Thank you so much for your time and comments; it was amazing to hear how it connected with so many of you 🙂

For the first twenty-four hours, I was ecstatic.

But in the following days, anxiety crept in.

This story is about the past week I spent with these feelings, and the question that helped me move forward.

Recently I’ve been more intentional about building a writing habit. So last week I attended my first Shut Up & Write event.

“We’ll go around the table to share what we’re working on, and then I’ll start a one-hour timer for focused writing,” the organizer explained to our group sitting in a coffee shop.

“I’ve been writing about my recent burnout. I’ll keep going on that,” I told the group, and got nods from around the table.

In the next hour, I found a beautiful flow, the collective energy powering my solitary pursuit. I decided I’d try to make attending these writing sessions a near-daily habit. Then I hit publish that evening.

The post took off.

The support was overwhelming. Tens of people reached out to me in many ways. It felt amazing to see that my writing mattered to others. And it helped others share their burnout stories too.

But validation quickly became obligation, and I worried about what I’d write next. I threw myself into my second and third Shut Up & Write events on back-to-back days, eager to double down on my success, and I found myself in an all-too-familiar pattern, overworking to quiet my anxiety. My next post might not take off, but I could make sure that I couldn’t fault my own work ethic.

Yet as I sat down to write at the fourth Shut Up & Write event I’d attended in five days, I finally became conscious of the tension I was bringing to the page. I was writing what I thought readers would want to read, and I didn’t see myself in the pages.

I shared what I’d cobbled together with my writing buddies, a draft of my next post, but something didn’t feel quite right.

My friend Linh encouraged me to ask myself a question:

I read her words and paused.

I felt a slight relief. I realized the pressure I’d been placing on myself. Something started to shift.

Later that day, I was back at the first Shut Up & Write event I’d attended a week ago.

Friendly faces greeted me, “Welcome, Mark!”

We began sharing what we’d be working on, and I decided to open up a little.

“I published the post I’d been working on about burnout, and it got a bunch of likes,” I shared enthusiastically.

The group clapped and cheered.

“And now I’m feeling anxious about publishing the next piece.”

Everyone laughed.

I let out a sigh of relief and smiled.

Then I felt calm.

I remembered the place my first piece came from. A place of creation, honesty, and authenticity. Making with no expectations. A piece I was proud to publish, regardless of the response.

And after the organizer set the one-hour timer, the pages I wrote started to feel true again.

Sometimes it takes a good question to help us see ourselves.

Me from a few years ago wouldn’t have posted again for months after last week’s post, overcome by the fear I couldn’t live up to my past creation.

Me from a few days ago would’ve pushed down the anxiety and announced: “I’m now publishing weekly!”

Today, I know that I’ll keep creating pieces that are true to me.

And when I’m proud of what I see, I’ll hit publish.

If you’re interested in discovering yourself and telling your story, check out our writing course, Unearthed Pages. Our pilot cohort is entering week two, and we’re excited to start making plans for our second cohort :)

Thank you to my story buddies, , , and , for their feedback that helped shape this piece.

We share our highs.

But we rarely share our lows.

I deeply admire authenticity. It’s part of why I love Substack. It’s one of the few places you’ll find people openly sharing their struggles in a non-performative way.

This post is my contribution. It’s about burning out from work, and finding peace even when you don’t know what’s coming next.

I: April

“I can’t do this anymore,” I told my manager in April.

By the time I’d said it out loud, I’d known for weeks. My body had known for months.

I was a Senior Product Manager at a healthtech start-up. I’d been struggling for over six months but had tried to ignore it. I’d startle awake early, already dreading the day. I’d struggle to fall asleep at night, an endless list of action items running through my mind. I’d offload them onto paper, and then fail to face them in the morning.

I’d burned out the previous October, taking two weeks of sick leave while I mostly laid in bed. But desperate to be a productive member of society, I convinced my therapist it’d be best for me to return to work. It took a deep depression and a complete bodily shutdown in April to force me to listen and quit.

At first, I felt a deep shame. I remember calling my mum a few weeks later. She was with my aunt and uncle and put me on speakerphone. “Yeah, I burned out at work”, I updated them, “but I’m sure something good will come next,” I said unconvincingly. The line stayed silent; my tone had fooled no one.

I became allergic to screens. I took down my computer monitor and turned my desk into a journalling and piano setup. I listened to ambient music and cocooned myself with books at home. When I emerged from the house with noise-cancelling headphones on, the world around me was shades of gray.

