Five ways to clear foggy brains and improve cognitive well-being

The oth­er day, my friend Kristi­na told me that one evening she unin­ten­tion­al­ly locked her hus­band in a down­stairs part of their house. She had known he was down there, but while dis­tract­ed­ly lock­ing the door for the night, for­got com­plete­ly. She didn’t real­ize what she’d done until she saw a text from her hus­band the next morn­ing ask­ing her to please let him out.

“I couldn’t believe I did that to him,” she says. “I was stunned and alarmed that I had no aware­ness, in the moment or after­ward, of what I had done.”

Kristina’s is one of many sto­ries I’ve recent­ly heard from peo­ple sug­gest­ing they’re hav­ing more trou­ble stay­ing focused, mak­ing deci­sions, or remem­ber­ing things. I’ve expe­ri­enced this myself—misplacing keys, for­get­ting appoint­ments, and leav­ing lights on in vacat­ed rooms. When it comes to work, I’m less focused and have trou­ble get­ting things done.

Per­haps it’s because I spend so much time online, read­ing news, shop­ping, work­ing, even social­iz­ing via Zoom. When you’re con­stant­ly star­ing at a screen—especially if you’re fol­low­ing events unfold­ing in Ukraine—you’re bound to suf­fer stress and atten­tion fatigue from infor­ma­tion overload.

The emo­tion­al costs of the pan­dem­ic aren’t help­ing, either. It’s clear that COVID-19 con­di­tions have affect­ed people’s stress lev­els, sleep, and men­tal health—especially those who don’t deal well with uncer­tain­ty. This, in turn, has affect­ed our cog­ni­tive well-being, lead­ing to poor­er per­for­mance on tasks that require atten­tion, mem­o­ry, or deci­sion making.

Though the worst peri­od of the pan­dem­ic may have passed—cases and deaths are falling, and there’s no immi­nent dan­ger of anoth­er shel­ter-in-place order—many of us are still pay­ing that cost in the form of “brain fog.” Researchers have not­ed that liv­ing through the pan­dem­ic is neg­a­tive­ly influ­enc­ing people’s cognition—their focus, atten­tion, abil­i­ty to plan, and more. Though the elder­ly may be par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble, many of us could be suf­fer­ing some degree of brain fog in the wake of recent events. Here are some steps you can take to clear the fog away.

1. Become more intentional about consuming news

Whether we’re try­ing and fail­ing to make plans, keep­ing up with the ever-chang­ing rec­om­men­da­tions around COVID, or doom­scrolling about cli­mate change or the war in Ukraine, it’s hard to avoid anx­i­ety or cat­a­stro­phiz­ing about the future. That’s going to impact our brains.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, news­pa­pers, TV news pro­grams, and many social media sites make their mon­ey by grab­bing your attention—and noth­ing grabs atten­tion bet­ter than neg­a­tive news. But repeat­ed expo­sure to crises wreaks hav­oc with our well-being and can lead to bad deci­sion making.

If we want to reduce stress and keep sharp, there are ways to tone down our media con­sump­tion and be more inten­tion­al about how we con­sume our news. For exam­ple, once you’ve read an update on what’s hap­pen­ing abroad in Ukraine, you might skip watch­ing 24-hour cable news where the same sto­ries are repeat­ed ad nau­se­am. You might lim­it your use of social media, as doing so can help you feel less lone­ly, depressed, and anxious.

In fact, tak­ing breaks from tech­nol­o­gy, in gen­er­al, could help you focus bet­ter at work and elsewhere.

2. Exercise regularly—outside, if you can

One of the best tools for stress-bust­ing or fight­ing depres­sion is exer­cise. But it’s also impor­tant for think­ing more clearly.

When we exer­cise, we encour­age blood flow through our bod­ies, includ­ing our brains, which need oxy­gena­tion to per­form at their best. Sit­ting for long peri­ods of time with­out tak­ing breaks to move has been tied to brain changes asso­ci­at­ed with demen­tia, as well as poor cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing. Get­ting exer­cise, on the oth­er hand, is tied to bet­ter cognition—and even mod­er­ate exer­cise can help us think more clear­ly and per­form bet­ter on tasks requir­ing focus.

