Informational Obesity: the brain equivalent of overeating junk food.

The 7‑Day Information Detox (Leader Edition)

1/22/20264 min read

Your Attention Is Being Ripped Apart. Here’s How to Get It Back in 7 Days

Most ambitious leaders are not burned out from “too much work.” They are burned out from too much noise. Over the last three months, you have probably consumed more information than an 18th‑century person would see in a lifetime: feeds, chats, reels, news, dashboards, podcasts. Your attention is shredded into a thousand pieces—and deep thinking feels harder every week.

This is called “informational obesity”: the brain equivalent of overeating junk food. The good news: a simple 7‑day “information detox” can free 2–3 hours of clean time every day and restart your capacity for deep focus.

At Pausa, this is exactly the kind of micro‑intervention we love: small, concrete steps that compound into profound mental health benefits for leaders.

What Information Overload Does to a Leader’s Brain

Modern leaders struggle to stay on one task longer than 10–15 minutes without checking a screen.
Notifications, micro‑scrolling and constant channel‑switching train the brain to be distracted, not focused. Every ping is a “rep” for shallow attention.
After a single interruption, the brain may need up to 20 minutes to fully return to the previous level of concentration. Three “quick checks” can quietly erase an hour of meaningful work.

For a founder or senior executive, that is not just annoying—it is existential. Strategy, judgment, and creative problem‑solving all require deep, uninterrupted thinking.

The 7‑Day Information Detox (Leader Edition)

Use this as a structured experiment. You are not “leaving the world”; you are rebuilding the operating system of your attention.

Day 1 – Audit Your Inputs

Spend one full day simply tracking every information source you touch.

Log social networks, WhatsApp/Slack/Teams channels, YouTube subscriptions, newsletters, news sites, podcasts, even internal work chats.
By evening you will likely see 30–50 distinct sources.

For each source, answer in under 10 seconds: “What concrete value does this give me?” If you cannot answer quickly, mark it as “blacklist candidate.” Pleasure‑only sources are allowed—but they must be few and time-bounded.

Tiny habit:
After opening any app, quickly write its name into one running note. That’s it.

Day 2 – Brutal Unsubscribe

Now act on the audit:

Unfollow WhatsApp/news/social channels that don’t clearly serve your current priorities.
Leave or mute work chats where your personal involvement is rarely needed; ask colleagues to tag you only when you truly need to act.
Remove YouTube channels and “habit scroll” sources you watch from inertia.

Tiny habit:
When you see a low‑value channel, do not scroll—tap “Unfollow” immediately.

Day 3 – Kill Notifications (Almost All of Them)

Treat notifications as what they are: a direct tax on your nervous system:

On your laptop: disable notifications for all apps.
On your phone: allow only truly critical apps (for most leaders: banking, family, maybe 1–2 direct reports).
In messengers: leave alerts on only for a short “stars list” of people who never ping you casually.

Research shows that after an interruption, it can take around 20 minutes to regain full focus. That is a terrible deal for any senior leader.

Tiny habit:
Each time a notification pops up today, ask “Will this matter in 20 minutes?” If not, turn that notification off.

Day 4 – Put Screen Time on a Budget

Both iOS and Android now show precisely where your time goes and allow daily limits:

Set daily caps, e.g. social media 30 minutes, news 15 minutes, pure entertainment 60 minutes.
Our co-founder (Yaro) reduced his daily screen time from ~4 hours to 1.5 hours using these hard limits—gaining 2+ hours of clean time every day.

For a founder, that is like finding two extra workdays per month.

Tiny habit:
Tonight, open Screen Time / Digital Wellbeing and lower one app’s limit by just 10–15 minutes.

Day 5 – Build Your “White List” of Content

Detox is not about consuming nothing. It is about consuming better.

Curate a short list of high‑quality inputs that truly help you grow:

Concrete usefulness: you can apply what you learn this week.
Depth: it makes you think, not just nod.
Credible source: practitioners and serious experts, not shallow “gurus.”youtube

Tiny habit:
When you find a truly valuable source, add it to a “White List” note. Everything else stays outside.

Day 6 – Switch to Active Consumption

Passive consumption (“read, scroll, forget”) trains shallow thinking. Active consumption rewires your brain toward integration and strategy.

For each serious piece of content—article, video, podcast—capture at least 2–3 lines:

Main idea
How you will apply it in your context
Who you might share it with

Yaro used exactly this template and noticed he stopped even opening low‑value content—because it wasn’t worth the effort of taking notes.

Tiny habit:
After finishing any valuable piece of content, force yourself to write one sentence: “The key idea was …”

Day 7 – Design Your New Information Regime

Now synthesize.

Yaro’s personal regime looks like this:

Morning: ~30 minutes of work‑relevant reading—no news, no social feeds, only what helps current priorities.
Daytime: full‑focus mode; phone on silent; messages checked a couple times per hour at most.
Evening: up to one hour of “free” content—but only from his white list.

This structure creates about 3 hours of deep work every day—15 hours per week, 60 hours per month. For a CEO, that is the difference between living in Slack and actually moving the company.

Tiny habit:
Block one 60‑minute “no‑notifications, one‑task‑only” deep work slot in your calendar this week.

What Changes After the Detox

Yaro describes a withdrawal curve: the first days “hurt,” then several shifts appear:

Reduced background anxiety—the constant feeling of “I’m missing something” fades.
More mental space for long‑form reading; he read two books in a month after his first detox, compared to none in the previous six months.
Sharper strategic thinking: with less informational junk, the brain more easily sees patterns, second‑order effects, and better business decisions.

This is exactly what Pausa aims to create for leaders: not just “calm,” but the mental freedom to think clearly and act deliberately again.

How Pausa Can Help You Sustain It

An information detox is like a reset sprint; Pausa is the long‑term protocol that keeps your attention healthy:

Our tiny‑habit library gives you plug‑and‑play micro‑routines for sleep, focus, and emotional regulation.
Our structured programs for high‑pressure leaders add accountability and community around new attention norms—so you do not slide back into old defaults once the 7 days are over.

If you want to protect your most scarce asset—your attention—start with this 7‑day experiment. Then, when you are ready to turn it into a new operating system for your leadership, Pausa is here to support the next step.