The Chaos Cleanse

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There’s a reason clutter feels heavy. Whether it’s the 3,000 unread emails in your inbox or the tabs multiplying across your browser, mental bandwidth is a finite resource — and we’re burning through it fast.

The Science of Too Much
Researchers at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute found that visual clutter competes for attention in the same region of the brain responsible for focus and self-control. The result? Lower productivity, higher stress, and slower recovery from mental fatigue [1]. A separate study from the University of California, Irvine revealed that employees interrupted by digital notifications took an average of 23 minutes to regain full focus — even after the alert was dismissed [2]. Over time, those tiny disruptions compound into what psychologists now call attention residue: the lingering cognitive fog that follows task-switching.

The 15-Minute Reset
A quick “chaos cleanse” doesn’t require perfection — just a pause. Neuroscientists at the University of Toronto found that even brief acts of organization (like cleaning a desk or clearing files) lowered cortisol levels and increased perceived control [3]. The key is to reduce the number of decisions your brain makes in a day. Delete five emails. Close three tabs. Say no to one unnecessary commitment. Each act frees a small piece of attention — and those pieces add up.

Simplifying Health, Too
That same logic applies to how we manage our wellbeing. ALLtech plans through Regence were built to cut the clutter from health care, with one member login that connects medical, dental, vision, and behavioral benefits under a single umbrella. Members can use the Regence app or Regence.com to find doctors, compare costs, and access $0 telehealth visits — no extra logins, no time lost hunting for answers.

And for mental clarity, SupportLinc’s all-in-one portal and app streamline access to counselors, guided mindfulness, and work-life tools — a direct route to less chaos and more calm.

The truth is, simplifying isn’t about what you give up — it’s about what you get back. One clean tab, one quiet moment, one deep breath. That’s the real reset.

 

Sources:

[1] McMains, S., & Kastner, S. (2011). “Interactions of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in human visual cortex.” Journal of Neuroscience, 31(2), 587–597.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/2/587
[2] Mark, G., Gudith, D., & Klocke, U. (2008). “The cost of interrupted work: More speed and stress.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
https://www.ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf

[3] Vohs, K. D., Redden, J. P., & Rahinel, R. (2013). “Physical order produces healthy choices, generosity, and conventionality, whereas disorder produces creativity.” Psychological Science, 24(9), 1860–1867.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797613480186