the ability to formulate questions, interpret meaning, and make judgments.

That is precisely why what is needed from now on is not just to keep thinking for a long time.

It is to maintain a state where one can think at the necessary depth when necessary.

However, we are constantly exhausting that power to think in our daily lives.

Reacting to notifications.
Switching between multiple tasks.
Keeping unfinished tasks in our heads.
Even after finishing work, looking back at the past and predicting the future.
Taking in even more new information during free time.

While the power to think is becoming more important, the surplus capacity for thinking is being continuously eroded on a daily basis.

Therefore, it is necessary not only to know how to use the power to think, but also to know how to restore it.

Clearing the mind is not simply about calming one's mood.

It is about returning the power to think to a state where it can be exerted once again.

Not lost, but occupied

When our mind and body are tired, we feel like we "can no longer think."

However, it is not as if there is a fuel tank for thoughts in our heads and the remaining amount simply decreases every time we think.

In reality, several different functions are being affected.

The ability to choose what to focus on and maintain attention on that subject.

Working memory, which temporarily holds information while comparing, combining, and updating it.

Executive function, which suppresses unnecessary reactions, switches tasks, and adjusts judgments in response to new information.

Furthermore, there is the capacity to regulate emotions, the motivation to think, and the state of physical arousal.

If we were to express these collectively, we could call them "cognitive resources."

However, cognitive resources is not the name of a single academically established ability.

In this article, I would like to use this term as a general term for the cognitive, emotional, and physical capacity available for thinking.

Restoring cognitive resources is not just about simply replenishing what has been used.

It is also about releasing resources that are being occupied by unnecessary things.

Anxiety is occupying working memory. Notifications are stealing attention. Keeping unfinished tasks in your head so you don't forget them. Ruminating on past events and replaying the same emotions.

In this state, it is not that the ability to think itself has disappeared.

Resources that should be available are being continuously used for other objects.

That is why the act of calming the mind has the meaning of

meaning.

What depletes cognitive resources is an endless load.

When your job involves thinking, it is difficult for work to end in your head.

Even if you come up with one answer, another possibility appears. If you organize the structure, you find new contradictions. Even if you make a judgment, the question of whether it was really the right thing to do remains.

After explaining it to someone, you think about whether there was a better way to say it. If you solve one problem, another problem behind it becomes visible.

The more capable a person is at thinking, the more they tend to increase the subjects they think about.

They look not only at the events in front of them but also at the structures behind them. They consider not only the present but also the impact on the future. They read not only the other person's words but also the intentions and interests hidden beneath them.

Expanding the range of one's thinking improves the quality of work.

However, at the same time, it makes it difficult to close off that thinking.

Tidying up and washing dishes have visible endpoints.

Items return to their original places.
Dishes are put away on shelves.
The sink becomes empty.

Golf also has an end to every single shot.

You set up, swing, the ball flies, and you get a result. Whether it goes well or not, that shot is over for the moment. The next shot can be started fresh.

On the other hand, work-related questions often lack a clear endpoint.

How much thinking is enough?
How much research is correct?
How much should the quality be improved?

Even if a task is formally finished, the questions remain.

This 'sense of incompleteness' continues to linger in the mind.

When thinking about recovering our mind and body, we tend to look for 'ways to avoid stress'.

However, as long as we are working, we cannot completely avoid the load.

Thinking about complex problems uses working memory. Coordinating with others requires controlling one's own emotions. Making repeated judgments uses executive functions to maintain attention, suppress unnecessary reactions, and switch between thoughts.

Even work you love is tiring.
Even challenges you chose yourself carry a load.
Even in a fun game of golf, if you concentrate for a long time, both your body and mind will get tired.

Receiving a load itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

A moderate load helps people focus, draws out their abilities, and encourages growth. A state with no load at all is not necessarily a healthy or fulfilling state.

The problem is that after receiving the load, the reaction to it does not end.

You check your email even after finishing work.
Every time a notification arrives, your consciousness returns to work.
You keep incomplete tasks in your head so as not to forget them.
You replay conversations and wonder if there was another way to say things.
You continue to predict how tomorrow will unfold.

Even when the body has left the workplace, the mind remains connected to work.

In research on recovery from work, recovery is explained as the process by which psychological and physiological stress reactions caused by effort return to their original state.

