Sociologist Erving Goffman called this impression management , our instinct to perform versions of ourselves for others. But in the internet age, that instinct has been industrialized. We no longer perform depth occasionally; we live inside that performance.

Our desire to show others our lives has grown greater than our desire to live them.

We treat attention like a muscle to be constantly exercised, not a space to be occasionally emptied.

But thinking requires emptiness . It requires boredom, confusion, stillness, moments where your brain isn’t optimizing for output. Real thought doesn’t happen when you’re consuming; it happens when you’re stuck.

Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations not... See more