But while my body was broken, my spirit wasn’t. A few weeks earlier, one of my writing idols, Lawrence Yeo, had invited me to be the Story Ranger for his course Thinking in Stories. Reading students’ submissions and encouraging curiosity about their own writing provided a deep sense of meaning when I was otherwise struggling to face the day. For four weeks it was a place of solace, yet it was coming to an end, and I didn’t know what would get me through my two weeks notice at work.

But then there was a beacon of light. Linh, one of the students from the course, reached out to me about forming a writing group.

I told her I was in.

I didn’t know how I would make it work. But I knew it was worth trying.

II: May

Yet when I finished work, things didn’t improve, they got worse.

In May, the after-effects of holding it together at work hit hard. Days spent entirely in the apartment, sometimes not even leaving bed. Days old dirty dishes stacked in the sink. I would be in tears on the phone with my family. I cancelled most social events; I entered a period of wintering, retreating into myself.

But there was one thing I could bring myself to do: keep my commitment to my writing buddies. Linh had recruited Rachna, another student from the storytelling course, and each week the three of us showed up for each other and shared stories.

As the weeks went by, not only did we share stories, we provided thoughtful feedback. When family and friends would say “nice story!” making us question if they’d even read the jumble of words we’d stitched together, we would ask “why was this important to you?”, and gain insights on ourselves and each other.

While I couldn’t face a busy group gathering, I could share my thoughts in a private community, or escape them entirely with some fiction writing. I found peace in writing, and a place to see my own reflection.

We even welcomed a new story buddy to our group. Three became four.

III: June

Through June, I started to re-emerge.

I had a long planned trip with university friends in Calgary that I almost canceled, anxious about spending a week with others after weeks in near solitude. But thankfully I didn’t, and being around old friends helped stabilize me.

And then something small happened that changed how I saw everything.

On my return home, I stayed at a small farm run by two retired teachers, full of dogs, chickens, donkeys, miniature horses, emus, and a llama (which their website explicitly states never enters the cabin). It was paradise, a heaven on earth. And thanks to my writing habit, I found myself appreciating it with a newfound level of attention.

Before I left, I wrote a poem for the host about being present in the moment: “Can we experience heaven on earth, if we aren’t at peace with ourselves?” I almost didn’t leave it. My inner critic told me I was being pretentious, that it wasn’t any good. I told myself what was the worst that could happen, and left it anyway.

A few days later, I received a message from the farm’s host on Airbnb. He’d typed out my poem and placed it in the RV for others to see.

I felt a deep sense of joy.

A joy I’d never felt from shipping anything at work.

For years, I’ve looked at the world through the lens of what do others expect of me: jobs that pay well, that make sense on my career trajectory, that can be easily explained. But I’ve felt a deep emptiness. And yet here was something that I’d made purely because I felt moved to, and the world had responded. I shared the story with my writing buddies and they celebrated with me.

A couple of weeks later, Linh had another idea. She’d faced her own setback, injuring her knee playing pickleball, and while she was recovering from surgery, a thought came to her. We’d been creating consistently for three months now and it had brought great joy - what if we helped others discover this same joy?

I answered the call to adventure.

IV: July

Last month, I felt reinvigorated with a new sense of purpose.

The dread of early morning calls had been replaced with exercise to quiet my brain, the relentless whack-a-mole of responding to Slack had been replaced by deep work building a website and creating course materials. Linh and I shared countless emails back and forth, allowing us time to reflect. We’ve had calls with a depth I’ve never experienced at work, reflecting on how to help our students work with their inner critic.

My desk became full of technology again. But this time it was for hosting our first info call to people who could’ve been anywhere else, but chose to spend time with us.

And we’re getting signals that following our intuition is working. We’ve got our first paying customers, including people who aren’t our friends (yet!).

It’s been the most rewarding money I’ve ever earned.

Finding comfort in between

There’s a phrase in the financial independence community: “Build the life you want, and then save for it.”

I’m living the life I want. But now I’ve got to earn it. And to earn any meaningful money from this, I’ve got to work on my relationship with self-promotion.

I’ve always struggled with self-promotion. Something about “Look how great I am,” and “This course will change your life.” sits so uncomfortably with me. The reserved Brit inside me cringes.

But I’ve come to realize that my struggle was never with self-promotion. It was with having the confidence to tell my story. And now I’m ready.

By external standards, I might look like I’m in a low.

But internally, I’m feeling comfortable where I am.

I’m not the corporate employee that I used to be.

