Tag: digital minimalism

The Cognitive Tax: Why Your Brain is Getting Leaner as Your Output Gets Faster

I asked a junior colleague a simple, high-stakes question last week. She opened a new tab before she opened her mouth.

I recognized the gesture immediately. I’d been making it myself for over a year.

The reach is always first now. We just stopped noticing it was a choice—or counting the cognitive tax we pay every time we make it.

… Read the rest “The Cognitive Tax: Why Your Brain is Getting Leaner as Your Output Gets Faster”

The Borrowed Brain

Quick map: this is the long-form essay. There’s a tighter Medium version, a 9-minute video, and a 60-second cut. Read first. The AI-Resistance Self-Assessment link is at the end.

On outsourcing grief, the seven-second window, and what I learned the hard way when I stopped

I want to write about something I have been avoiding writing about for a while, because I am still inside the embarrassment of it.… Read the rest “The Borrowed Brain”

Via Negativa: The Ancient Mental Model That Cures Modern Distraction

The fastest way to improve a system isn’t adding the right thing. It’s removing the wrong one.

This is the core principle of via negativa — and it may be the most powerful mental model for focus and productivity that most people have never applied.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was forty days from bankruptcy.… Read the rest “Via Negativa: The Ancient Mental Model That Cures Modern Distraction”