The Forces of Distraction

Technology Between Addiction and Sovereignty

This was once part of a Digital Wellbeing coaching program I designed. Now it’s right here, for you, for free. Enjoy!

My interest in and passion for digital wellbeing and the design of humane technology was sparked by the following thought process:

How can I live a good life?

Which quickly became a question of:

How can I align my behavior with my highest values and goals?

Which led me to ask:

What’s the single biggest factor shaping our lives today?

And the answer to that, it turns out is this:

💻📱📺⌚️ Our screens.

Reflect for a moment on the relationships you have in your life, and the people you spend the most time with. And now, compare that to the time you spend looking at screens. For most of us, just by the time we spend on it, our relationship to technology is one of the most important, and certainly one of the most influential, we have in our lives.

Now, what’s fascinating to me is that we can design these screens.

It’s almost like we’re designing a digital city. When we look at real cities… it’s not that easy to just redesign Berlin over the course of a few weeks. Or to be like, “okay, let’s just start again.”