When demands cease and the load on the same functions is removed, tension and fatigue gradually subside. However, if you continue to work after leaving the office, or keep replaying work in your head, that unwinding process is unlikely to occur.

It is not just the magnitude of the load that tires people out.

It is the fact that the load does not end and continues to persist.

In other words, what is necessary for recovery is not avoiding the load.

Notifications steal your attention before your time.

In modern life, stimuli come to you without you having to go looking for them.

Emails, chats, news, social media, videos, advertisements, recommendations, and notifications.

The problem is not just the sheer volume of information.

Each individual stimulus demands a small judgment:

Is this important?
Should I react right now?
Should I remember this for later?
Does this concern me?

These are the kinds of small judgments required.

Even if you do not open the notification, the moment you realize it has arrived, a portion of your attention is stolen.

Who is it from?
Is it urgent?
I need to check that later.

Deciding not to react also requires cognitive processing.

There are experimental results showing that even without actually operating a smartphone, simply receiving a notification lowers performance on tasks that require attention.

Therefore, stopping passive stimuli can lead to recovery.

It is not because the stimuli themselves disappear.

This is because the number of times your attention is directed by external sources decreases.

Turning off smartphone notifications is not an act of rejecting information.

It is an act of returning the decision-making power regarding when to receive information to yourself.

However, it is not necessarily the case that you should turn off all notifications uniformly.

If the anxiety of missing important communications causes you to check your smartphone even more frequently, it defeats the purpose.

What is needed is not to reduce notifications to zero.

It is to keep only those that truly require immediacy and change the design so that you go to retrieve the rest yourself.

Does the initiative of your attention lie with the outside world, or with you?

I believe that is what we should be asking.

Even with agency, recovery is necessary

Activities you choose yourself can sometimes feel less burdensome than activities forced upon you by others.

It is meaningful to me.
It leads to growth.
I can handle it.
I can interrupt it if necessary.

Such perceptions help in viewing a load not as a mere threat, but as a challenge.

Research on stress mindset has shown that psychological and behavioral responses can change depending on whether you view stress solely as something that harms you, or as something that has the potential to promote ability and growth.

Therefore, agency and meaning-making have the potential to mitigate the effects of stress.

However, it is dangerous to think that 'if you are proactive, you won't get tired.'

Even work you choose yourself will tire you if continued for long hours.
Even a favorite hobby will exhaust you if you become obsessed with results.
Even a meaningful challenge will lower your cognitive function if you cut back on sleep.

What agency changes is primarily the interpretation of the load.

It does not eliminate the load itself.

In fact, the more proactive a person is, the more they may underestimate the load they are under.

Because I chose this myself, I cannot complain.
Because I am doing this because I like it, there is no need to rest.
Because it is meaningful, I should be able to continue.

As a result, I postpone the recovery that was originally necessary.

Autonomy turns a burden into something meaningful.

However, even a meaningful burden will accumulate if it is not released.

Recovery consists of "decompression" and "replenishment."

When considering recovery from work, the four recovery experiences presented by Sonnentag and Fritz in 2007 are helpful.

The first is psychologically detaching from work.

The second is lowering mental and physical tension and relaxing.

The third is gaining skills or a sense of accomplishment through activities outside of work.

The fourth is deciding for yourself how to spend your leisure time.

These are called psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control, respectively.

It is easier to understand these four by dividing them into two directions.

One is recovery that lowers the burden.

Stepping away from work.
Calming tension.
Letting go of the state of constant thinking.

This is a "decompression-type" recovery that returns a negative to zero.

The other is recovery that increases psychological resources.

Becoming able to do something.
Gaining a small sense of accomplishment.
Deciding how to use your time yourself.

This is a "replenishment-type" recovery that creates a positive from zero.

This two-way classification of "decompression/replenishment" is not the official classification shown by Sonnentag and Fritz themselves. It is an organization for this article.

However, it serves as an effective map for understanding the differences between the four recovery experiences.

Tidying up and washing dishes have a decompression aspect that allows you to step away from work and lower your tension.

At the same time, they also have a fulfillment aspect of changing a state with your own hands and achieving a small sense of completion.

Golf practice acts as a fulfilling form of recovery, allowing you to psychologically distance yourself from work while gaining skill improvement and a sense of self-control.

Multiple recovery experiences are contained within the same activity.

