Reclaim The Brain

I set an intention for 2025: fewer things, fewer tabs open at once - on my laptop and in my mind - but doing things well, present and mindful. Less, but better.

One of the take-home lessons of Buddhist philosophy is that feelings just are. If we accepted their arising and subsiding as part of life, rather than reacting to them as if they were deeply meaningful, we’d often be better off. Learning to do that is a big part of what mindfulness meditation is about.

When you reduce yourself to a product, you sacrifice the very essence of what makes you unique. Your quirks, your weirdness, your vulnerabilities, your authentic self-these are the things that resonate with others, not a polished, palatable persona. The impactful creators understand this.

But solitude and loneliness are not one and the same. “It is actually a very healthy emotional response to feel some loneliness,” the NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg told me. “That cue is the thing that pushes you off the couch and into face-to-face interaction.” The real problem here, the nature of America’s social crisis, is that most Americans... See more

Research has long shown that health and longevity come down to five fundamental lifestyle behaviors: exercising regularly, eating a nutritious diet, eschewing cigarettes, limiting alcohol consumption and nurturing meaningful relationships.

If you do not deep read, you do not cultivate a capacity to think, imagine, and create; you therefore may not realize that anything more satisfying than a video game even exists.

THE POORLY DEFINED PROBLEM OF BEING ALIVE