Are You Overchunking Your Experience?

Reclaiming clarity and calm in a world obsessed with metrics

Have you ever stopped to notice how our minds are master chunkers?

From the moment we wake up, we slice and dice the continuous, flowing river of experience into neat little boxes: seconds, minutes, mornings, nights, neighbors, strangers, moods, personalities, diagnoses… you name it.

This mental chunking is incredibly useful—it’s what helps us get through the day, make sense of complexity, and engage with the world. In fact, we wouldn’t be here without it! Our minds evolved to carve up the unending stream of sensory input so we can navigate life with some semblance of order.

But here’s the thing: those chunks don’t exist “out there” independently. They are creations of your own mind, ways your consciousness organizes experience to make sense of it.

The continuous flow of life is happening within you, always unbroken, regardless of how many labels or measurements you create.

These days, however, our chunking often goes into overdrive. Take your smartwatch obsessively tracking your sleep down to the minute. Or calorie counters slicing every meal into numbers. Social media likes turning connection into digits. Even odometers on your bike or treadmill meters quantifying every step or mile—each one a tiny mental chunk pulling your attention outside your natural experience.

Just for a moment, think about your smartwatch telling you you only slept 5 hours last night. That number is a chunk—a mental construct, a simple piece of information created by your own mind. The feeling of restfulness or exhaustion you actually experience doesn’t come from the number itself; it arises naturally within you, completely independent of that chunk. The watch doesn’t hold your well-being—your inner clarity does.

Yet the anxiety or worry about “not sleeping enough” isn’t simply a natural response—it’s often fueled by our reliance on devices that break our experience into ever-smaller chunks. These gadgets hand us numbers and metrics that invite our minds to assign significance, turning simple data into stories that trigger stress or self-judgment. In other words, this worry is a direct byproduct of overchunking encouraged by external devices—taking neutral measurements and transforming them into emotional pressure that fragments your natural sense of peace.

Could it be that the very devices and metrics designed to help us manage life are instead pulling our attention away from the natural flow within? These constant streams of numbers and measurements invite us to focus outside ourselves—on calories, steps, hours slept, likes, and miles tracked—fragmenting our experience and scattering our peace.

Here’s an observation worth considering: these additional chunks often pull your attention away and stir up feelings like worry or pressure. Noticing this can be a doorway to recognizing that these numbers and metrics are just tools—mental creations—not the source of your true well-being.

Remember, peace and clarity don’t come from perfectly measured data; they arise from resting in the continuous, unbroken flow of your own awareness beneath all those mental labels. When you loosen your grip on the numbers and stories, you make space for your natural inner calm to shine through.

So, here’s a simple question to carry with you today:
Could you be overchunking your experience?