Therefore, there is no need to think of recovery methods as a binary choice between resting or moving.

Time to lower the load and time to regain your own strength.

We need both of these.

Tidying up is closing a small world

Thinking about it again, what I felt through tidying up and washing dishes was not just simple relaxation.

It was the sensation that the state in front of me was changing reliably through my own hands.

At work, no matter how much you think, problems do not necessarily converge.

The other party's judgment changes.
New information comes in.
Premises are updated.
Things that should have been organized are disrupted again by other circumstances.

Others, time, and chance intervene between effort and result.

However, the plate in front of you becomes clean if you wash it.

If you wipe off the moisture, you can return it to the shelf.

Cluttered items will gradually decrease if you move them one by one.

The distance between action and result is short.

You can confirm that chaos has turned into order through your own efforts.

Therefore, not only a sense of completion but also a sense of self-control is born there.

Step away from the great chaos of work and return to a small world that you can bring under control with your own hands.

I believe that experience is what organizes the mind.

Tidying up does not directly increase your thinking ability.

However, it releases the attention that was occupied by a sense of unfinished business or the feeling that you cannot move things forward on your own, allowing you to regain the mental space needed to think about what comes next.

The act of organizing the mind is not just about the space in front of you, but about organizing how your cognitive resources are used.

Moving your body changes your mode of thinking

Exercise, too, is more than just a change of pace.

Physical activity, especially moderate exercise, may have a small but positive impact on cognitive functions, including attention, executive function, and working memory.

However, moving your body vigorously does not necessarily increase your thinking ability.

If you are exhausted, it will be difficult to focus afterward.

The important thing is not to exhaust your body, but to switch your state of arousal and create a condition where you can enter the next phase of thinking.

Furthermore, the types of thinking that can be enhanced by physical activity are not all the same.

Walking, in particular, may be related to divergent creativity.

In an experiment published in 2014, divergent thinking—generating multiple new uses or ideas—was higher while walking or after walking than when sitting. On the other hand, no similar effect was seen for tasks that require converging on a single correct answer.

This difference is also practically interesting.

When you want to come up with new ideas, walk.

Record the words and associations that come to mind while walking using voice memos or similar tools.

After that, return to your desk, select the ideas that emerged, structure them, and write them down.

Walk when you need to diverge, and sit when you need to converge.

You switch your mode of thinking by how you use your body.

Exercise does more than just interrupt thinking.

It regulates your state of arousal and creates the physical conditions necessary for attention and working memory to function effectively again.

Moving your body is not the same as disengaging from thought.

It is about using the body as a medium to create a state where thinking can function once more.

In golf, you are switching the type of load.

What makes golf driving range practice different from tidying up or washing dishes is that it is not a simple task.

You set your stance, swing, feel the impact, and watch the ball's trajectory.

With every single shot,

What went well?
Where did it go wrong?
What should I change next?

You are making these judgments.

There is certainly a cognitive load involved.

However, it is a different kind of load from the one used in work.

Abstract thinking through language.
Long-term forecasting.
Inferring the intentions of others.
Judgment involving multiple interests.

You are stepping away from those processes,

Physical sensations.
Immediate judgment.
Feedback that returns in seconds.
Non-verbal fine-tuning.

and switching to these instead.

Golf offers a challenge that is neither too easy nor too difficult.

The relationship between your movements and the results is returned in a short amount of time.

If you hit a beautiful shot, you know it immediately. Even if you fail, that shot is over, and you can start fresh with the next one.

That is why I believe it is possible to achieve the seemingly contradictory state of resting the mind while simultaneously sharpening one's attention.

It is not about resting by doing nothing.

It is about switching to a different kind of load than that of work.

In golf, it is not that one is not using cognitive resources.

One is simply changing where they are directed.

By shifting the load from linguistic and abstract work-related thinking to physical sensations and immediate feedback, one allows the cognitive functions occupied by work to rest.

For me, golf is likely a form of active recovery.

Mindfulness is a method, not an end goal

When the topic of "calming the mind" comes up, the word mindfulness often appears.

However, the term often precedes the understanding,

why it is necessary,
what it involves,
who it benefits and how.

are often not sufficiently explained, and it tends to become a conversation about "just meditating."

Mindfulness is not a way to create a state of thinking about nothing.

It is about noticing that thoughts have appeared, not chasing their content, and returning your attention to your breathing or physical sensations.

