Sometimes, before I’ve even gotten out of bed, I’ve already consumed several other people’s thoughts.

I check my email (all three accounts, of course). I read a newsletter. I open Instagram and inevitably discover a book I should read, a restaurant I should visit, or a morning routine that could apparently change my life. I pour over my notifications. I scroll while I make coffee. And then maybe I listen to a podcast while walking my dog. By the time I sit down at my desk, I’ve encountered dozens of ideas before I’ve had much opportunity to notice my own.

“By the time I sit down at my desk, I’ve encountered dozens of ideas before I’ve had much opportunity to notice my own.”

Sound familiar? I know I’m not alone in these habits.

The truth is that I actually like many of these things. I often read a book before going to bed and enjoy reading upon waking, but I’ll give you a wild guess on which habit takes precedence most mornings. 

I love books. I love learning. I love making notes. I’m a writer, which means collecting ideas and observing the world is part of how I move through it. I love a good podcast and have absolutely asked AI to help me untangle some pesky spreadsheets so I can spend more time writing and less time in the weeds with Google Sheets.

Though lately, I’ve been wondering: When does inspiration actually become interference?

“When does inspiration actually become interference?”

Look, we live in an era of extraordinary access. It can truly be wonderful. But that also means there’s always another essay to read, podcast to hear, posts to add to my Instagram, a video to watch, notification to answer, memes to fire off in my DMs, a wellness practice to try, and experts willing to explain how we might become slightly happier, healthier, more productive versions of ourselves. 

And I’ll be completely honest. All of that access, my saved ideas, the posts, the videos, the near never-ending content, often gets ignored after a while. Sure, I do return back to things that I’ve saved or even better in my gremlin scroll sessions: I email them to myself with subject lines like “Read this”; “Open letter”; “Buy this if you still like in 24 hours”; “Make for dinner this week.” 

It’s exhausting. It also doesn’t have staying power in my brain.

Eventually, that input needs somewhere to go. I think we need somewhere to go, too. ✨

What do we mean by an “inner life”?

An inner life can sound wonderfully philosophical, like something Mary Oliver might’ve contemplated beside a window while the rest of us answer Slack messages. The truth is, really, it’s the most ordinary thing in the world.

Our inner lives are the private landscapes of thoughts, memories, desires, questions, fantasies, values, emotions, and contradictions that exist underneath what we perform for everyone else. It’s where we daydream and where we make meaning. It’s also where we begin figuring out what we actually believe before someone else offers us an opinion or more facts.

“Our inner lives are the private landscapes of thoughts, memories, desires, questions, fantasies, values, emotions, and contradictions that exist underneath what we perform for everyone else.”

Psychologists sometimes study pieces of this experience under the umbrella of self-generated thought, which includes mind-wandering, memories, imagination, and thoughts about ourselves and our futures. Research suggests spontaneous thought occupies a considerable portion of waking cognition and may contribute to memory, planning, and working through ongoing personal concerns.

There’s something comforting about knowing our minds are supposed to wander. I love to wander. I love daydreaming. It’s how I get some of my best ideas.

Research also complicates the assumption that an unfocused mind is necessarily an unproductive one. Self-generated thought has been associated with long-term planning and creativity, while a 2025 study found that greater mind-wandering during an incubation period predicted improvements on a creative writing task when participants returned to the same prompt. The effects depend heavily on context and the content of our thoughts, of course; rumination isn’t the same thing as an afternoon spent pleasantly daydreaming. 

“Some seemingly empty mental space isn’t empty at all.”

In other words, some seemingly empty mental space isn’t empty at all.

It’s where the mind gets to meet itself. I can attest to this personally (with daydreaming, meditation, and so on).

Our attention lives in a very crowded room

Information overload predates smartphones, but we’ve become extremely efficient at creating it. It’s remarkable. And the overload keeps coming and coming.

“The overload keeps coming and coming.”

A systematic review published in 2023 describes information overload as an increasing problem alongside the digitalization of work and expanding use of information and communication technologies. Researchers have consequently studied interventions ranging from individual behavioral changes to redesigning the environments in which all this information reaches us. 

Notifications are one tiny example. In a field experiment involving 247 participants, researchers asked one group to turn off communication notifications for a day. The study examined how those interruptions affected performance and strain, illustrating how even the little pings surrounding ordinary digital life have become worthy of psychological investigation.

Even a silent phone may compete for some of our cognitive resources. A well-known 2017 experiment found that participants performed better on certain measures of working memory and fluid intelligence when their phones were in another room rather than sitting on the desk. A subsequent meta-analysis found the broader evidence for this so-called “brain drain” effect to be mixed, although it did identify a small negative effect on working memory.

This kind of nuance matters. And no, I don’t believe that we need to abandon our phones either. I do wonder what happens when there are fewer moments in which nothing is asking for our attention. If we resisted the lure of our phone notifications and texts.

“I do wonder what happens when there are fewer moments in which nothing is asking for our attention.”

Waiting for the train becomes scrolling. Folding laundry becomes podcast time. Walking somewhere becomes an opportunity to answer a voice note. Even rest can acquire homework with meditation apps, sleep optimization, therapy content, journaling challenges, and morning routines. (FYI: That isn’t real rest either!) 

I’ve caught myself doing this with self-development content in particular. I can read about mindfulness instead of sitting with my thoughts. I can listen to someone explain creativity instead of making something. I can consume an hour-long podcast about presence while barely noticing the trees I’m walking beneath.

At a certain point, “working on ourselves” can become another ingenious way of avoiding ourselves.

You don’t have to optimize your interior world

This is perhaps the trickiest form of infinite input because it arrives wearing such a cool outfit.

