You stopped at last time.
The story in four panels
When I started observing my day
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1The problem
A smartphone with notifications piling up An hour already?
Fifteen minutes on a delivery app, twenty on a shopping site. My day was just drifting by.
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2How it works
Two neurons reaching out and connecting Attention changes the brain
Neuroplasticity: brain circuits really do reorganize toward where you often pay attention.
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3What to do
An open book and a pen Write down your time
Record and observe your day, and purposeless time starts showing up in numbers.
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4The change
A staircase climbed step by step with a flag at the top Now there's a direction
Just as observation settles the day, action shapes a future that isn't fixed yet.
Honestly, for a while I was letting my days drift by. Fifteen minutes opening and closing a delivery app, another twenty browsing a shopping site with nothing to buy. One day I looked closely at my daily routine and found there was far more of that time than I’d thought. That’s when a question came to me: am I “observing” my time right now, or just drifting along? That question became my reason to take another look at quantum mechanics and brain science.
What changed when I started observing my day
When I first started logging my time, honestly, the result surprised me. The moment I saw in numbers how much “purposeless time” there was in my day, it felt as though my brain responded differently. Things I had vaguely blamed on “not having time” turned out, I realized for the first time, to have simply lacked direction.
Explained in terms of brain science, this experience is quite interesting. There is a concept called neuroplasticity: the property by which the brain’s neural circuits physically reorganize according to repeated attention and behavior. Put simply, the brain itself gradually changes in the direction of wherever you most often direct your attention.
The moment I began recording my day, the act of “observing” itself was already sending signals to my brain. It struck me that this resembles the observer effect in quantum mechanics. The observer effect is the phenomenon in which a particle, before it is observed, exists in a state of superposition, with several states at once, and settles into a single state the moment someone observes it. Of course, this doesn’t mean the human brain works the same way as particles at the level of electrons.
Still, the principle that “nothing is settled unless it is observed” applies surprisingly well to everyday patterns of behavior.
In fact, Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff proposed the Orch-OR theory, which holds that quantum-level information processing may take place in the microtubules inside the brain. Orch-OR stands for “orchestrated objective reduction,” a hypothesis that consciousness itself may arise from quantum mechanical processes (Source: Hameroff & Penrose, Physics of Life Reviews, 2014).
It hasn’t yet reached full mainstream consensus in academia, but it is clearly a serious attempt to explore where the brain and the microscopic world meet. In my own experience, what mattered more than theoretical completeness was “the act of observing itself.” Simply starting to look closely at my day reduced my habit of opening the delivery app, and other choices took its place. The concept of the reticular activating system (RAS) connects to this too.
The reticular activating system is the brain’s filter, selectively picking out, from countless pieces of information, the signals related to what you’re focusing on. When you change the direction of your observation, the RAS starts catching different information.
- Neuroplasticity: brain circuits physically reorganize in the direction you pay attention to
- The observer effect: the moment of observation settles a superposition into a single reality
- The reticular activating system (RAS): the brain’s filter that selectively catches information related to what you focus on
- Orch-OR theory: the hypothesis that consciousness may arise from quantum processes in the brain’s microtubules
In short: simply starting to “observe” your day sets the brain’s neuroplasticity and reticular activating system to work, changing your patterns of behavior.
How to prove with action that the future isn’t fixed
For a while I lived with the verdict “This is just who I am.” When I woke up I’d think, I’ll be tired again today, and this decision probably won’t work out anyway. But now I’ve become someone who uses the short break after meals to go running. Even when I think, “Maybe I’ll just lie down and rest today,” if I get up, put on my running shoes, and head out, I soon find myself running. Through the concept of superposition in quantum mechanics, I came to think again about how powerful an act of settling reality that is.
“If I decide in advance, ‘I’m too tired today, so I’ll just lie down,’ my brain settles only on the state of ‘tired.’ But when I held off judgment for a moment (keeping the superposition) with ‘Why don’t I just put on my running shoes?’ and began observing through action, a completely different reality, ‘me, running,’ was settled instead of lying down.”
Superposition is the phenomenon in which, before observation, a particle has several states at once; until it is measured, no state is settled. In my experience, it reads a little differently: the moment you jump to a conclusion, the brain starts collecting only the information that confirms it.
Conversely, when I held off judgment for a while, a third option I hadn’t seen before actually came into view. The concept of quantum entanglement is also striking. Quantum entanglement is a nonlocal connection in which, when the state of one of two spatially distant particles is determined, the state of the other is determined instantly. Applying this directly between people would be a leap, but in neuroscience the concept of mirror neurons really does exist. Mirror neurons are neurons that respond, when we observe someone else’s actions or emotions, as if we were performing those actions ourselves (Source: Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2010).
In fact, some coworkers had been watching closely as I put on my running shoes every day during the short break after meals to walk or run. A while later, they told me, “Seeing you keep moving after every meal motivated us, so we started a routine of getting up early to walk at dawn.” The result of my observing and choosing positive behavior didn’t stop at my own change; like mirror neurons, it actually changed the behavior patterns of the people around me. In the end, there is real support in brain science for the idea that the effort to stay in a positive state is not just a matter of mood but has physical and psychological effects on our surroundings and the people in them.
My conclusion is this: the fact that the future isn’t fixed is not a word of comfort; it means that where you put your attention right now actually shapes the next reality. Some call this “quantum thinking,” but I think the principle itself matters more than the grand term. Holding an open question instead of a closed conclusion: that’s the starting point.
If you want to dig deeper into this topic, books that explain the concepts without equations, such as Kim Sang-wook’s Lectures on Quantum Physics or Jeong Jae-seung’s Science Concert, are good introductions. When I read them, the everyday insights stayed with me longer than the difficulty of the theory.
In short: “superposition” doesn’t mean putting off conclusions; it’s an attitude of keeping more possibilities open, and that attitude changes real actions and choices.
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