The Unseen Force Draining Your Energy and Focus

Do a quick mental inventory of the appliances in your home: televisions, computers, gaming consoles and other appliances.

The energy they consume when not in use may not be a significant amount in any day or month, but, over time, this Phantom Energy accumulates.

What is Phantom Energy?

Phantom Energy is a term I learned from meditation teacher Jeff Warren. It describes the electricity that is consumed by appliances when they are plugged in, even when not in use.

It’s similar to the effect that happens when you have many applications open on your phone or computer, or many tabs open on your browser.

Each open application or tab consumes processing power, or bandwidth. The effect is that it slows down the processing power allocated to the main task you are trying to do.

This background processing energy might be at a level where you don’t notice the drain on resources for your primary task.

In both cases, you might assume that whatever level of output you’re receiving — from your appliances, your primary app, your current browser tab — is simply what you can get.

If you unplug devices when not in use, shut down all but your primary application, and close all those extraneous browser tabs, you might notice a sudden surge in available processing power.

Apps and websites suddenly process faster, your hair dryer kicks in with a boost of power. Everything moves with greater ease.

The Background Apps in Your Mind

The mind works in a similar way.

The mind is often running “apps” in the background of our primary tasks: thinking about solutions to other problems, upcoming conversations, strategizing a plan, worrying about problems.

Just like you might be used to the background hum of your computer, refrigerator, or air conditioner, you may be so habituated to the background hum of your churning thoughts that you don’t notice how they drain your energy and focus.

But they do.

A mind with a lot of open tabs is inefficient.

When we have a lot of “open tabs” running in the background, we fatigue more easily. Our focus is compromised. We aren’t operating at our full processing power.

Unfortunately, closing out the open “browser tabs” in the mind is not as simple as closing those tabs in a browser.

The mind is a muscle, and we must train it as such.

Training it to let go of the contraction of background thoughts is a practice that will help you optimize your personal processing power and reclaim your energy.