“This is perhaps the trickiest form of infinite input because it arrives wearing such a cool outfit.”

You know how it goes:
Dress like your future self.
Quantum leap for your next success.
Read this book.
Try this practice.
Heal this wound.
Buy this thing.
Understand your attachment style.
Fix your nervous system.
Take this supplement for focus.
Become your highest self.

There can be tremendous value in all of those explorations. I’ve found language in books, meditation, spiritual practices, and therapy-adjacent resources that genuinely changed how I understood myself. Yet an inner life needs something besides instruction.

“An inner life needs something besides instruction.”

What I found that helps me build a rich interior life is more nuanced. It nourishes me. Things like experience, mystery, and yes, I even really do need boredom.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote extensively about inwardness and subjectivity, while centuries of contemplative traditions have treated silence and solitude as conditions through which we encounter ourselves more clearly. Modern psychology offers its own, more measured version of the idea.

Research by psychologist Thuy-vy Nguyen and colleagues suggests that solitude can help downregulate high-arousal emotions. Other experimental work found that people experienced greater low-arousal positive feelings when solitude was framed as potentially beneficial. Solitude and loneliness aren’t interchangeable; chosen time alone can serve a very different psychological purpose from unwanted isolation.

“Chosen time alone can serve a very different psychological purpose from unwanted isolation.”

MIT psychologist and sociologist Sherry Turkle has similarly argued that our ability to be alone supports our ability to meaningfully connect. Her work isn’t an argument against technology. As she told MIT News about Reclaiming Conversation, technology can remain part of our lives while we deliberately protect conversation, solitude, and attention.

Maybe building an inner life requires becoming a little less afraid of unoccupied space.

Start leaving some things unfulfilled

I’ve been experimenting with this in tiny ways. Sometimes I walk without headphones. Sometimes I sit with my coffee without immediately reaching for something to read. I keep a notebook nearby and write down whatever surfaces. Sometimes that’s half a poem, something strange I dreamed, a question, or a sentence I don’t understand yet. This isn’t to say that something spectacular happens every time I use my notebook. That’s sort of the point.

“An inner life doesn’t need to become another project.”

An inner life doesn’t need to become another project. You don’t need a 30-day challenge called Become More Interesting to Yourself. The impulse to turn inwardness into another measurable wellness practice rather defeats the purpose.

Instead, try creating small pockets of unclaimed attention. 

Leave the phone in another room while you read ten pages of a novel. Take a walk without consuming anything. Cook dinner without a podcast once in a while. Look out the window on the train. Write three pages that nobody will ever read. Follow a curiosity without deciding whether it could become useful. Notice what comes through. 

“Follow a curiosity without deciding whether it could become useful. Notice what comes through.”

For some of us, meditation can help create that space. A systematic review and meta-analysis of 47 trials found moderate evidence that mindfulness meditation programs can produce small-to-moderate improvements in anxiety, depression, and pain, although evidence for some other outcomes was limited. More recent research also suggests mindfulness practices can support aspects of emotion regulation.

None of these things are mandatory. Different activities can certainly count instead, like gardening or knitting. Daydreaming in the bathtub also counts. So does reading a novel slowly, making bad art, or staring at the ceiling for ten minutes while your thoughts rearrange and coalesce. What matters is allowing some portion of consciousness to remain unavailable for consumption.

Let noise become material

I don’t want to live inside a vacuum. I’ve done my best creative work while being outside of one.

The outside world gives our inner lives texture and shape. Art, conversation, journalism, music, scholarship, gossip, friendship, nature, and even the occasional ridiculous TikTok can send us somewhere unexpected. Input can become a creative compost of sorts.

“The distinction I’m trying to uphold in my own life is the difference between collecting and metabolizing.”

For me, the distinction I’m trying to uphold in my own life is the difference between collecting and metabolizing.

If I’m continually filling myself with other people’s ideas, I have little opportunity to discover which ones actually belong with me. An inner life requires digestion. What moved me? What irritated me? What do I disagree with? What keeps returning hours later when the screen is gone?

This is when noise can become very useful. Maybe even a tool in itself. Instead of immediately consuming the next thing, stay with whatever the last thing awakened. Sounds rather poetic, right? Stick with me here.

“If I’m continually filling myself with other people’s ideas, I have little opportunity to discover which ones actually belong with me.”

Researchers studying spontaneous thought have found that its content matters enormously. Internally generated thoughts can support creativity, autobiographical reflection, future planning, and goal development, while repetitive negative forms can be associated with rumination and poorer emotional well-being. 

That being said, maybe the new goal should be to give our brains actual time to process and respond.

Protect only what you can hear

As the year begins tilting toward its busier final months, I’m thinking less about what else I can add to my life and more about what I want to leave untouched.

“I’m thinking less about what else I can add to my life and more about what I want to leave untouched.”

I’m considering twenty quiet minutes in the morning and a mid-afternoon walk and letting my mind (and feet) go wherever it wants.

There will always be another notification. Another recommendation. Another brilliant person with something worth hearing. There will probably always be another version of ourselves we’re told we could become if we just read, buy, learn, heal, track, or optimize one more thing.

I can listen, but I can also turn the volume down too. My richer inner life isn’t built by knowing everything happening outside of myself. It grows when I leave enough space to notice what’s happening within.

Stephanie Valente is a Contributing Editor at The Good Trade. She is a copywriter and editor covering wellness, commerce, lifestyle — and more — for publications like Brooklyn Magazine. Based in Brooklyn, she’s often writing poetry, getting lost in a book, or hanging out with her dog.