TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

By filling in our free moments with web browsing, tweets, videos and news, we may be reducing our brain’s ability to make sense of new experiences and form memories:

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”

At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.

Seems accurate from my experience. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when I go for a bike ride for a few hours, I feel refreshed and—more interestingly—I tend to come up with new ideas.