I’m not the creative that I desire to be.

I’m somewhere in between.

And that’s okay :)

The pilot of our writing course, Unearthed Pages, is currently in session. If you’d like to be notified when sign-up reopens, join the waitlist at https://unearthedpages.com/.

Thank you to my story buddies, Linh, Rachna, and Anamika for the always thoughtful feedback, to Lawrence for being an inspiration, and to Thinking in Stories and Books to Visuals for inspiring me on my creative journey.

“They’re American White Pelicans, visit here every summer,” a wildlife photographer said next to me, the only soul in sight.

“It’s the most I’ve ever seen – four-hundred.”

“Oh, I thought they were storks.”

We chatted for a bit about their migratory patterns, I recommended Listers, an incredible documentary on birdwatching subculture, and then returned from the gravel path back to the road, aware that on another day I would’ve blown straight past that moment.

~~~

Over the two days, I fell in love with my setup, a gravel bike with aero bikepacking gear. This was my second trip, this time with shoes strapped on top of the rear pack so I didn’t need side panniers. Fast enough to make good time, adventurous enough to make the time good. With tires twice the width of older road bikes, a road turning into a gravel path became an adventure, not a dead end; a missed turn to join a bike path became an opportunity to traverse the terrain without putting a foot down.

Taking the side road to explore the pelicans wasn’t the first diversion I’d taken on the trip. On the journey out to Port Townsend, despite the early start to beat the heat, I experienced a relentless stream of traffic riding across the Hood Canal Floating Bridge, a deafening hum in my left ear. I’d crossed the bridge many times by car, but rolling at a slower pace, this was the first time I’d seen a beach lying away to the right. I took a break from the noise. A beautifully smooth sweeping descent brought me down to the water before turning into an uneven mix of thick and thin gravel that brought me to a slow roll.

“Morning,” an elderly gentleman in the empty lot greeted me as I rolled in. He was spreading gravel, presumably for the state park, although there were no labels on his clothes or truck. He was the sort of grandfatherly figure who could tell you “everything’s going to be okay, son” and you’d believe him and feel at ease.

I took in the scene, seaweed-covered landswept logs lined the rocky beach. The calm water a reprieve from the stream of vehicles crossing the state highway above. A minute to breathe. And then I mounted my bike again.

“You have a good ride now,” he wished me as I rode off. I wished him well too, before climbing the hill back to reality. He’d be there for as long as the gravel needed spreading.

~~~

I’d bikepacked just two days ago, but was keen to go on a solo trip to get more familiar with my gear and see what sort of pace I could hold on my streamlined bag setup, snacks overflowing my jersey pockets. I was making great time on the way out, including a typical gas station stop for the trifecta of food, water, and a pee. I was running on autopilot, and it wasn’t until I saw a gas station pump for the faucet that I was snapped out of it, a reminder to be present.

Soon after, I turned off the state highway onto the Olympic Discovery Trail and felt the rush of speed rolling across hard-packed dirt, trees on either side forming a canopy shielding me from the sun.

Further along the trail, I was pedaling uphill around a gradual right-hander when a guy came flying towards me full tilt, taking the racing line tight into my lane, barreling straight at me.

“WOAH WOAH!” I yelled.

His eyes widened as he saw me. His grip tightened on his handlebars, quickly swerving right, passing inches to my left as he grabbed the brakes. I looked behind me and my agitation quickly turned to concern as he desperately scrubbed speed, road tires scrubbing wide on the loose dirt. He ran right to the edge of the trail and almost made friends with a tree, narrowly keeping the bike on the path. And as quickly as he’d appeared, he disappeared around the corner.

~~~

I kept working towards Port Townsend and quickly rounded the coastline that led to downtown.

When I reached the campground I took a nap in the shade. Cloud-watching soundtracked by Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Evening birdsong chirped through my AirPods, unable to cancel out nature’s call.

~~~

The next morning I woke to a crimson red plastering the sky, “Red skies in the morning, shepherd’s warning.” Fortunately I had another day of clear riding before the storm system would hit. I packed up camp and rode to catch the first ferry of the day.

“This doesn’t take tap unfortunately,” the friendly gentleman in the ticket booth told me as I raised my phone, an ease about him, unhurried. “That’s alright,” pulling out my bank card, “it adds to the island spirit.”

I realized as I cycled away that Port Townsend isn’t an island.

“It adds to the spirit of the peninsula” didn’t have the same ring.

He’d known better but didn’t feel the need to correct me.