It is a practice of choosing where to place your attention rather than being swept away by thoughts that run automatically.

Studies examining the relationship between mindfulness interventions and cognitive function have shown certain effects on executive attention, working memory, inhibition, attention switching, and sustained attention. However, these effects are not universal, and not all cognitive domains improve.

Therefore, there is no need to elevate mindfulness as the only way to calm the mind.

What is important is the function behind it.

Mindfulness is one method for achieving that.

Tidying up, washing dishes, taking a walk, and playing golf all head in a similar direction through different paths.

Four modes for restoring cognitive resources

Based on the discussion so far, acts of calming the mind can be broadly divided into four categories.

The first is calming.

Regulating your breathing. Being in a quiet place. Taking a bath. Taking distance from the state of constantly thinking about work.

Lowering excessively heightened tension and weakening the state of being continuously caught up in thought.

The second is closing.

Tidying up. Washing. Wiping. Putting things back.

Creating small endings through tasks that have clear completion criteria.

Stepping away from the chaos of work that you cannot resolve yourself, and returning to a small world that you can reliably resolve with your own hands.

The third is moving.

Walking. Light jogging. Stretching.

Using your body to switch your state of arousal and creating conditions where attention and thought can function easily again.

The fourth is integrating.

Golf, playing an instrument, cooking, gardening, etc.—integrating your body and attention into a single task.

Engaging in activities that have moderate difficulty and immediate feedback.

This is not an absolute classification common to everyone.

It is a practical organization based on the actual experience of this article and research on recovery.

However, by separating these four, it becomes easier to understand why even with the same rest, there are times when you feel refreshed and times when you do not.

If your tension is too high, calm down.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by a sense of incompleteness, close out small tasks.

If your mind is stagnant, move your body.

If your attention is scattered, integrate your body and attention into a single task.

The necessary method of recovery changes depending on how you are currently feeling out of balance.

There are three depths to restoring cognitive resources.

When thinking about recovery, if you group everything under the single word "rest," the problem becomes harder to see.

Therefore, in this article, I would like to consider recovery by dividing it into three depths.

This is not a direct classification into three stages from any single existing theory.

It is a synthesis organized for this article based on research into recovery from work, studies on attention and cognitive function, and theories regarding motivation and resources.

The first is physiological recovery.

Sleep, nutrition, hydration, physical rest, and lowering excessive tension.

Sleep deprivation cannot be solved by finding meaning or through sheer willpower.

Physical burdens require physical recovery.

The second is cognitive recovery.

Reducing stimuli that steal your attention. Psychologically detaching from work. Writing down incomplete tasks. Switching to different activities.

Releasing the occupation of your mind.

The third is semantic recovery.

How do you spend your time? What do you take on yourself? How much thinking is enough? Is that really a problem you should continue to carry?

If you are repeatedly exhausted by the same subject no matter how many times you rest, the problem is not just a lack of recovery.

It lies in how you are using your cognitive resources themselves.

Simply returning to your former self will only lead to being worn out again by the same habits.

What should you let go of, what should you pay attention to, and why do you think?

You need to re-evaluate the allocation of your resources.

These three are not necessarily a hierarchy that must be followed in order from the bottom up.

If you are not sleeping, you need physiological recovery.

If you are distracted by notifications, you need cognitive recovery.

If you cannot find satisfaction in your work itself, you need meaningful recovery.

At what depth do you need recovery right now?

Just by identifying that, it becomes easier to see why you might be thinking, 'I am resting, so why am I not recovering?'

Do not leave recovery to the strength of your willpower

Ironically, the more you need recovery, the harder it becomes to take recovery actions.

Because you are tired, you cannot make the decision to rest. Because you are busy, you cut back on exercise time. Because your head is full, you lack the energy to write down unfinished tasks. Because you are anxious, you check notifications repeatedly.

The more a person needs recovery, the further they drift away from it.

Therefore, you must not leave recovery to your mood or the strength of your willpower.

You need to incorporate it as a system during normal times.

Write down unfinished tasks at the end of the workday. Decide when you will resume them. Consolidate the time you spend checking emails. Turn off non-urgent notifications. Set fixed days for exercise. Secure time to do nothing as a scheduled appointment in advance.

You do not need to solve every problem before you rest.

What is important is to create a state where you can resume later without having to keep everything in your head.

It is too late to think about how to rest after you are already tired.

Recovery is not something you do only when you have spare time.

Calming the mind means returning to a self that is capable of thinking once again.

When we talk about calming the mind, we often think of returning a chaotic state to a previous, normal state.

Of course, that is important.

However, recovery is not just about returning to how things were.

Lowering the load.
Releasing the occupation of your thoughts.
Regaining lost psychological resources.
Reevaluating what you use your cognitive resources for.

Sometimes, it is necessary not to return to the same state as before, but to change how you live after you have recovered.

Even if you spend a week away from smartphones and electronic devices, if you return to the same volume of notifications, the same workload, and the same way of using your attention, your resources will be occupied once again.

What is important is not just whether you have recovered.

It is whether you have realized what was stealing your cognitive resources and whether you have been able to change how you use them.

Calming the mind does not mean stopping your thoughts.

It means letting go of what is occupying your thoughts and regaining the margin needed to think.

And it means choosing again what you will use that margin for.

What is needed to maintain the power to think is not just the power to keep thinking.

It is the power to step away from thinking.
The power to close off the load.
The power to return to the body.
And the power to return to the questions you should be thinking about, by your own will.

Putting all the dishes back on the shelf and looking at the empty sink.

Standing in a tidy room and gazing at the space that has become a little wider.

Hitting a golf ball and watching its trajectory stretch into the sky.

What is happening there is not just a change of pace.

You are reclaiming your attention into your own hands.

And, it is returning the power to think that you originally possessed to a state where you can use it once again.

In an era where AI generates many answers, it is not enough to simply assert that the remaining role for humans is just "to think."

The power to think is not something that can always be used sufficiently if left to its own devices.

If you use it, you get tired.
If your attention is stolen, it scatters.
If you hold onto incomplete problems, it becomes occupied.
If it loses meaning, the very power to try to think weakens.

That is precisely why, if you treat the power to think as something valuable, you must also know how to recover it.

Calming the mind is not a technique for continuing to distance yourself from reality.

It is a technique for releasing the occupation of cognitive resources and returning to a self that can think once again.

Main research and papers referenced

• Geurts, S. A. E., & Sonnentag, S. (2006)
  “Recovery as an explanatory mechanism in the relation between acute stress reactions and chronic health impairment.”
  A paper that views recovery as the process by which psychological and physiological load reactions subside after effort is exerted.

• Sonnentag, S., & Fritz, C. (2007)
  “The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: Development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work.”
  A study that scaled four recovery experiences: psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery, and control.

• Wendsche, J., & Lohmann-Haislah, A. (2017)
  “A meta-analysis on antecedents and outcomes of detachment from work.”
  A meta-analysis integrating the relationships between psychological detachment, fatigue, well-being, and more.

• Karabinski, T. et al. (2021)
  “Interventions for improving psychological detachment from work: A meta-analysis.”
  A meta-analysis integrating 30 studies on interventions to enhance psychological detachment, involving a total of 3,725 people.

• Stothart, C., Mitchum, A., & Yehnert, C. (2015)
  “The attentional cost of receiving a cell phone notification.”
  An experiment showing that even without operating a smartphone, simply receiving a notification lowers performance on attention tasks.

• Crum, A. J., Salovey, P., & Achor, S. (2013)
  “Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response.”
  A study showing the possibility that how one perceives stress is related to psychological and behavioral responses.

• Zainal, N. H., & Newman, M. G. (2024)
  “Mindfulness enhances cognitive functioning: A meta-analysis of 111 randomized controlled trials.”
  A meta-analysis integrating 111 randomized controlled trials to examine the relationship between mindfulness interventions and cognitive function.

• Chang, Y. K. et al. (2012)
  “The effects of acute exercise on cognitive performance: A meta-analysis.”
  A meta-analysis integrating the effects of a single bout of exercise on subsequent cognitive tasks.

• Oppezzo, M., & Schwartz, D. L. (2014)
  “Give your ideas some legs: The positive effect of walking on creative thinking.”
  Four experiments showing the possibility that walking enhances divergent creativity.

Note: "Cognitive resources," "Decompression type/Replenishment type," "Calming/Closing/Moving/Integrating," and "Three depths of recovery" in this text are not names of a single existing theory. They are concepts organized practically for this article based on the research above and personal experience.