{"id":37809,"date":"2026-02-23T19:45:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/?p=37809"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:45:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:45:52","slug":"doing-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/doing-zero\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing Zero"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Black people in prison get an unfair mental advantage <\/div>\n
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Able to be blacked out for 7 hours. 7 years. <\/p>\n

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Alex Northstar<\/a><\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u2066\u202a@NorthstarBrain\u202c\u2069<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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Sunday. I did a brain reset, 7 hours of silence. <\/p>\n

What it did to my brain:<\/p>\n

No phone. No music. No books. No screens. Just water and silence. This was week 8 of my 53 Skills project.<\/p>\n

The first few hours were easy. Then around hour 3, my brain switched from boredom to processing pic.x.com\/UvxNsWIvIm<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

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2\/22\/26, 12:06\u202fPM<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
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\n
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Sunday. I did a brain reset, 7 hours of silence. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
What it did to my brain:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
No phone. No music. No books. No screens. Just water and silence. This was week 8 of my 53 Skills project.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The first few hours were easy. Then around hour 3, my brain switched from boredom to processing mode. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Old emotions, unresolved thoughts, things I\u2019d been outrunning for years. All surfacing on their own.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
By the end, my mind felt completely clear. Not tired. Not numb. Actually calm. It lasted for hours after.<\/div>\n
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Why this matters: I think we never give our brains offline time anymore. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Every quiet moment gets filled with a podcast, a scroll, a notification. Your brain is running on 100% input and 0% processing all day.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Neuroscience backs this up. Unstructured mental downtime improves memory consolidation, creative problem-solving, and emotional regulation. <\/div>\n
\"image9.jpeg\"\"image10.jpeg\"\"image11.jpeg\"\"image1.jpeg\"\"image2.jpeg\"\"image3.jpeg\"\"image4.jpeg\"\"image5.jpeg\"\"image6.jpeg\"\"image7.jpeg\"\"image8.jpeg\"<\/div>\n
It\u2019s the same mechanism as sleep, except we can access it while awake. We just choose not to.<\/div>\n
You don\u2019t need 7 hours. <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
One hour of zero input per week would put you ahead of most people in terms of mental clarity.<\/div>\n
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Try it: one hour, no phone in the room, no background noise. <\/div>\n
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First 20 minutes will be uncomfortable. Last 10 will surprise you.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black people in prison get an unfair mental advantage  Able to be blacked out for 7 hours. 7 years.      Alex Northstar \u2066\u202a@NorthstarBrain\u202c\u2069 Sunday. I did a brain reset, 7 hours of silence. What it did to my brain: No phone. No music. No books. No screens. Just water and silence. This was week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}