I spent that whole ferry ride in the bathroom, changing into my cycling gear, applying a layer of sunscreen over already dirty skin, arms covered in flies like a car windscreen on a summer road trip. I added wet wipes to the gear list for next time. “Passengers please return to your vehicles,” the tannoy sounded.

I worked across Whidbey Island, and before I knew it, I was boarding the third ferry of the trip. As I got off in Edmonds, the herd of deer in the road from my sunrise ride in Port Townsend had been replaced by a steady flow of cars roaring up the hill. My jersey pockets now empty, drink mix in bottles, UV sleeves shielding me from the baking mid-morning sun. As I drew closer to home, the familiar sounds of the city returned: crosswalk chimes, pressure washers, construction drills. I thought back to the birdsong of the campground. I dissociated from the dull ache in my left hamstring as I reflected on my trip, but I was pulled back into the moment by two kids riding a grass pump track off the Interurban Trail, north of 155th. I hopped in with them, pedaling through the bumps, and one of them cheered, ‘Nice man!’

~~~

As I reflected on the trip, a quote from ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ kept running through my head:

“We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on 'good' rather than 'time' and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.”

It’s a book about a father and son’s motorcycle trip across the US where they refuse to ride busy interstates and opt for scenic roads, enjoying the journey instead of reaching their destination faster.

I added a DSLR to the gear list.

Strava route: https://www.strava.com/activities/19070312047

Powered by: Lazorade, Washington State Ferries Bacon Egg Cheese Muffin, Mozzarella Sticks, WSF Vegan Sausage Muffin, Peanut Butter M&Ms, Family Donut Shop.

Soundtracked by: Ninajirachi - I Love My Computer, Al Green - The Belle Album, Fleetwood Mac - Rumours, Daft Punk - Random Access Memories, The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers, Michael Jackson - Thriller.

“So what is it?”, Dwarkesh asked tongue in cheek.

Patrick went on to provide a thoughtful and self-aware answer about the advice he’d give a 20-year-old:

• There are many winning strategies available, what’s important is understanding what arena you’re playing in.

• Who am I to give advice to someone when it’s likely overfit to me, and might not be good advice for the person who’s receiving it.

• I could’ve taken the same path in life and been less successful. I could’ve taken a different path and been just as happy. Who am I to give advice tailored to my life, when in another life my advice would be completely different?

As I listened to Patrick, I thought about how his advice might be outdated in five years, how he might look back on his previous answer and respond differently.

What does that mean about the value of the advice?

My mind went to what others have said.

Bo Burnham’s advice: Don’t follow my advice. It’s all confirmation bias. “it’s like a lottery winner saying 'liquidize all your assets and buy Powerball tickets, it works’”

Jason Fried’s advice: Don’t give advice. At best, share what you would do, or share your experience. People can pick and choose from it as they want.

What gives? Does this mean there’s no value in advice?

I think we can draw a lesson from timeless maxims. I’ve come to love a phrase from the late Charlie Munger: “if it’s trite, it’s right”.

He was talking about how wisdom gets refined over generations and how common advice that proves valuable gets distilled into timeless maxims:

• “Every cloud has a silver lining”

• “Actions speak louder than words”

• “Good things come to those who wait”

These phrases are well known. They hold deep truths. Yet they aren’t advice they’d give a friend.

So if timeless maxims are true, why aren’t they good advice?

If I was to tell someone “every cloud has a silver lining” when they’re in the midst of a breakup, it’d likely be received with frustration because it comes across as tone deaf and doesn’t empathize with the pain they’re going through. It’s only once they emerge on the other side of the breakup as a stronger person that they might understand the depth of this phrase. It’s our lived experience that teaches us the truth to “no pain, no gain”. It’s our own struggle that makes a song like “Wish You Pain” profound.

This is the difference between knowledge and understanding. We can’t impart understanding through words. It has to be lived and experienced to be understood.

Think about the first time someone told you “money can’t buy you happiness” versus the moment you actually understood it. I’ve had a series of moments in life that’ve helped me better understand this lesson, but I still haven’t fully internalized it.

“You have to learn the hard way” captures this idea that knowledge isn’t enough, we only learn through personal experience. But that’s not quite right either.

We don’t learn solely through making mistakes–although sometimes it can feel like it.

We can also learn through self understanding. Through paying attention to our own patterns and reactions, by what captivates us and what doesn’t.