If you have a park or open space near­by, try spend­ing some time mov­ing while in green spaces (espe­cial­ly among trees). Research con­firms that being out in more nat­ur­al set­tings is help­ful for our well-being and has pos­i­tive effects on our cog­ni­tion above and beyond those com­ing from exer­cise alone.

3. Stay connected to others

The lack of social­iz­ing dur­ing COVID lock­downs may have been par­tic­u­lar­ly hard on people’s cognition.

For exam­ple, in one study, researchers in Scot­land test­ed the cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing in 342 adults ages 18–72, start­ing when lock­down restric­tions were in place but eas­ing over time. The par­tic­i­pants per­formed online tasks that mea­sured their atten­tion, mem­o­ry, deci­sion-mak­ing, time-esti­ma­tion, and learn­ing skills; the researchers also mea­sured how iso­lat­ed they were. When com­par­ing the test results to the lev­el of iso­la­tion they were expe­ri­enc­ing, the researchers found that cog­ni­tion improved as peo­ple became less iso­lat­ed and had oppor­tu­ni­ties to social­ize more.

Though some of this could have been due to oth­er fac­tors, like lack of exer­cise, a recent review of many stud­ies (pre-pan­dem­ic) con­firms that social­iz­ing is impor­tant for keep­ing your­self cog­ni­tive­ly fit. It also found that lone­li­ness increas­es people’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to cog­ni­tive decline, espe­cial­ly among the elder­ly. So, it’s a good idea to try to find ways to be with others—safely, of course—to keep your brain func­tion­ing well.

4. Try new challenges

While many of us have been at our wit’s end dur­ing the past few years, we can do some­thing for our brains that’s good for cog­ni­tion at any time: learn new things.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, I began learn­ing to speak Greek in antic­i­pa­tion of future trav­el there. It was cer­tain­ly a cog­ni­tive challenge—one that was fun and, hope­ful­ly, will help stave off demen­tia (which hap­pens to run in my fam­i­ly). You prob­a­bly know peo­ple who’ve used lock­down restric­tions as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn to play a new instru­ment, write poems or sto­ries, study their his­to­ry, or build furniture.

Whether there’s a pan­dem­ic on or not, using your brain in new, chal­leng­ing ways is good for neur­al health, and will help your brain stay healthy. Of course, you should not take on more to do if you are already strug­gling to keep up with the basics. But notic­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to incor­po­rate new things into your every­day routines—even tak­ing a new route on your walk or try­ing out a new recipe—could give your brain a fun work­out with­out adding more to your to-do list.

5. Be kind to yourself

If you are already try­ing things to avoid brain fog and still seem to have it, don’t beat your­self up about that. We are liv­ing through extra­or­di­nary times, and so we need to prac­tice a lit­tle self-com­pas­sion. That can mean any­thing from sim­ply for­giv­ing your­self for your laps­es (like los­ing your keys for the nth time) to active­ly advo­cat­ing for few­er work assign­ments (so you can build in a lit­tle breath­ing room for inefficiency).

If you find your­self suf­fer­ing extreme anx­i­ety or depres­sion, you may want to seek pro­fes­sion­al help—because seek­ing treat­ment is a key way to be kind to your­self. Talk­ing to a trust­ed ther­a­pist can help you fig­ure out how to man­age chron­ic emo­tion­al issues bet­ter so you can suf­fer less brain fog. (Ther­a­py is expen­sive, but you might be able to find agen­cies in your area that pro­vide it on a slid­ing scale.)

It’s impor­tant to accept that we may not be our best selves right now and that it may be some­what out of our con­trol. But, if we can keep in mind what feeds our brains in the com­ing weeks, it may help us regain some clear-head­ed­ness as we nego­ti­ate the chal­lenges ahead.

— Jill Sut­tie, Psy.D., is Greater Good‘s book review edi­tor and a fre­quent con­trib­u­tor to the mag­a­zine. Based at UC-Berke­ley, Greater Good high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Copy­right Greater Good.

To Learn More:

• Pos­i­tive soli­tude, Feel­ing active and Future-mind­ednes: Three Keys to Well-being
• New study rein­forces the impor­tance of walk­ing through forests for men­tal and gen­er­al health
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress