I have tinnitus, though my conscious mind makes little if any note of it while I’m focused. Unfortunately, deep focus comes infrequently, rarely on schedule, and leaves rather too quickly. The sensory input of that noise remains, regardless. How many clock cycles does my unconscious burn on filtering this distraction out?

We live in a modern world inundated with novel and distracting input. It’s not just phone notifications but also city noises, computer fans, conversations, flashing LEDs, so on and so on. Never mind our increasingly complex internal monologues. When did you last count the number of inputs your mind must be filtering out in any given moment? How many inputs did you overlook because of habituation?

Your brain needs to filter incessantly. Filtering might even be at the root of experiencing consciousness. How badly do you overburden your brain, though? If you had to cut your extraneous inputs in half, even accounting for the consequences of neglect, which half would you cut? How many of those inputs could you excise from your daily life without delay? Which one can you remove right now?