How to Stop Scrolling Through Your Life and Start Living It
You’re not broken. You’re overstimulated.
Excerpt
These days, our lives feel more like a game of mental Tetris, one that can never be won. Clear one email, three pop up. No matter how hard we try, the notifications keep stacking.
Right now, I have 33 tabs open on my laptop. Thirty-three. And that's not a metaphor, it's my actual browser. But it might as well be my brain.
Our minds jump from thought to thought, mentally everywhere and yet emotionally nowhere. We're so sucked into our phones that we can't remember the last time we looked up. Let alone what we just scrolled past. Perhaps you're like me; I tried turning off notifications, but I ended up checking my phone more often. A feeling reminiscent of the yo-yo diet culture of the early 2000s, where Special K was sold as the "answer" but only left us hungrier. This isn't distraction, it's deeper. We're fragmented, overstimulated, and always somewhere else.
It's what I call open-tab mind. The mental default of the digital age. But it isn't just a metaphor. It's how technology is impacting our brains and everyday lives. This became impossible to ignore when I learned how the people who built these systems live with them.
Jack Dorsey — the co-founder of Twitter, a platform designed around constant updates and real-time attention — now practices some of the most extreme digital boundaries I've ever heard of.
When I first heard this, I had two immediate reactions: That's insane. And — of course. That makes total sense. Because why would someone need monk-level discipline unless they'd built something so compelling it required monk-level discipline to resist? That isn't hypocrisy. It's evidence.
At the airport, you refresh your gate info, check texts, and scroll on repeat. You were supposed to journal, but you got distracted by the buzz of a notification. Instead, I got lost in the scroll, only half hearing my boarding call. Twenty minutes later, I still hadn't pulled out my notebook, and my phone hadn't left my palm.
Here's the thing: it wasn't just me. And it isn't just airports. Digital distraction has seeped into every aspect of our lives. It’s in classrooms, boardrooms, even the conference rooms of the most innovative companies in the world.