I’ve come to believe there’s no right career path, place to live, or partner. There’s just what is the right fit for us. And to answer that question, we have to understand ourselves.

The most common regret on people’s deathbeds is “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

How do we avoid this fate?

My advice to my 20-year-old self?

It’s not specific. It’s not tied to my life. It might be meta-advice.

Seek to better understand yourself.

And here’s the paradox. The better you know yourself, the better you become at filtering external advice. You’ll still learn from others, but you’ll do so selectively, taking what fits, adapting ideas, and leaving the rest behind without guilt.

Socrates put it best: “Know thyself”.

If you enjoyed this essay, please give it a heart. It’s nice to know there’s a human on the other side of these words I put out into the world.

This essay was inspired by The Inner Compass: Cultivating the Courage to Trust Yourself by Lawrence Yeo. I think great thoughts can capture us, and the book’s message came to mind as I was hearing Patrick’s answer on advice for a 20 year old. It dives into the importance of knowing yourself, and how this can provide a deep sense of comfort. It’s short enough to read in a single sitting, which makes it excellent to re-read. I’ve found myself re-reading the second half of the book multiple times already. If you want to understand yourself better, it’s a great starting point.

Follow up reading and listening:

1. Patrick’s advice:

   1. Advice · Patrick Collison

   2. Dwarkesh Podcast - Patrick Collison (Stripe CEO) - Craft, Beauty, & The Future of Payments (0:08)

2. Jason’s advice:

   1. Giving advice is cringeworthy - LinkedIn

   2. People are better off with no advice than some advice - LinkedIn

   3. Giving less advice – Signal v. Noise

3. Bo’s advice:

   1. Bo Burnham's Inspirational Advice: Give Up Now | CONAN on TBS

I remember the joy of burning my CDs onto the computer, excitedly watching the progress bar as they copied to the memory-stick-sized iPod Shuffle my parents had bought me for my twelfth birthday. Metallica’s “Wherever I Roam” powered me on my runs, freed from my portable CD player. The iPod ushered in a new era of physical minimalism - we no longer needed a record player and records, a Sony Walkman and tapes, a CD player and CDs. Many physical devices had been replaced by one.

I was in love with the simplicity and embraced this digital world, expanding my iTunes music collection one 79p single at a time. Yet I still gravitated to my uncle’s physical CD collection when I was around his house. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but with the iPod, my world had gotten a little smaller.

The Great Bundling had begun.

——— ⏣ ———

Six years later, in 2007, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone.

It wasn’t just musical devices compressed into one; it was a phone and a computer, a physical camera, a notepad, maps for the road, a calendar, a calculator, an alarm clock. New utilities too, a flashlight, a voice recorder, a gaming device, all in the palm of our hand. The Great Bundling continued.

I was filled with excitement. I took far more photos, images instantly available. I looked up facts at a moment’s notice, no longer stumped for knowledge in conversation. Life was supercharged, cleaner, and minimal. An iPhone in my pocket was all I needed.

But I started feeling a void in the physical world. I’d still reach for my Casio FX-350ES scientific calculator even for simple calculations; its tactile buttons fixed in place, unmoved by a software update, its blank display sparing my attention, unlike the alluring apps on my phone.

——— ⏣ ———

A year later, we entered the era of “There’s an app for that”. Apple’s app store launched, and more tasks moved from the physical world to the digital. I stopped writing down what I wanted to buy and going to a store, I pulled out my phone and instantly bought it on Amazon. I stopped buying physical books, I loaded up my Kindle. I started getting my flight tickets on my phone.

Yet when I was leaving home after graduation and clearing out my drawers, I found a collection of physical tickets from concerts, movies, and flights which were years old and I realized I hadn’t added to them in years. The only mementos I was collecting from my life were digital stubs across TicketMaster and Apple Wallet, nothing more than clutter to be deleted.

I recently saw a stub of an early Red Hot Chili Peppers concert that was $20, with Nirvana and Pearl Jam as openers. An iconic moment in time captured in perpetuity in this ticket.

These old physical stubs sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay. How much does a screenshot sell for?

——— ⏣ ———

As the years went on, I became more glued to my phone. I couldn’t complete household chores without being plugged into the latest auto-downloaded Lex Fridman podcast. Even going out for dinner had me wired to my phone, scanning the QR code for the menu. I thought back to childhood dinners, an echo of my parent’s words in my head. How have we forgotten the wisdom of “no phones at the table”?

Silicon Valley dialed up our addiction. During a monthly business review, my team and I celebrated increasing user retention in Word by increasing user engagement in AI features. Yet later that night, I’d find myself binge-watching recommended YouTube videos, unable to pry myself from my screen. When I put my phone down it buzzed with another notification. “Relive this memory from three years ago with friends”. My thumb hovered over the notification. I couldn’t quiet the curiosity, I tapped.

It was 2014. Apple saw our compulsive phone checking and sold us the Apple Watch. Silicon Valley’s finest even sold us on how to capture other people’s attention, just before selling us on how to avoid the same trap ourselves, capitalism’s finest play.

We had slot machines in our pockets, dishing out variable rewards and little hits of dopamine each time we checked them. The average person spends four hours a day on their phone - a quarter of their waking hours on their phone (link); nearly six full days per month. I bet your phone’s in your hand, next to your keyboard, or in your pocket right now. 71% of us suffer from moderate to severe nomophobia, the fear of being without our phones (study). If a psychologist were to examine our relationship with our phones, we’d be described as anxiously attached.

And then COVID hit. The Great Bundling reached its crescendo. Not only had many physical tasks been sucked into our devices, but now our physical world had collapsed in on itself. The final boundary between work and home disappeared. Humans have evolved to organize our environments into functional zones associated with different activities, a space for working, a space for eating, a space for relaxing. Yet we took Zoom calls in our pajamas on the same sofa we’d curl up on to watch Netflix that night. Digital and physical worlds became blurred, and our bodies and brains were fried.

——— ⏣ ———

But times are changing. We’re not seeing The Great Bundling wide-eyed anymore.

Last year, Tim Cook’s marketing division re-told Steve Jobs’ Great Bundling story, this time with the iPad Pro. Indulge yourself for ninety seconds and give it a watch: Crush! (YouTube).

This retelling of Steve Jobs' Great Bundling pitch wasn’t received with awe.

We’ve come to value the physical objects in our lives, the value of devices that serve a singular purpose.

When you’re cooking dinner and want to listen to some music, maybe you don’t need to see your latest messages, or be tempted by the app you’re currently checking the most. Maybe you just need a radio with an on button.

——— ⏣ ———

The Great Bundling promised freedom.

But confined us instead.

——— ⏣ ———

After two decades of the Great Bundling, we stand at a cultural inflection point. Technology has fundamentally reshaped the structure of our lives, compressing our physical one while expanding our digital one, often without our conscious consent. Steve Jobs sold the promise of a minimalist world bundled in our pocket. But while we simplified our physical world, we overloaded our mental world.

Beneath the surface, we’re seeing early signs of a cultural correction. We’re falling back in love with physical devices and reclaiming our agency. It’s the Gen Z photographer choosing to shoot with a Polaroid camera instead of their iPhone. It’s the music enthusiast savoring the ritual of playing a vinyl record, and the growing awareness of how our attention has been commodified.

I pulled out my iPod Classic from my drawer recently and charged it up for the first time in a decade. It didn’t hold charge well, but the LCD screen lit up, pixels visible to the eye. I circled my thumb on the click wheel, uncovering Metallica in my old music collection once more. Using an iPod today in our world full of iPhones is seen as a rejection of technology, yet this same device was the one that severed music enthusiasts’ relationships with their record players just two decades ago. Yesterday’s disruptor is today's nostalgic device.

That’s when I realized it’s not about swapping your phone for a dumb phone or going entirely phone-free. Phones adds tremendous value to our lives; to shun something so valuable is to allow it to control our lives differently.

Instead, we must figure out how to redefine our relationship with our phones. When I’m out, I secure my phone in a zipped pocket, making myself conscious of the habitual phone checking that’s become ingrained, unbundling the neural pathways the Great Bundling etched into my brain. At home, I start and end my days in a phone-free bedroom; a sunrise alarm clock gently wakes me up, and a book on my nightstand sends me to sleep.

Each evening, as I turn the physical pages of my book in bed, my eyes grow heavy in a way the bright blue light of my phone prevented. In this drowsy surrender to a bounded set of pages rather than an endless digital feed, I find myself unbundling not just my phone, but my attention itself. I’m uninterrupted and at peace—a cadence my body remembers, but the great bundling made me forget.

——— ⏣ ———

Thanks to Tim, Ricard, Deb, and Andrea, who read early drafts of this post and helped shape its direction.

This post was inspired by my spectacular and boring no phone sundays.

If you enjoyed the post, please give it a heart, and if you have any thoughts, please share them below; I’d love to hear from you!